The Pinkerton Papers: All Papers

The summer between high school graduation and the start of college is a significant but often overlooked moment, especially for students from low-income households and those who are the first in their families to attend college. Removed from the structured and supportive environment of high school, overwhelmed with questions about their futures, and armed only with a hazy vision of what college entails, many recent graduates can face barriers that disrupt their college plans before college even begins.

The Pinkerton Advanced Leadership Network brings together leaders of color from New York City’s nonprofit youth development community. Launched more than two years ago as part of the Pinkerton Foundation’s Racial Equity Initiative, the PALN was designed to offer responsive support, resources and learning opportunities for BIPOC CEOs and Executive Directors among the Foundation’s grantee organizations.

The Pinkerton Foundation is on a journey to advance racial equity in the communities we care about through work done by the organizations we support. We know we are not alone. We see many colleagues in philanthropy struggling to develop effective strategies to deal with racial injustice and we at Pinkerton struggle along with them.

Supporting career internships has long been at the heart of The Pinkerton Foundation’s mission to help level the playing field for young New Yorkers.

Nine years ago, when I was on the grantee side of the table, I always looked forward to site visits from The Pinkerton Foundation. I felt I had a special relationship with Pinkerton, and I enjoyed hosting the visits because I knew that if something went wrong, they would understand.

Today, our workforce is engaged in a renewed examination of equity within our field. Philanthropy is hosting “equity in workforce” webinars, workforce organizations are arranging equity trainings for their staffs, and workforce conferences are mounting panels to reassess our field through an equity lens. Nearly without exception, this examination of equity is defined primarily in racial, and sometimes gender, terms. Which is, without argument, essential. But what is missing?

For 45 years I’ve worked to create better jobs for low-income workers. I have supported African-American enterprises in rural Virginia and North Carolina, worker buy-outs of threatened factories in New England, and large-scale service cooperatives in the inner cities of the South Bronx and Philadelphia.

How do you train hundreds of unemployed women of color and provide them stable jobs? You build a company that embeds training and employment within a single, seamless strategy. For over 30 years in the Bronx, Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) has honed that strategy, producing off-the-charts results: Of 630 jobseekers enrolled annually, 94 percent graduate with a portable credential and 85 percent are employed as home health aides. Of those, 68 percent remain employed after one year.

To reach and engage young people has long been the quest of youth justice interventions. We write this paper as strong advocates for credible messenger mentoring— an approach with great promise not only to disrupt the tragic spiral of incarceration and recidivism that traps so many young people but also to strengthen communities disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration.

In 2012, ExpandED Schools and the Kelley Collaborative approached The Pinkerton Foundation for funding to launch a NYC STEM Education Network. Building on the work of a Noyce Foundation-supported group in New York City called the Science Alliance, the newly-established Network brought together STEM educators and leaders from a range of professional development organizations for after-school and summer STEM providers.

In a burst of entrepreneurial spirit, the workforce development field is showing new enthusiasm for an old idea: creating “social enterprises” to employ low income jobseekers.

Workforce dollars are precious—particularly those targeting low-income jobseekers. The woman of color with a fifth-grade reading level; the returning veteran; the out-of-school youth with no employment experience; the immigrant laborer without papers; the court-involved; the individual recovering from addiction—their challenges differ, but each is seeking the stability and respect that steady employment can provide.

“Employer engagement” is the current battle cry of funders and policymakers as they urge workforce practitioners to become ever more “market driven”— meeting the needs of employers and, in the process, providing lasting benefits to low-income jobseekers.

A bad job is not simply the absence of a good job. A bad job destabilizes the individual, her family and the community. A bad job not only fails to pay enough for decent food and shelter for a worker’s family, it can risk her health, disrupt any chance for a predictable family life, undermine her dignity, and deny her voice within the workplace.