Workforce Development

Pacific Community Ventures (PCV) invests in and supports businesses that provide economic gains to low- and moderate-income communities in California. Since its founding in 1999, PCV has helped companies access capital, business advice and other resources for accelerating company growth.

BTW has worked with Pacific Community Ventures since its inception to measure the social returns of its work. Among other services, BTW:

• Wrote an internationally distributed case study of the organization’s approach
• Provided PCV with vital data on the portfolio’s ability to create quality jobs for low/moderate income employees
• Evaluated PCV’s Business Advisory Service
• Helped build PCV’s internal capacity to evaluate social and community impacts

With BTW’s strategic support, PCV continues to bring together principles of venture capital and community development to enhance communities across the state.

Enterprise for High School Students (EHSS) is a San Francisco–based program that helps high school students find jobs, develop skills and form good work habits. EHSS engaged BTW in an evaluation planning process.

BTW created an evaluation plan and data-collection tools that would allow EHSS to measure change among participating students while the program was underway.

After EHSS had collected its own data, BTW analyzed the information and reported on the findings. EHSS used these findings not only to understand the impact of its work, but to secure additional program funding.

A group of organizations wished to explore the adaptation of health-care training and advancement models to the health-care environment in San Francisco. Jewish Vocational Services (JVS), University of California, San Francisco Hospital and Laguna Honda Hospital, along with their union partners SEIU-UHW-West and AFSCME 3299, engaged BTW to help.

BTW’s research provided insight into career advancement at each health-care facility. Our findings identified the perceptions of career-advancement training, support and opportunity and obstacles to career advancement.

Based on these findings, BTW offered recommendations for training and support that JVS integrated into the design and implementation of the project.

REDF’s purpose is to improve the lives of San Francisco Bay Area residents who face chronic poverty and homelessness. A leader in social entrepreneurship, REDF works to expand the capacity of nonprofit “enterprise employment”: enterprises that put people to work. Committed to monitoring results, REDF hired BTW to measure and analyze the impact of those efforts.

BTW collected outcome data on portfolio employees from 1998 through 2008, and are now analyzing the results. Our culminating report will provide REDF—and the nonprofit organizations it supports—with an understanding of the impact of enterprise employment in the Bay Area.

Community Vocational Enterprises (CVE) is a primary provider of vocational services to people with mental illnesses. CVE was particularly interested in tracking vocational outcomes and factors of emotional and psychosocial stability. They hired BTW to help.

BTW designed a comprehensive, agency-wide client information system for evaluating and monitoring the progress of CVE’s vocational programs and social enterprises.

Our systems allowed CVE to track client indicators over time, and to generate reports to use for external consumption as well as for internal management and reflection.

The Bay Area Workforce Funding Collaborative (BAWFC) is a group of funders supporting innovative sectoral employment strategies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. BTW, in partnership with Abt Associates, has led a multi-year evaluation of the programs BAWFC supports.

BTW’s formative evaluation employs multiple methods to gauge change at the individual, employer, organizational and systems levels.

The study results are providing programs with information about their success in placing workers and in changing the employment system.

BAWFC has also used ongoing feedback from the evaluation to craft a new strategy focused on building the capacity of community colleges to prepare disadvantaged adults for employment.