Careers at Making Waves Foundation: Seven Reasons Our Compensation and Benefits Stand Out
by Making Waves Foundation
At Making Waves Foundation, you’ll find a great community of people and a dynamic, collaborative, and rewarding work environment.
We are proud to offer an above market total rewards package* to our team members – our most important assets. We value recruiting top talent, treating them equitably and fairly, investing in their growth and development, and supporting their career progression at Making Waves and beyond.
If you’re interested in learning more about working at Making Waves, here are seven reasons to consider working at this mission-driven non-profit organization based on our approach to our core values and our compensation and benefits package for our employees.
1. Clear organizational values
Our core values at Making Waves Foundation ground our community – including staff members, students, alumni, board members, donors, and partners – in who we are and how we operate together.
Our core values come to life in our everyday work supporting educational opportunities as well as in share-outs in team meetings, feedback we give to each other, awards and recognition, performance reviews, and more.
Our Core Values
- Drive impact. We expand educational opportunity for underrepresented students – this is the heart of our mission. To support college and career success for individual students and at scale in communities, we think big, set ambitious goals, and achieve results.
- Promote equity. We acknowledge that marginalized communities face systemic inequities. With our students, we address barriers to opportunity by supporting them to pursue their dreams. With our staff, we leverage our diverse perspectives, build genuine relationships, and implement policies that promote fairness for everyone.
- Build community. We seek deep connections and nurture authentic, inclusive relationships. We show up for each other and build each other up with love, strength, and joy. We accelerate progress through intentional collaboration and partnership.
- Do hard things. When we see a challenge, we rise to it with optimism and courage. The stakes are high, so we don’t give up.
- Learn and grow. We stretch ourselves by staying curious and testing new ideas. We reflect, celebrate, iterate, and share our learning to support others’ growth.
2. Transparent, equitable salaries – and no salary negotiations
In line with our commitment to equity, fairness, and transparency – and since salary negotiations have historically negatively impacted women and people of color – we have a no salary negotiation policy. This policy means we will always give our best offer. We use data and a consistent framework to make salary decisions, and we regularly analyze pay data – internally and externally – to drive compensation program enhancements.
We provide competitive base salaries along with the opportunity for merit-based increases so employees can grow their salaries. Our job levels, salary ranges, and salary bands help ensure pay is equitable. They also help build trust, increase retention, and communicate growth potential to current and prospective employees.
3. Time off… 51 days off a year to be exact
We believe staff are best positioned to achieve our mission focused on educational equity and make an impact when they have time to work hard, learn, grow, and care for themselves. A combination of company-paid holidays as well as paid vacation, sick, and personal time adds up to a total of 51 paid days off each fiscal year, to start.
4. 100% paid medical benefits – plus other wellness benefits
Making Waves Foundation covers 100% of medical (Kaiser HMO Platinum), vision, and dental benefits for the full-time staff member and a spouse/domestic partner or dependent child(ren). A $750 HRA account is given to help employees to help fund mental health benefits, and an FSA is available for medical and childcare expenses.
5. Hybrid work environment
We offer an intentional hybrid work environment where, generally, staff work from the office in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Richmond, California, on five common days a month – including one day dedicated to community and collaboration – with flexibility to work remotely otherwise. Plus, employees can choose four weeks per year to work entirely remotely.
6. Work perks, community building, and professional growth
During in-person days, team members enjoy lunch together through credits to Grubhub – plus gain free access to Grubhub+ (free delivery, anyone?) outside of work. Meals are also available during full-team community and collaboration days, which focus on community building and professional development.
In the spirit of building community, the People and Culture team organizes occasional social events and holiday gatherings. To help employees learn and grow, Making Waves Foundation provides an annual professional development stipend.
7. Bonus!
Looking for one more reason? In addition to cost-of-living adjustments and opportunities for merit-based salary increases, Making Waves Foundation provides annual bonuses – a percentage of salaries – for organization-wide performance.
*Based on a 2022 study conducted by Edgility Consulting
About Making Waves Education Foundation
At Making Waves, we are committed to educational equity. Making Waves Education Foundation is a Bay Area nonprofit that supports Making Waves Academy – a public charter school with more than 1,100 5th through 12th grade students – and leads college and career programming with more than 430 college students.
Knowing the opportunities that come with a college degree, we partner with historically underrepresented and underserved students to help make college affordable and graduation attainable. Centering the journeys of our students, our personalized approach includes college and career coaching, scholarships, and financial planning.
Our alumni network includes more than 730 college graduates, who earn their degrees and land jobs at more than twice the rate of their first-generation, low-income peers, with 85% graduating debt-free.
