NAMI Reviews

The organization is terribly run and actively perpetuates a toxic work culture. I wish I’d left after a couple of years. I spent years being optimistic, and my sum total assessment of the national branch of this organization is abysmal. The pay for lower-ranking employees is terrible and there is no process for increasing your pay or title to reflect your work. I and other colleagues who tried to negotiate pay increases and promotions were gaslit (and remained underpaid). Until the last couple years I was there, there wasn’t a single full-time HR professional. The one they eventually hired was categorically unhelpful. The C-suite and higher-level leaders each promote a terrible environment in their own way. Some are unqualified for their job, and others are actively abusive. If you work here, you might have a fine experience. Or, you might spend years overperforming for no reward, while being told that everyone is “here for the mission” and the workplace is not a functioning professional environment where you can expect accountability, but a “family.” You may find yourself and your colleagues repeatedly gaslit, treated abusively, tokenized, and microaggressed. You may wonder how such a place could be a mental health organization. So, you could spend years shocking your friends with stories of all the terrible things that happen to you and your colleagues, or you could simply not work here.

NAMI national is a corporation. They run it like a business and seem to determine organizational priorities through available funding. Employees are replaceable. Turnover is high. Top level leadership is inaccessible and unwilling to address issues or make decisions. Compliance and risk aversion is rewarded. Innovation is “encouraged” although framework, process and internal support is lacking. Favoritism is rampant, internal metrics for performance are not a thing, and hiring practices are not standardized. It’s frustratingly political for the size of the organization and the CEO is hands off (essentially not present) inside the organization. Very out of touch with the work and unwilling to engage with the staff beyond disingenuous banter.