Invest in Social Enterprises - Put Californians to Work

People feel pride in working because a job represents dignity and opportunity, in addition to a steady paycheck. REDF’s model creates jobs that change lives. And these jobs can change California.

Keeping the Promise of Opportunity

In California, hundreds of thousands are shut out of jobs because of chronic poverty, homelessness, criminal history, substance abuse or mental illness. Getting and keeping a job can be the key to overcoming those challenges.

Social Enterprise Success

Social enterprises are nonprofit-run businesses that create jobs and employ people who are overcoming life’s greatest barriers. Over the past 14 years, REDF has successfully invested in social enterprises to help thousands of people move into the workforce. REDF helps people contribute to their own independence, while strengthening their families and their communities.

Leading the Way for California

The only California-based organization to receive a grant from the federal Social Innovation Fund, REDF is scaling our model so that innovative, sustainable social enterprises flourish across California—and eventually across the country—creating jobs that change lives.

REDF enters this growth period on a solid foundation with an experienced staff, deep pool of talent on our Board and Advisory Council, strong partners in business, government and philanthropy and a tested model that has already achieved documented results for thousands of people.

REDF’s Five Year Goals (2011-2015)

Create jobs for thousands of Californians facing significant barriers by investing in and growing social enterprises.

REDF will spur the growth and replication of businesses throughout California by selecting the strongest nonprofit organizations and best business models, increasing financial investments, brokering large-scale procurement deals and developing career pathways for employees.

This job-creation engine will serve as a stepping stone into the workforce for tens of thousands of Californians over the succeeding decades. REDF will strengthen employment retention support services to ensure that at least 70 percent of those who get a job keep it for more than one year.

Grow social enterprises and expand REDF’s proven model to help people overcome significant barriers, find jobs and keep jobs.

REDF will refine, codify and “package” a nationally replicable social enterprise model, building on our work in California and the knowledge of social enterprise leaders throughout the country. This model will focus on job creation, market linkages and employee supports that will enable these nonprofit enterprises to scale, thrive and deliver results.

Continuing our longstanding history of rigorous measurement and self-examination, REDF will evaluate results, extract lessons to increase effectiveness, fuel growth and lay the groundwork to scale the model nationally.
........................................................................................

- CARLA JAVITS, REDF PRESIDENT

........................................................................................

 

Support the Promise of California

California’s history is one of opportunity and innovation. To realize this promise and achieve our job creation and model development goals by 2015, REDF intends to create a growth fund to fuel social enterprise expansion across the state. The benchmarks for this next phase are ambitious and will require REDF to forge new partnerships and significantly increase support for social enterprise.

This funding will help REDF achieve our vision for growing the social enterprise sector so that society’s most vulnerable individuals have a reliable route into real jobs, stabilized lives and pathways to success.

 

Click here to download the PDF version of REDF's strategic plan.