I thought about how the economy sputters along, and no one seems to know where the ‘next big thing’ is coming from.  The newspapers today told us that we can’t count on the technology sector for big job growth, and President Obama’s Labor Day suggestion of a new infrastructure ‘bank’ and $50 billion of funding to create jobs repairing roads and bridges hardly registered for most people who are either pedaling as fast as they can to hang on to the jobs they have, or holding their breath as they try to make it through yet another week of unemployment.

Meanwhile, John Tammy of Forbes tells us,

“But while it’s exciting to contemplate the giving nature of Gates and Buffett, if their true desire is to help their fellow man, they should hoard every penny of their significant wealth…

Some will no doubt benefit in the near term, but the removal of limited capital from the productive parts of the economy will ultimately reduce our standard of living, drive up unemployment and make individuals more — as opposed to less — needful of charity”.

Interesting.

Sean Stannard-Stockton’s Tactical Philanthropy blog offered up some choice comments on Tammy’s suggestion, noting that the nonprofit sector is a huge part of our economy, with millions of jobs and active investments in the building blocks of our economy – education, scientific experimentation, etc.

From REDF’s perspective, the irony is perhaps even more pronounced.  We are using a mix of philanthropy and government funding (through the Social Innovation Fund) to invest in the creation of businesses that in turn provide jobs to people who would otherwise be economically unproductive, and would require public subsidies to meet basic needs, while cycling through costly systems such as prisons and homeless shelters.

Quite the reverse of Tammy’s notion, the philanthropy flowing into these ‘social enterprises’ provides capital that drives down unemployment, and makes people less — as opposed to more — needful of charity.

We invite Mr. Tammy to come visit organizations like New Door Ventures, Community Housing Partnership, and Buckelew Programs.  See what philanthropic capital can do when deployed productively.  There’s more than one way to stimulate the economy.  And given the paucity of solutions flowing from for profit private sector businesses, or our nation’s capital for that matter, maybe it’s time to look for ‘the next big thing’ elsewhere.

What do you think?  Where is the job growth of the future going to come from?  How can it include more people who have traditionally been excluded from the workforce, while also employing millions of people who were working, but now have been frozen out of an economy that is anemic when it comes to job creation?  What is the ‘next big thing’ to stimulate job growth?

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Unexpected Findings: What Businesses Can Learn from Social Enterprise
By Janet Zhou
Farber Intern, 2010

I often like to ask people in social enterprise what skill MBA students should develop to be effective in social enterprise. One summer in venture philanthropy doesn’t make me an expert, but my time at REDF has given me some food for thought on this topic.

Use the language of your audience

Janet Zhou, 2010 Farber Intern

At REDF, you can be sitting in a KKR Board room one morning and taking a tour of urban housing projects the next. Business school prepared me well for the board room, but I found myself floundering in my presentation to the crew of a recycling social enterprise. I was knee deep in explaining my “break-even analysis” when one of the crew members interrupted to ask, “Are you talking about making money?” That was exactly what I was talking about, but I wanted to call it “break-even” because that was what I had learned. This young man was (politely) reminding me that what I had learned was only as valuable as my ability to help others understand.

Business school teaches a language designed for board members, customers, and investors. Yet, true leadership requires articulating a case that is compelling to a broader audience of employees, politicians, and community members. For those of us who believe business can be an engine of social change, it is critical that we learn to persuade from a diverse set of perspectives and go beyond the language of business to make our case. There won’t always be a young man in the audience to prompt me to explain myself better, but I’ll remember what he taught me when I’m in front of my next audience.

Know the boundary between doing better and demanding better

Like many MBAs, I wondered if social enterprises struggled primarily because they didn’t have the right incentives for efficiency. My observation from this summer is that incentives are not the biggest problem. Instead, real, structural barriers exist, and they require an endless amount of creativity to circumvent. By way of example: one of the enterprises I worked with was charged a fee of almost 50% by their payroll administrator because of the population they employ. That’s about twice what normal payroll fees would be. Because this is a labor intensive industry, that 50% fee amounts to a 50% tax on the enterprise. I don’t know many small businesses that could turn a profit with that kind of burden! For many social enterprises, optimizing prices or benchmarking productivity can only move the needle so much. Outside of that, our energy should be spent changing the rules of the game, which is why advocacy is a critical piece of the puzzle. Some of the answers that this field needs will not come from doing better on business, but demanding better business conditions for our social enterprises.

Embrace the blank slate

In business school, we are rewarded for being prepared. We’re taught to read ahead, think fast, and be ready with our opinions when our name is called. At times, all of that preparation makes it hard to hear anything but our own thoughts, and we internalize the message that leadership is about having answers.

I realized how misconceived this notion was when I ran a meeting with senior staff for one of my projects. I came into this meeting armed with a framework and a list of carefully prepared questions. Ten minutes in, I realized no amount of preparation would allow me to unpack the richness of a conversation that started long before I arrived and will continue long after my summer is over. So, I listened. In the end, that meeting – seemingly unorganized, discursive, and without input from me – proved to be my most valuable guidepost for understanding REDF and the challenges that social enterprises face. It’s scary to walk into the room as a blank slate, but I hope my career will be filled with many opportunities to be just that.

Ask not what business can do for social enterprise, but what social enterprise can do for business

In some ways, my summer experience has been about unlearning my business school mentality. Talking to non-business audiences, looking outside of business for solutions, and embracing not having answers are not the bread and butter of MBA curricula. What strikes me, however, is that many of these ostensibly social enterprise lessons are ones that could make businesses better too. Would the financial crisis have happened if the banking system had been forced to make the case for CDOs in plain-spoken English to all the stakeholders involved? What if businesses approached issues like climate change as a blank slate and listened to the conversation taking place between scientists? I came to REDF thinking that I would use my MBA skills to maximize value for social enterprises, but what I will take away from this experience are the skills I learned in social enterprise to maximize the value of my MBA.

Over the next five years, we will help grow nonprofit social enterprises, and also to innovate in an area where success has been elusive — helping people to retain jobs and advance up the ladder who do start working after a period of chronic disconnection and unemployment.

While we know that social enterprise brings people into the workforce successfully, we do not have a rigorously proven model that has lengthened the duration of employment for people who initially face multiple barriers to work.   We do know from research that when people are stably employed for a year or so, most of the important elements of their lives change for the better – income, health, housing, and reductions in recidivism to prison.

Going forward, we will dedicate some of REDF’s resources to advancing those practices that are ‘bright spots’ with demonstrated success in job placement, job retention and upward mobility for social enterprise employees.  We’ll build into our “model” what we learn from the evidence.

And while we institute these new approaches, we also recognize that some people will, over the long haul, work at front line jobs that deliver essential services benefitting us as individuals, and improving our communities, but jobs that are not high up the career ladder or income scale.

Many people who are concerned about workforce development tend to focus on advancement, education and training, rather than helping people to simply get any job.  This is motivated by an interest in ensuring that people can support themselves with adequate salaries and realize their full potential to contribute.  We wholeheartedly agree, and everything REDF and our portfolio companies do aims to help people achieve their highest aspirations for education and work!

But sometimes the drumbeat has an undercurrent of disrespect for people in certain jobs.  Like janitors for example.  This has always bothered me, perhaps because of some personal history.  While my life has been privileged, my father’s father was a janitor on New York’s Lower East Side in the early 1900’s as I was told repeatedly.   He was an educated, intelligent person, as many people are who do that work.   Maybe that’s one reason why I always resonated with the quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. who manages to support both sides of the equation at once…

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

This hasn’t always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don’t drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you’re forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn’t do it any better.

If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.  Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

While REDF aims to help people set their sights as high as possible, we also might consider how and whether all of us express respect for people that do work on the front lines – and often do it with polish and dignity.  Better pay, after all, is often connected to how we value particular kinds of work.

Here is another story you might want to check out if you resonated with that thought.

Meanwhile, front and center on our minds is how we can help to end joblessness among people with major barriers, while being bombarded by articles like those about the self-named “99’ers”. These are the 1 million or so Americans who will have exhausted 99 weeks of unemployment benefits by the end of 2010, and have few ‘barriers to work’ other than not having a job!

Why does REDF believe it’s so critical to create jobs for people with major barriers, when so many other people don’t have work?

An answer we’ve consistently offered over the years is that long-term unemployment clearly costs society, communities, families, and taxpayers as people depend on public benefits or experience cycles of homelessness or even incarceration when they have no way to earn a living.

But in the context of today’s sky high unemployment rates, our commitment to this effort has, perhaps paradoxically, gotten even stronger as we understand in our bones the impact of long-term unemployment. This was brought to life for me at the office last week. A candidate for a REDF job came to interview, and said, “This interview will be short, because I was offered two jobs today.”

She went on to tell us that she had still wanted to come in and meet us because she felt so strongly about our mission, especially after having experienced a significant period of unemployment herself. The painful effects of losing the social network, the feeling of pride and accomplishment and sense of purpose were fresh in her mind. And she told us that what was hardest to hold on to was a sense of hope. She had recently heard someone say that more than any other characteristic, what distinguished those who eventually got a job was maintaining hope.

Click the photo to read about how a job changed Jamall's life

When I first arrived at REDF three and a half years ago, I liked our tag line, “Investing in employment and hope”, but it’s taken on a whole new meaning through this recession. All people need the chance to work. REDF is about making sure some of those with the least opportunity have that chance.

One thing we know for sure is that government is not bailing us out of this mess anytime soon. Private citizens and the private sector have to step up. And with a hole blown in our economic resources, we have to make sure that public and private dollars are invested in initiatives that are not just cost effective, but really impact peoples’ lives.

And while the science of measuring social sector results is imperfect, REDF will do all we can to advance the SIF focus on improving what we do based on what we learn, and scaling the practices that have demonstrated real evidence of impact. Two articles that illuminate the ‘social measurement’ topic in all its thorny glory – worth reading: the New Yorker profile of Esther Duflo of MIT’s Poverty Lab describing the benefits of and controversies surrounding her random assignment studies of social programs ; and the piece by Geoff Mulgan director of the Young Foundation in Stanford Social Innovation Review arguing for sharper common frameworks among funders. There’s an insightful comment on that piece by Sara Olsen posted on that article.

Even if it’s not always what practitioners, policymakers and philanthropists are interested in, we are only going to be able to deliver results on the ground and get the political process and donors to invest in change ‘at scale’ when we are ready to offer hard facts and hard truths about what does and doesn’t work.

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REDF Leverages First Social Innovation Fund Grant

By Carla I. Javits, REDF President
Originally posted on the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) Opinion Blog

As we prepared our application for the federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF) there were times that I struggled with a hard-earned skepticism about the latest silver bullet solution to domestic social problems. I’ve spent 25 years trying to find ways to counter the destructive effects of chronic poverty. A $50 million federal program—a fraction of the resources needed—did not seem to merit the intense focus it attracted from the social sector.

But one remarkable thing about people is that hope springs eternal even in the most dire circumstances. Fanning that resilient and optimistic flame is at the center of the work of the social sector. And it’s at the heart of the success that sometimes comes to those we serve when they are offered half a chance.

Given the stakes, all of us at the Roberts Enterprise Development Fund (REDF) were elated to hear that we would be representing California as a member of the first group of federal Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grantees.

Here’s a brief look at what’s promising and fresh about the SIF—which hopes to accelerate widespread adoption of approaches that demonstrate greater impact than the status quo. To do so, it will test whether funding intermediaries and a focus on measurement of results together deliver better results.

While federal funding for “intermediaries” is controversial, my experience working in two of them over 18 years is that, done right, they can be powerful engines of positive change. These oddly-named entities put the pieces together and connect the dots. We support and aggregate the impact of multiple organizations to make a compelling case for change, and stick with it over time, helping build a healthy nonprofit sector that delivers results (for more on this topic see a great report here).

Funders are often reluctant to sustain intermediaries, viewing them as “overhead”—but the SIF, having the vision to see how intermediaries can expedite and facilitate change, has taken the risk to support us. Our challenge is to prove worthy by adding value.

At REDF, we know what a heavy lift we have ahead with our plans to help nonprofits create businesses to employ people with major barriers across the State of California, and create a model that can be even more widely replicated. But there are few examples of real progress in this area, and the evidence shows that we’re on to something that works. This is the big chance to demonstrate it, and prove it can be done cost effectively.

How will the SIF help? Federal support offers financial resources, greater credibility, and help facilitating policy change. SIF-funded groups will learn from one another.

Some critics also dismiss the SIF’s unprecedented focus on measurement and evaluation as “business as usual” and “not innovation” because subgrantees have to demonstrate a track record. I disagree because the focus on measurement (1) lays down a direct challenge to the kind of patronage that still influences expenditure of public resources; and (2) gives us a lever—objective data—that disruptive innovators can use to get a seat at the table with philanthropy, business, and government. For more on this topic see these blog posts.

With no public resources to spare now, and even less in the future, now is the time to make sure the public knows what results our investments achieve. What is success for REDF and the first “class” of SIF grantees?

• Results! (documented, quantified, well-described, powerful, positive) for people in communities—at a reasonable cost.

• New knowledge and clarity about what works.

• A greater willingness by public and private funders to throw down with those groups that adopt proven practices, measure results, and constantly improve based on what they learn.

Learn how Ramses turned his life around after being hired at a REDF-supported social enterprise.

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Today REDF was elated to receive news of a two year $3 million federal Social Innovation Fund grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The support is welcome and needed fuel we will use to expand San Francisco Bay Area social enterprises, and to take our work to other parts of California. We are especially motivated to put all we have into accomplishing our goals as we are the only California-based organization among the eleven groups selected.

As readers of this blog know, we believe, and evidence demonstrates that nonprofit-run social enterprises create the jobs that offer a way into the workforce for young people and adults who would otherwise face almost insurmountable barriers due to histories of homelessness, addiction, mental illness or incarceration.

REDF would not have received this federal support without the enthusiasm and hard work of the portfolio of nonprofits we have had the honor to support over the years, as well as our other partners, and our steadfast Board, Advisors, and donors.

Increasing the prospect of successful implementation, several outstanding organizations committed to partnering with REDF in various ways to implement the SIF program including the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, Bank of America, The California Endowment, the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, The Fresno Regional Foundation, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, NISH Pacific West Regional Office, The California Workforce Association, Association for Corporate Growth – SF Bay Area Chapter, the Center for Employment Opportunities, the SF Workforce Collaborative, and the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development. And we hope to have the chance to learn from the other ten grantees as part of an initiative that the CNCS and philanthropy are fostering in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

Most of all, we are inspired to do even more by the tenacity and spirit of the people who get jobs in social enterprise, and undaunted by all of the barriers at hand, thrive and succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams when given half a chance.

One of our first steps will be replication in California of the New York-based Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) social enterprise model that has achieved proven results in reducing crime, and recidivism to jail and prison. The resources are now in place for the first replication — a private-public partnership between REDF, CEO, government, foundations, and local nonprofits.

To carry out the SIF, over the next five years REDF commits to:

• Put thousands more Californians to work by investing in social enterprise growth and job creation in the Bay Area and around the State; and

• Develop a replicable, scalable, sustainable model of social enterprise by:
  • A more rigorous demonstration of its impact on job retention and wages;
  • An assessment of the cost-effectiveness and ‘social return on investment’ of social enterprise as compared to other approaches; and
  • Showing how these enterprises can grow in different geographic regions of California

The path ahead will not be easy, but we are heartened by the enthusiasm, talent, and optimism of the people in nonprofits, business, philanthropy, and other sectors that continue to step up in support of REDF, the nonprofits we assist, and most importantly people who need to, want to work, and thrive when given the chance to do so.

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A Slippery Slope We Need To Climb
Cynthia Gair
Managing Director of Programs, REDF

The difference between a first-step job and a dead-end job can be a slippery slope, but it is a slope we need to climb.

All of us who have jobs now started out at some point with a first-step job…that job in which we began learning skills for dealing with coworker and supervisor relations, group deadlines, customer interactions, and a host of other demands that come up in any job. Our first-step jobs were often in low wage, entry level positions – positions that, like my first job cleaning tourist cabins in a small town motel, form a necessary step toward productive, satisfying employment.

At REDF, we’ve spent over ten years creating first-step job opportunities for people who, due to histories of incarceration, homelessness, mental illness and other challenges, don’t get opportunities to succeed in jobs that can open the way to other employment. Social enterprises that provide supported first-step jobs are the best way for many long-term unemployed people to get onto the path to better jobs.

The California Labor Federation, an organization representing several unions and their 2.1 million union workers in manufacturing, retail, construction, hospitality, public sector, health care, entertainment and other industries, sets its sights on increasing higher-paying, higher-opportunity jobs. This focus was evident at the Federation’s vibrant annual conference a few weeks ago, themed “Building the Jobs Recovery.” Reports on the scale and urgency of current needs throughout California and the U.S., mixed with thought-provoking critiques of economic policy and innovative private/public and business/labor initiatives made this more than a networking conference —-the air seemed to hum with ideas, concerns, and plans for bolstering and increasing good jobs and individuals’ skills to fill those jobs.

Throughout the buzz of ideas and plans, I heard terminology that said a lot about attendees’ point of view: there was much use of “high-road” and “low-road” to describe the jobs labor promotes (“high-road”) versus the jobs it disapproves of (“low-road”). High-road jobs are those with higher pay and greater opportunity. Low-road jobs are low pay, low skill jobs. Labor’s focus on high-road jobs is not only understandable; it’s admirable in many ways: it is based on a belief in workers’ abilities and potential for increased levels of skill and responsibility. But this positive perspective shouldn’t exclude opportunities for the many Americans who need a first-step job – a job that may seem “low-road” – and an extra boost of support in order to get started on the path to full productive employment.

Organized labor’s skepticism about these jobs is clear and it is well-founded. After all, often entry-level jobs do turn into “last- step” jobs….steps to nowhere, to unending low pay and no opportunity. In addition to wage and opportunity issues, I have heard concerns raised about a lack of work standards enforcement that allows notoriously bad employers to prey upon people coming into their companies’ first- step jobs.

But a first-step job is not necessarily a low-road job, not if it includes, as do REDF-supported social enterprise jobs, employer-sponsored programs to build employees’ job readiness, skills, and links to better jobs. We all need to start somewhere and not everyone is ready to jump into high-road jobs. I hope Labor can begin to embrace the important role these supported first-step jobs can play in people’s lives. Some unions support pre-apprenticeship programs that help people with little experience move toward higher skilled union work. Perhaps links between such pre-apprenticeship programs and social enterprises can smooth the route toward better jobs for more people.

Yes, the distinction between first-step jobs and low-road jobs may be a slippery slope. But if we can be aware of the ‘slipperiness’ and the pitfalls, and if labor and social enterprise proponents can work together, we can strengthen the paths from first-step jobs to better opportunities.

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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.

With unemployment in California stuck around 12%, prospects for increased employment of individuals with significant barriers might seem dimmer than ever. Putting a fine point on it, “I think the unemployment rate will be permanently higher,” noted Mark Sandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, “or at least higher for the foreseeable future.” The Congressional Joint Economic Committee just reported that the unemployment rate for youth between age 16 and 24 is—at close to 20%—the highest since it began tracking the data in 1947.

It is hard not to consider whether REDF’s relentless focus on bringing those with significant barriers into the workforce is still relevant in this context. And maybe that’s why I particularly noted the words of actress, performance artist and playwright Anna Deveare Smith who entranced attendees at the “Gathering of Leaders” hosted by New Profit earlier this year.

To paraphrase, she said that those with “optimism” are busy looking for signs of falling unemployment and people heading out to the mall to shop. Those with “hope” have the imagination to look out beyond the evidence of static unemployment to create new possibilities that become contagious against all the odds— innovating despite the present realities, inventing new technologies, and starting businesses that eventually employ hundreds of thousands.

Although we do not know that it will turn out well, people with hope create job opportunities for those with unemployment rates five times as high as others, even when unemployment is sky high. And men and women with hope seek jobs and work hard to retain them when they get them, despite the competition they face from others carrying less baggage.

Few things are as bad for us as being involuntarily out of work, and most people know it.

What is not so clear is why our country has put up with disproportionately high unemployment rates for significant swaths of the US population for decades, especially when the related costs of recidivism to jail and prison, homelessness, youth violence, and family dysfunction have been breaking the bank.

Decades of experience have demonstrated that people with the most daunting challenges are fully capable of moving into the workforce when offered paid work experience and targeted services that connect them to basic education and certified training.

It’s high time to stop talking and start doing. REDF’s 2011-2015 strategy, to be unveiled at our 2nd annual benefit in San Francisco on September 30, is all about making good on our longstanding slogan “investing in employment and hope.” We’ll be taking our job-creation effort statewide in California, with ambitious goals for the numbers employed. We’re going to work with local partners to develop a tier of social enterprises that is a model of jobs plus services. Our aim is that every individual who wants to will have the chance to get on that first rung of the employment ladder and start to move up. Our contribution will be a powerful model that every community can and should be able to develop and rely upon as an on ramp into the workforce.

The reality is that a thriving US economy and society depends on a well-prepared workforce contributing all of their diverse talents and skills.

Accelerating the growth and productivity of the entire economy will require some of us with imagination and hope to fuel business and job growth, so that men and women who have had the most limited opportunities in the past participate in building a better future.