A guest blog by Gregg Keesling
Indiana is leading the nation in creating opportunities for those facing the greatest barriers to employment with the recent unanimous passage of HEA 1289, codifying “employment social enterprise (ESE)” through our state legislature. ESEs are typically nonprofit businesses that use transitional jobs – time-limited wage paying employment in the enterprise – to generate revenue by producing and/or assembling goods or delivering services and investing revenue into the mission of the organization.
Established in 2004, RecycleForce is an ESE focused on helping formerly incarcerated adults by providing a transitional job, associated training credentials, and assistance with the transition from prison to civil society. Over the past 2 decades, thousands of returning citizens have come through our doors. We begin to prepare them prior to release from prison, equipping them to re-integrate into the workforce and become work ready, trained, and productive, tax-paying citizens who positively impact their families and communities. We accomplish this through the RecycleForce ABC Model®: Any Job – Better Job – Career.
Finding ways for nonprofits to augment their grants and donor base with business revenue is important for sustainability. Developing ways to employ those our agencies serve helps these American workers have a pathway for their own success. Transitional jobs and ESEs are important parts of the workforce development eco-system, especially for the most marginalized American workers.
Indiana is leading the country in implementing the ESE model. I encourage others to look at this growing model and follow Indiana’s lead.
Sharing a Success Story:
Meet India Coleman! Ms. Coleman has been at RecycleForce for a little over a year. When she first came to RecycleForce, she started on the production floor and has since then worked her way up to Case Manager, onboarding our new participants and working with them.
"What I love about RecycleForce is they don't look at you like you are what you've done, they just look at you like you're a person. They gave me the opportunity to show what I can do, they keep opening doors for me as long as I keep working towards it. RecycleForce has unconditional compassion for people, they try to give people chances to get it together, they don't expect you to come out of incarceration and just be perfect. They see imperfections and they work with you, they talk with you. They care about everyone and take the time to get to know everyone."
RecycleForce is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in Indianapolis, Indiana operating an employment social enterprise, applying commercial strategies to maximize social impact. Over the last 20 years, it has served more than 4000 adults leaving the state prison system who are at moderate- to high-risk to return to prison. Gregg Keesling is the founder and president of RecycleForce.