Building Business Partnerships

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Making a Difference Through Strategic Business Partnerships: A Guide for Faith-Based and Community Organizations (PDF)
When FBCOs help individuals find employment, they are providing a valuable service to employers in addition to the people they replace. This document will provide faith-based and community organizations with valuable information about to create partnerships with employers, including financial partnerships. Through strategic business partnerships, non-profits can do a more effective job of placing hard to serve individuals in employment.

Many small nonprofit organizations provide various employment services to those whom they serve — whether it is communication skills, interviewing skills, soft skills or technical training. However, some of these nonprofits have a hard time linking up with employers that provide the jobs for those they work with and do not know how to "market" their services to employers. In this conference call, we discussed how to partner with employers, including a model for financial partnerships. This is a great source of basic information for any organization looking to work with their local businesses or increase their effectiveness.

The cost-of-turnover worksheet is also a helpful tool for faith-based and community organizations as they help businesses understand how turnover can affect organization's bottom line. Nonprofit organizations can help meet the workforce needs of business as the process of recruiting, screening and placing applicants can often be expensive and tedious.

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Department of Labor Business Relations Group

The DOL Business Relations Group (BRG) is leading the workforce investment system's transition to a demand-driven system and to institutionalize this shift at the federal, state and local level. The President's High-Growth Job Training Initiative is a strategic effort to prepare workers to take advantage of new and increasing job opportunities in twelve high growth/high demand and economically vital industries and sectors of the American economy. The foundation of this initiative is partnerships that include the public workforce system, business and industry, education and training providers, and economic development.

These twelve industries are:

• Advanced Manufacturing
• Automotive Services
• Biotechnology
• Construction
• Energy
• Financial Services
• Geospatial Technology
• Health Services
• Hospitality
• Information Technology
• Retail Trade
• Transportation

From this, a lot of valuable information for faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) can be accessed at the following sites:

http://www.doleta.gov/business/ — At this Web site, you can learn more about some of the Business Relations Group's targeted emerging industries by clicking on the appropriate title. Information available includes industry snapshots, occupational outlooks, types of jobs created in each business sector, workforce issues, and industry forums.

http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/IndProf/download_profile.cfm — At this site, FBCOs can access additional pertinent information on different high-growth sectors including a profile of many industries in the President's High-Growth Job Training Initiative as well as some of the industry investments that have been funded by the DOL Business Relations Group.

http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/JobTrainInitiative/SuccessStories.cfm — At this site, FBCOs can read some success stories of partnerships that have been created.

Page last revised: 6/29/2007