Fuel for the Field

In this guest post, Jason Trimiew, REDF’s Director of Fund and Business Development, presents a picture of what nonprofit social enterprise looks like at scale. Like most effective programs of this size and scope, the NISH/AbilityOne example requires the kind of cross-sector partnerships I have discussed in previous posts. It’s an inspiring example that calls us all forward and I’m grateful that that Jason and REDF colleague David Derryck, got to witness it first-hand!

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A picture of social enterprise at scale
Jason Trimiew
Director of Fund and Business Development, REDF

Jason Trimiew speaking at REDF's 2009 Benefit and Social Enterprise Expo

I had the privilege of recently attending the 2010 NISH national conference. I left inspired by what I saw and heard and hopeful for the future of social enterprise.

For the uninitiated, NISH is a national nonprofit organization providing broad support to the AbilityOne program—a Federal program that creates jobs for people with severe disabilities. AbilityOne provides incentives for branches of government, such as the Department of Defense, to buy products and services such as landscaping, military uniforms, facilities management—currently over $2 billion worth a year—from nonprofit-run businesses across America. Seventy-five percent of the direct labor hours on any given contract must be performed by people who are blind or have other significant disabilities. Over 40,000 people who normally face unemployment rates of 70% or more are working every year as a result of this program.

NISH’s role—much like REDF’s—is that of a true intermediary. NISH provides technical support to the nonprofits who service the contracts that NISH helps secure on behalf of its 600-plus member network. NISH provides extensive, frequent training—everything from a 3-day document shredding boot camp to how to improve your negotiation skills—and financial resources such as loans and grants to build nonprofit enterprise and organizational capacity. NISH also employs industry veterans in 10-plus lines of business who actively monitor market trends to identify contracts that, in NISH parlance, can be “brought on the PL”—the master AbiltyOne procurement list that functions like a database of preferred vendors and streamlines the purchase process for Federal customers.

The conference itself was professional, well-attended, and filled with substantive content. But what got me excited was to see NISH’s machine in action. Hotel meeting rooms filled with the marketplace’s buyers and sellers; government bureaucrats and nonprofit executives doing business deals and working together to strengthen a program that, in addition to the benefits each receives, also saves the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

I couldn’t help but be awed by this cascading waterfall of self-reinforcing, mutually beneficial contracts—both business and social—that anchor the program’s impressive results.

No doubt, these symbiotic relationships require intentioned, professional and committed players: the employees ready to work, the nonprofits running the businesses, the customers (in this case Federal agencies) buying the stuff, and NISH, at the center, feeding the beast. But it’s an example of social enterprise at scale and holds significant potential for a number of the efforts underway to find, resources, study, and replicate the most promising and effective solutions to deal with problems like persistent unemployment and joblessness.