Combining Economic and Employment Development

• Targeted development programs serving businesses. Activities include a consortium of metalworking firms modeled on flexible manufacturing networks, technology modernization, and development and improvement of industrial sites. 
• Learning programs. Basic skills education for economically disadvantaged residents, and specialized employment training in the metalworking industry. 
• Partnership programs. JARC connects local firms to resources and programs in the "larger world beyond the neighborhood." These partnerships include relationship with the Chicago Manufacturing Center (a federally-funded manufacturing extension program) and school-to-work initiatives.

• Each year, its specialized employment training program serves 17 firms employing a total of 2,275 workers. 
• Between 1992 and 1995, 751 workers were enrolled in JARC training programs - and 740 of them completed training. 
• Each year, JARC's Targeted Development Programs serve 95 businesses with over 3,000 total employees. Over 25 percent of these businesses report that JARC's services were critical to their decision to remain in, or move to, their present location. 

A Lesson for all Sectoral Development Programs

• The success of any sectoral development project requires a credible industry "broker." 

 

 

Nonprofit, neighborhood organizations tend to be neither familiar with the "demand" side of the labor market, nor connected to employers. Consequently, starting a sectoral project is not just a matter of a neighborhood-based organization saying "let's go sectoral." 

To succeed, organizations have to hire, contract or otherwise ally themselves with an industry "broker" who can open the doors to a group of employers. The broker is a person recognized by the industry as an "insider" with whom they will work and as someone with grounding in the broader world of public sector or community-based activities. For example, the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Denver Job's Initiative targeted the manufacturing sector and brought in an industry broker who had worked in a federal agency (National Institute of Standards and Technology) assisting manufacturers with technology modernization. He was a former manufacturer with a "clientele" of manufacturing firms. 

In all these cases, the broker brings a deep set of relationships with employers. Neighborhood-based organizations must have on board a person or an organization with strong roots in the industry. Otherwise, employers will not take neighborhood-initiated sectoral projects seriously. 

Of the three strategies included in this Toolbox, sectoral development is perhaps the most complex. Sectoral strategies can focus on economic development, on employment development or on both. Precisely because this strategy is complicated and requires patience and time, it is well-suited to foundation support. Government funding sources too often demand quick turn-around or evaluate success with simplistic quantitative performance standards. Sectoral strategies require careful initial research, well-developed organizational capacity and the ability to carry out on-going economic analysis. These are areas in which targeted foundation support can make the difference between success and failure. (See the C.S. Mott Foundation case study, for a longer discussion of sectoral development funding.) 

Resources

Siegel, Beth and Kwass, Peter. Jobs and the Urban Poor: Publicly Initiated Sectoral Strategies. Somerville, MA: Mount Auburn Associates. 1995. 

See Resources section for more information.