Pros
This mission-driven company generates quality educational products for an underserved audience. The work they do in the education sphere is important, and the staff generally are supportive and work well as a team. There's a lot of creativity in this company, and the people I worked with believed in the work they did and cared deeply about doing it well. The founders' vision is still alive and well and permeates the culture.
Cons
Because the company's product line serves primarily Title I schools, their internal funding is tightly tied to how well the US government funds those schools--in other words, the schools themselves must be adequately funded by the government in order to be able to afford the products and services that SFA offers. SFA's financial stability fluctuates as a result, as does their ability to fund staff positions. The current trend toward deep government cuts to needy populations in general has, unfortunately, affected this organization's ability to support the staff it needs to produce the volume of work it's committed to producing. Their internal infrastructure is struggling to bring itself up to date with the standards in today's digitally driven environment; their processes and procedures for disseminating the materials they produce are, in many cases, outdated and clunky.
