This report summarizes lessons learned from successful workforce pipelines catalyzed by the Casey Foundation’s Making Connections initiative. It gives a detailed overview of how neighborhood-focused job pipelines can recruit, prepare, place and retain residents in well-paying jobs through mutually beneficial partnerships with employers, workforce agencies, community colleges, community-based organizations and other partners. It offers ample guidance on how this approach can overcome historic disconnects between employers and residents in low-income neighborhoods: transportation barriers, race-based hiring preferences and lack of access to informal but critical job referral networks.
The job pipeline process can be organized to build a continuum of outreach from recruitment thru retention at the neighborhood level. By strategically deploying a range of partners throughout the continuum the pipeline can serve neighborhoods on a larger scale than any single agency or partner could.
