Namechanged as this is quite outing - sorry its long! I'd love some advice.
I'm in my 40s and about 4 years ago I moved career. Previously I had been working running small businesses in an industry I knew well - initially other people's companies and then my own. These roles were hard work with long hours but fun and I was always successful. Business owners were always quite hands off (and then I obviously didn't have a boss when I worked for myself) but everyone was always happy with my work, I never had any serious issues and I did well financially.
When I moved career my aim was to do something more rewarding and I moved into charity finance. I had to take a fairly big hit on my salary initially but I was happy to do that for a step-down position, better work-life balance and more time with my young kids. This felt like a good fit for me when I was planning and I thought I would really enjoy it.
The first charity I worked for was awful - a lot of very serious safeguarding and financial problems and extremely poor decision making. The culture was very self congratulatory so raising anything negative was tricky. It felt like the goal posts kept moving, lots of things being misrepresented, lots of discussion but very little action, huge staff turnover . I stuck it out for a couple of years unsuccessfully trying to change things.
After leaving there I spent a good six months looking for something new (did some freelancing in between) and spent a lot of time trying to find a charity with more of a business ethos - I turned down several offers in this time from charities I didn't have confidence in. I started a new role in an organisation that seemed good six weeks ago and it's not what I had hoped it would be. Decision making seems better and staff turnover is much lower. But their induction process is awful, they are unaware that the finances are in a huge mess and the self-congratulatory culture seems very similar. I haven't raised much yet but will need to begin doing so soon.
In discussions with other people working in charity these sort of things seem to come up a huge amount; and almost everyone I've spoken to has been "oh yes - that's exactly like when I worked at Y" . But then there's also part of me which wonders whether the reason I find it hard to ignore this is because I've had organisational responsibility for a long time - maybe other people just ignore the issues?
I am very torn with what to do. For logistical reasons it would be impossible to go back to doing exactly what I was doing before but I could move back into a business role and hope that solved the issue. This would have the advantage it would be better paid.
Or I could look for another charity role and hope third time lucky but I feel anxious about doing this - and ideally wouldn't want a period of not working again until I've built up savings.
Or I could try raising things in this charity and try to fix from inside - perhaps with some business coaching to support with raising things within that sort of culture which I have less experience of.
Or I could look for a charity role with more overall responsibility which would more closely model my previous roles and I'd have more control to fix things to how I like. Whilst I was job hunting before I did apply for some charity ceo roles and got to end-stage but didn't get offered.
Or maybe there's something which I haven't thought of? What would you do? Any advice?