Our Work

Tools for Community Leaders

The following tools and resources are for community leaders to utilize when creating a engagement strategy for engaging business leaders in sustainable partnerships.

 

Building the Business Case for Investing in Tomorrow's Workforce: Employers See Positive Returns from Community Partnerships

Released: September 22, 2011

The economic prosperity of the United States depends on having a skilled and experienced workforce—one from which employers can tap into a diverse and talented labor pool, and one in which all individuals have opportunities to earn wages that support their families. Yet too many young people today — the workforce of tomorrow — are not prepared with the skills needed to succeed at work. As our nation faces an evolving economy that demands highly skilled and credentialed workers, an inadequate supply of appropriately skilled graduates and demographic changes that will continue to exacerbate the problem, America’s current talent pipeline is simply not producing the exceptional workforce we need to compete in the 21st century.

 

Supporting the Education Pipeline: A Business Engagement Toolkit for Community-Based Organizations

Released: November 12, 2010

Corporate Voices and United Way Worldwide, in partnership with Workforce Strategy Center, released Supporting the Education Pipeline: A Business Engagement Toolkit for Community-Based Organizations, which will assist community leaders in creating beneficial and sustainable partnerships with business by providing lessons on how to identify potential partners, make realistic goals and how to set up partnerships for long-term success. A companion website has been developed, which is a clearinghouse of tips, tools, resources and examples of techniques others in the education and workforce fields have used to engage business. We encourage individuals to upload successful business engagement documents and strategies to the website.

 

Understanding the Needs of Your Business Partners: Building and Conducting a Successful Business Survey

Released: April 7, 2011

Business leaders are an important partner in the community and should be actively engaged when workingto ensure that youth are ready for college, work and life. Business leaders are eager to collaborate withcommunity-based organizations and educational institutions to ensure that the young people in thecommunity have the supports they need to succeed and be prepared for work. Preparing youth for workspeaks directly to business’ bottom line and the need for a prepared workforce. Business leaders alsocollaborate with community organizations because they feel it is their corporate social responsibility to beinvolved.

This tool offers practical advice to community organizations, helping them work strategically with employers in their region and guiding them through a business survey to better understand the landscape of business investments in their community.

 

Business Engagement Stakeholders Wheel: Identifying Business Leaders in Your Community

Released: November 8, 2010

To engage business, nonprofits should have a strategy to ensure that they identify the right business partners, to utilize the strengths of those partners and to take the steps necessary to ensure successful long-term collaborations. It can be difficult for nonprofits to identify all of the local businesses and business organizations in the community to begin executing this strategy. The Business Engagement Stakeholders Wheel lists different business organizations and business leaders who could partner, as well as information on the roles business can play to ensure all youth are ready for college, work and life. For a copy of the Stakeholders Wheel, please click here.

 

Call to Action, Ready by 21 Business Engagement Menu: Increasing Communications Between Business and Community Leaders

Released: September 14, 2010

Business leaders play a crucial role in community efforts to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life. Nonprofit leaders have the opportunity to recognize the needs of youth in their community and recommend how business may be able to best use their assets to meet those needs. The dual purpose Business Engagement Menu provides business leaders with the various ways they can be involved in communities. Nonprofit leaders can also use the menu to learn the array of options that exist to get business active in effectively meeting a community's goals for youth.

 

Common Goals, Unique Strengths: Education and Business Partnerships

Released: September 7, 2010

Educators and business leaders must create meaningful, successful and long lasting partnerships to ensure that all youth are ready for college, work and life. Collaboration between business and education can ensure that students graduate high school equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in the workplace, post-secondary education and life. In this publication, the American Association of School Administrators and Corporate Voices for Working Families highlight the benefit of these partnerships, tips for engaging educators and business leaders, and a case study illustrating these partnerships in action.

 

What are Business Leaders Saying About Workforce Readiness?

Released: December 15, 2010

Based on surveys of more than 150 business leaders, Corporate Voices found that 97% agree that their organization considers workforce readiness a critical business imperative. The findings also state that the majority of business leaders are already engaged in community partnerships focused on preparing youth for work, but they report a number of frequent challenges and frustrations in building and sustaining these partnerships.