States and localities spend $50 billion to $80 billion on tax breaks and incentives each year in the name of economic development. Historically, these traditional economic development policies and programs have not benefited all populations, and have in many cases particularly shortchanged people of color, immigrants, and low-income communities.

“Cities are recognizing that creating equitable and sustainable economic prosperity for all should be the goal of their activities across the board,” said Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink president and CEO. This is the driving force behind the PolicyLink All-In Cities initiative and a new fellowship program being launched today targeted specifically at economic development practitioners.

To help cities orient their economic development practices toward advancing equitable growth, the National League of Cities (NLC), PolicyLink, and the Urban Land Institute (ULI) are convening today in Portland, Oregon to launch the first-ever Equitable Economic Development Fellowship. Six cities were chosen to participate in the inaugural year of the fellowship: Boston, Charlotte, Houston, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis. 

The Equitable Economic Development Fellowship is a two-year, $1 million effort to help equity, transparency, sustainability and community engagement become driving forces in local economic development efforts. During the fellowship, which is generously funded by the Surdna Foundation and the Open Society Foundation, economic development leaders will convene for leadership development, technical assistance, and peer learning. Another class of six cities will be invited to participate in the second year of the program in 2017.

While in Portland, each city team will identify a particular equity challenge in economic development to focus on during the course of the fellowship. The cities will receive support and technical assistance from NLC, PolicyLink and ULI, as well as their peer cities, to address the specific diversity and inclusion challenges. "We are excited to be working with economic development leaders who are eager to integrate an equity approach into their efforts to grow strong local economies," added Blackwell.

Over the next few weeks, Equity Blog will feature posts about the newly-released series of 13 issue briefs from PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation. This series highlights the economic imperative of equity for the policy planks of the foundation’s Equal Voice Campaign National Family Platform.

The recent policy brief from PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Transportation for All: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy, provides a compelling set of demographic and economic indicators that strengthen the case for an equity-led transportation policy agenda. The national level examples help reinforce the example that Urban Habitat and our allies in the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network made in the Bay Area’s 2013 regional planning process, known as Plan Bay Area. The 6 Wins Network developed a regional plan alternative, known as the Equity, Environment and Jobs scenario, which demonstrated a regional transportation, land use, and housing plan that starts with community-identified needs that produces the greatest range of co-benefits (greenhouse gas reductions, increased transit service, better air quality, less risk of displacement) for all communities.

In the Bay Area, we’ve had strong success relative to the rest of the nation in passing local/county transportation funding measures. In November 2016, there will be another full slate of transportation measures in Silicon Valley San Francisco, and the East Bay. One of our strongest arguments in getting local officials on board to support transportation funding measures has been to demonstrate the nexus between quality job creation and transportation investments. However, we've still struggled to translate the job creation benefit data of shifting funds from highways to transit (and especially transit operations) into concrete changes in investment priorities. There’s still much education and advocacy work to be done on this front.

Regionally in the current round of Plan Bay Area, 6 Wins Network members such as Working Partnerships USA and the San Mateo Union Community Alliance have led efforts to incorporate quality job creation into our campaign for equitable regional planning. This is a new effort to show how investments and programs in regional land use and transportation planning can be leveraged to create more middle wage jobs and address the “hour glass” economy that has developed in the Bay Area.

Urban Habitat, Public Advocates, and members of the 6 Wins for Social Equity Network have also just released a second “equity report card” on the regional planning scenarios for Plan Bay Area. We’ve continued to document and provide analysis on how inequitable regional planning disproportionately impacts low-income people and communities of color and fails to achieve regional and state climate change goals. The report card has been one of our most effective communications and policy analysis tools for highlighting the costs of inequitable regional planning both for the public and decision makers.

In San Francisco, we’ve helped lead the development of MUNI’s transportation service equity strategy which provides a neighborhood level framework to help ensure that community identified transit service needs define investment priorities and that funding – especially new funding – is targeted to meet these needs in transit dependent communities. Transportation for All provides a framework for a lot of these issues and shows how targeted investments in equitable transportation can create more jobs than previous decades of highway construction have, while expanding access to opportunity to those communities that have not benefited from the current economic recovery.

For more information on Urban Habitat, visit: www.urbanhabitat.org or follow them on Twitter @Urban_Habitat.

(Cross-posted from the Stanford Social Innovation Review)

In this recording from the recent Frontiers of Social Innovation conference, Angela Glover Blackwell (PolicyLink Founder and CEO) talks about why, for United States to grow and prosper, policymakers must adopt new approaches to produce good jobs, ensure reinvestment in low-income communities, upgrade the education and skills of an increasingly diverse workforce, and create opportunities for everyone to apply their talents. She also shows how equity, inclusion, and fairness are no longer just moral issues but also economic imperatives: Equity is the superior growth model.

Click here to listen to the recording.

Job creation in Rust Belt cities is no easy task. But Cleveland’s director of economic development, Tracey Nichols, has focused on the city’s existing strengths and assets, along with Mayor Frank Jackson and others, rather than solely mourning the loss of manufacturing and industrial jobs.

In 2005, the city joined forces with the Cleveland Foundation, and anchor institutions such as local universities and hospitals, to form the Greater University Circle Initiative, a collaborative redevelopment initiative to improve economic opportunities for local residents while strengthening the region’s economy. More than a decade in, this anchor-focused approach has achieved impressive impacts: in 2013, the institutions collectively hired 539 local residents from low-income communities.

America’s Tomorrow spoke with Nichols about economic development wins and the power of hiring local.

Q: Why has Cleveland been so successful at community development strategies involving anchor institutions?

A:  One of the things that has made Cleveland very successful is the conveners that have come to the table, including Mayor Frank Jackson and Ron Richard from the Cleveland Foundation. It’s great to have the top people at the table—because they really help pass down the policies and initiatives — but we also needed a second level of individuals who are top level staff of their organizations, like others from the City of Cleveland and the various anchor institutions, and that’s helped us a lot.

In the beginning, it was very difficult for people in the neighborhood to get jobs at these institutions. One of the challenges was that you had to have a computer in order to apply. That was daunting for some, and others just didn’t have computers. So we set up times when people could come and fill out applications and there was someone there to help you. Then, the university hospitals started brainstorming and came up with a program called Step Up. In that program, people who were in entry-level jobs are mentored to take next-level jobs.  And when people move up, they get more money, more responsibility, more of a sense of accomplishment. They’re retaining people, which is fantastic.

Q: How does the upcoming Republican National Convention factor into the opportunities that are being created for Cleveland’s low-income residents?

A:  Well, I think that all of us are hoping that some of the stories of our successes will be noticed by what’s estimated as 20,000 media personnel who will be in town for the RNC.

We’ve also got a lot of new hotels and restaurants that are coming online. What’s exciting to us is that we have something called the Community Benefits Program. One of the things that’s required is that these businesses sign a workforce development agreement requires them to go through our Ohio Means Jobs portal, a database of all of the people who are not working in the city of Cleveland. [We are especially doing this] for large hospitality-type functions. What’s more important to us than temporary jobs are those that are going to be there after the Republican National Convention.

Q:  How have you formalized the process to ensure that this work of creating economic opportunity specifically benefits people of color and women in the city?

A:  We’re hiring so that the people who need jobs most, get jobs first. [In addition to the workforce development agreement] that helps to match unemployed residents to job opportunities, we have the Resident Employment Law, which requires construction projects of more than $100,000 hire Cleveland residents to perform 20 percent of all construction hours. Four percent of construction hours must be performed by low-income residents. So this gives people an opportunity to get training and get some hours under their belt in the construction industry.

Q:  How does a city like Cleveland balance the work of creating growth downtown with the kind of work that you do to help neighborhoods?

A:  Well, I think that it comes from the top down. Mayor Jackson tells us all the time that our job is to help the least of us. So while we work on downtown projects and they’re glitzy and they’re big, the bottom line is, for my team, we find a lot more reward in working in neighborhoods where there are tough situations.

I had a group of six senior citizen ladies who came to me and said they had to take three buses to the grocery store. And they said, “It’s your job to get us a supermarket.” Their area had been hard hit in the housing crisis and lost a lot of houses. So they didn’t have the population or the median income to bring another Big Box in. We worked to bring in a developer and brought in a Save-A-Lot and a Mills Clothing Store. The six ladies were there at the opening, as well as every elected official from kingdom come. Sometimes that kind of catalyst can help change a neighborhood.

Q:  How can your work in Cleveland be replicated in other cities?

A:  A lot of times people say to me, “Well, there’s no one in my city government like you, Tracey.” And I keep trying to tell people there may not be the top person in your city government who cares very much about economic inclusion, but I guarantee you there is someone in your community or economic development department who cares this much about economic inclusion. It’s just a matter of finding that person and telling them what you need and letting them try to figure out how to help you, and getting them to the table.

I think that most people who want to become public servants want to help people. There are other people like me in just about every community and every place. Find those people and get them to the table, because they know how to use the tools and they’ll be able to use them in your community just like we do here.

[Ed. note: on May 11, 2016, the Ohio Legislature passed House Bill 180 and Senate Bill 152, which would prohibit Ohio cities from mandating geographically based hiring preferences for local construction projects. It is currently awaiting the signature of Ohio Governor John Kasich. In a letter to Governor Kasich, Mayor Jackson wrote, “Low-income workers, women, people with disabilities and people of color are vastly underrepresented in construction jobs, when compared to their overall participation in the workforce. This is a missed opportunity for connecting our citizens to quality jobs, especially given the wages and benefits associated with construction work."]

When the brick industrial building located at 1647 South Blue Island Avenue was constructed in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood in 1925, it was a truck depot for Fuhrman and Forster, a meatpacking and sausage company. In those days, meatpacking established Chicago as an economic and social gateway for a generation of European immigrants to the United States.

That truck depot is now home to Blue1647, an entrepreneurship and technology innovation center named after the address of the 10,000-square-foot space, which opened in August 2013. “We looked at “blue” in so many interesting ways,” said Founder and CEO Emile Cambry Jr., “thinking of ourselves as the blueprint of community economic development in the 21st century.”

The organization’s mission is to serve as a career gateway for the local Black and Latino youth who flock daily to the site to take part in its classes, workshops, apprenticeships, and internships. In addition to its educational and workforce development programming, the site is also a coworking space and a business accelerator, and it houses programs such as the Code Blue USA Hackathon Series, 1919: Women in Technology, and Latina Girls Code.

As a former investment banker, academic, and community activist, Cambry saw how tech start-ups and the innovation economy were catalyzing Chicago’s economy, but observed that the opportunities for career advancement and wealth creation were inequitable. He sees Blue1647 as a corrective force, a way to change the narrative about what youth of color can achieve, and a business model with tremendous growth potential.

In addition to the original Pilsen site, Blue1647 has opened four more locations: another in Chicago, two in St. Louis, Missouri, and one in Compton, California. Two more are on the way in Indiana. Cambry’s ultimate goal: to impact a million students every year. In 2013–2014, 11,420 students participated in STEM classes or workshops at Blue1647. Ninety-six percent of students who participated in the center’s summer 2014 workforce development trainings are currently either in high school or college, or employed in tech.

The organization’s membership model helped to support its growth. Memberships to private offices and collaborative workspaces range from $25 to $450 per month. Blue1647 also accepts donations and is planning to raise money for equipment through a "community-based digital currency" called Blue Coin.

“I see it as economic justice on a high level,” said Cambry. “We have to make sure that we’re planting the seeds for today’s students to be successful. As the economy becomes more digital and more jobs are concentrated in the tech sector, we have to make sure that doesn’t create another crisis for communities of color.”

Serving the deepest need in St. Louis

In August 2015, Blue1647 opened its first non-Chicago site, located in the Al Chapelle Community Center at the Clinton-Peabody housing development in St. Louis, Missouri. The program is part of an employment training initiative coordinated by a partnership between the St. Louis Housing Authority  and the St. Louis Agency on Training and Employment (SLATE) and funded by two federal grants.

Clinton-Peabody is one of the lowest-income, highest-need communities in the city, with an average median income of $7,200. Only about 30 percent of families have a working family member and more than 90 percent of households are headed by single mothers. Blue1647’s tech hub there provides basic computer skills for adults as well as entrepreneurship and coding curriculum for youth.

“I wanted to improve my typing skills since I haven’t typed since high school,” said Velva Danner, 51, who graduated from a Blue1647 class in February, “so when I do go out and look for a job, it’s going to help in the long run.” She had previously worked in food service and customer service, but was interested in taking the class so that she could develop her administrative skills. In addition to her training at Blue1647, Danner will be graduating from a separate financial literacy class being held on site this month.

“We have so many opportunities in information technology in this region,” said Stacey Fowler, the adult services and special projects manager at SLATE, “but the people with the skill sets to fill them are not here. We can’t grow our labor force until we start building opportunities and training. The center provides a fun, up-close introduction to IT.”

“For the adults, we want to make sure that we tackle the immediate computer needs and then slowly progress to the more advanced programs,” added Cambry, commenting on the St. Louis effort. “That doesn’t mean they won’t ever have digital skills, like coding, but it really gives us a chance to test where they are and prepare them for their immediate work environment and work needs.”

Change doesn’t happen overnight

For youth, who are more likely to be digital natives, lessons involve app development, 3D printing, and graphic design. Cambry mentioned that the students started writing a newsletter about what they are learning in their classes, and it’s being circulated throughout the housing development. “We talk about changing the narrative. Now we have a distribution platform for that,” he said.

“All of this support and this micro-targeting is really starting to yield a lot of benefits,” he continued. “I’ve learned throughout this process that patience is important, but consistent programming with patience is even better.”

Since Blue1647’s headquarters opened in Chicago, Cambry has learned many lessons that are helping to shape the structure and the curriculum of the sites that he is continuing to open. Among them is that in each location he tries to employ as many instructors of color as possible. “It’s important for the students to see representation of themselves,” he said. “They need to see that. They have expressed that it’s important to them.”

And despite current statistics that show racial disparities in the innovation economy closing at a glacial pace—Ursula Burns stepping down as CEO of Xerox leaves no Black woman CEOs on the S&P 500, for example—Cambry sees his work as a process with long-term rewards: “The biggest thing we try to tell everyone is that it’s not magic. It’s not something that changes overnight. You can’t change 60 years of the cycle of poverty overnight. But I’m very optimistic. It’s a slow process that eventually builds upon itself. That’s how you start to change the narrative.”

Check out the rest of the June 2, 2016 America's Tomorrow: Equity is the Superior Growth Model issue.

Over the next few weeks, Equity Blog will feature posts about the newly-released series of 13 issue briefs from PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation. This series highlights the economic imperative of equity for the policy planks of the foundation’s Equal Voice Campaign National Family Platform.

This week, the staff from the National LGBTQ Task Force spent the day with service providers, advocates, and local Washington DC activists, brainstorming about our movement’s economic justice agenda. 

It’s a complicated question to tackle, but the issue we struggled with most was how to prioritize our strategies for progress.  Should we be focused on the ways our community is differently impacted by economic systems?  Or should we be thinking about the ways that members of our community are disproportionately impacted by systems of oppression?

A new policy brief released by our partners at PolicyLink and the Marguerite Casey Foundation helps to highlight what we think might be the answer: tackling both at the same time.  We have to think about the ways that our community has been targeted for discrimination by existing systems.  We lack explicit, nationwide non-discrimination protections in areas like employment, housing, and public accommodations.  Even where non-discrimination protections exist, enforcement is difficult, so in practice we continue to face discrimination at work, in shelters, and in bathrooms across the country.  Discrimination is felt particularly acutely by those members of our community impacted by multiple oppressions – people of color, transgender and gender non-conforming people, people living with HIV and AIDS, and undocumented immigrants are among those who struggle to succeed where non-discrimination provisions are nonexistent or nominal.

Yet where LGBTQ people are meaningfully integrated into economic systems, communities see significant benefits.  As this brief explains, inclusion of LGBTQ people can lead to increased economic activity (up to $64 billion per year), increased public savings, workforce stability, and healthier and more productive workers.

Still, adoption of non-discrimination provisions won’t solve all the problems of the LGBTQ community any more than our historic victory on marriage last year provided protections for every LGBTQ family.  Our community is disproportionately represented in a host of systems that are desperately in need of reform.  We are disproportionately poor.  We are disproportionately likely to experience homelessness and housing instability.  We face family and community rejection at astronomical rates.  We are bullied in schools and made invisible in education curriculums.  We’re disproportionately likely to become involved with the criminal justice system.  All of these systems – and countless more – impact the lived experience of so many marginalized members of our community.  We must engage in systemic reform on issues that impact all marginalized people if we hope to work toward an equitable society.

PolicyLink recognizes this dichotomy in their strategies for LGBTQ inclusion.  In addition to the more traditional call for explicit non-discrimination protections on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity, their report calls out the need for anti-poverty legislation, protections for young people in public schools, better treatment for LGBTQ people who are incarcerated, and meaningful investment in LGBTQ-inclusive health care and social services.  It is these types of systemic responses that will change the lives of LGBTQ people in a sustainable way.  Our movement’s economic justice agenda will reflect that intersectional perspective.  Stay tuned.

The House Appropriations Committee directed the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) Tuesday to measure how transportation investments will connect all Americans to opportunity and daily essential needs such as jobs, schools, healthcare, food and others – an unprecedented step toward tying federal transportation dollars to equity outcomes.

Transportation for America, PolicyLink, and The Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights thank Representatives Waters, Carson, Ellison, Grijalva, and Quigley for their leadership in including this important provision in the 2017 House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations report that passed the House Appropriations Committee Tuesday.

“Each day, millions of Americans — particularly low income communities and communities of color —struggle to access the resources they need to thrive, simply because they have no transportation to get them where they need to go,” said PolicyLink President and CEO, Angela Glover Blackwell.  “By calling on USDOT to work with communities to measure how well we are connecting people to opportunity, Congressional leaders have taken a key step toward equipping local leaders with the equity-focused data they need to reimagine and build a more just transportation system.”

“Connecting people to opportunities is one of the primary reasons we build transportation infrastructure, plain and simple,” said Transportation for America director James Corless. "It’s incredibly encouraging to see the House Appropriations Committee recognize the fact that transportation isn’t an end in itself. To determine if we’re building the right things in the right places, it’s critical that we measure — and improve — the access people have to opportunities. Jobs, healthcare, school, grocery stores full of healthy food — it’s critical that the streets and transit systems we invest in give as many people as possible more affordable access to all of these things."

“We are encouraged that the House Appropriations Committee has acknowledged the importance of measuring how our transportation investments stack up in terms of connecting our communities to opportunity, and the Department of Transportation must take up the charge to establish an accessibility performance measure without delay,” said Nancy Zirkin, Executive Vice President of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “Without access to transportation, our communities lack the ability to connect to all of the things that they need to sustain their families, including jobs, child care, and affordable housing. With access to transportation, our communities have a world of opportunity opened up to them. The Department of Transportation should leave no stone unturned in ensuring that dollars spent on transportation are being used in the smartest way possible to connect our communities to opportunity.”

The report accompanying this bill encourages the Secretary of Transportation, in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, “to establish an accessibility performance measure to be available to states, metropolitan planning organizations, and transit agencies to assess the degree to which the transportation system, including public transportation, provides multimodal connections to economic opportunities, including job concentration areas, health care services, child care services, and education and workforce training services, particularly for disadvantaged populations.”

USDOT is in the middle of an ongoing process to establish a new series of performance measures for transportation spending — resulting in a new system that will require states and metro areas to measure the impact of their transportation dollars. But the measures developed so far have been limited to metrics like road and bridge conditions, safety and congestion, among others — failing to consider whether or not investments give all people better access to what they need each day.

The House THUD Appropriations bill, in its current form, also provides robust funding for the Federal Transit Administration’s capital investment program and has strong funding for the important TIGER multimodal discretionary grant program. Both of these programs are essential to helping communities throughout the country build cost-effective multimodal transportation systems that can help connect all residents to opportunity.

We look forward to working with House leadership as the bill moves forward over the coming weeks and months to ensure USDOT, states and local leaders have the resources needed to successfully build and measure our transportation investments provide all Americans have access to basic needs and economic opportunities.

The right data is critical to inform effective policy solutions — but data describing the state of equity for particular racial and ethnic communities at the local level is often difficult to access. That is why the National Equity Atlas has added new racial subgroup data to its demographic and economic opportunity indicators.

The latest update better describes the incredible diversity within broad racial/ethnic groups, and can be used to develop targeted strategies to advance racial equity and inclusive growth. Now, when users go to the “detailed race/ethnicity" indicator, they can select “by ancestry” and see more detailed breakdowns of the Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, Latino, Native American, and White populations (e.g., Filipino, Jamaican, Puerto Rican). Users can also select “by nativity and ancestry” to get a breakdown of the share of each group who are immigrants versus U.S.-born.

Read the full letter from Rep. Denise Marcelle in The New Orleans Advocate

This week, Republicans in the state Senate are seeking to strike down an innovative policy that could help city leaders connect local residents to career-track jobs on public works projects.

The Senate Committee on Transportation and Public Works will vote Monday on Senate Bill 288 — a bill that is an overt attempt to usurp power from city leaders across the state by preventing them from maximizing the economic return of city public contracts. As a member of the House representing East Baton Rouge, I strongly oppose this pre-emption of local government authority.

Though the bill would affect all jurisdictions in the state, it was written to overturn Hire NOLA, a local-hire policy passed last fall that requires contractors on city projects to make a “good-faith effort” to ensure that some jobs go to Orleans Parish residents, particularly those who traditionally face barriers to employment, including low-income workers, military veterans, single parents and other disadvantaged workers. New Orleans has consistently faced disproportionately high unemployment rates, particularly for the city’s black men, 52 percent of whom are out of work.

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Benefit corporations provide a way for businesses to make profit without having to slash wages or resort to environmentally destructive practices. Ben & Jerry's, for instance, is one of the world's most popular ice cream brands with an annual sales revenue of $132 million. Its lowest-paid worker makes $16.13 an hour, which is 46 percent above the living wage in home state Vermont, and the company offsets more than 50 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions. More than 40 percent of the board and management are from underrepresented populations, such as women, people of color, lower-income individuals, and people with disabilities.

In a time when U.S. corporate profits are soaring but wages remain stagnant, Ben & Jerry's and hundreds of other companies, including Cooperative Home Care Associates profiled below, are choosing an alternative business model – benefit corporations – driven not just by profits but also by fair working conditions, diverse leadership, and environmentally sustainable practice.

One of the fundamental challenges to growing more "triple bottom line" businesses is the legal requirement to maximize profits that applies to corporations. Anything that takes away from profits, such as higher wages or more sustainable environmental practices, leaves the corporation vulnerable to being sued by its shareholders. This limitation hinders companies from advancing any values beyond profit making.

In response to this limitation, a movement was started to pass legislation allowing for a new type of corporate entity called the benefit corporation. The benefit corporation provides legal protection for businesses that choose to treat their workers well, protect the environment, and invest in their communities, even if it means their annual profits are not as high. As of 2013, 19 states plus the District of Columbia passed benefit corporation legislation, including Delaware, which is home to 50 percent of all publicly traded companies and 64 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

In 2012, Ben & Jerry's took a step beyond being a benefit corporation and became a Certified B Corporation, as conferred by a nonprofit organization called B Lab. There are currently more than 1,000 registered B Corps. A Certified B Corp voluntarily meets higher standards of governance, workforce treatment, environmental impact, and community involvement. Companies must score at least 80 points on a scale of 200 to be eligible for certification.

Certified B Corps are part of a community of socially responsible companies and span a large spectrum of goods and services. In 2012, Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) in the Bronx, New York, became the first home care company to become a Certified B Corp. Their overall B Score, at 154, is nearly twice the median score.

One of the reasons CHCA scores so high in the B Impact Assessment is because it is a worker-owned cooperative with the vast majority of the workers and worker-owners being from the Bronx. In an industry where good-paying jobs are hard to come by, CHCA deliberately chose a different business model, one that prioritizes workers over profits, and has flourished for nearly 30 years. The company has grown from 12 people to now over 2,000 employees, 70 percent of whom are worker-owners.

"When we started, a lot of for-profit home-care companies were established and were seen as a way of making a lot of money in a short time," said Michael Elsas, president of CHCA. "You didn't have to pay workers that much, you didn't have to train them that well, and you could move in and make a killing. And, in that environment we wanted to establish something a little different, more socially responsible."

Treating the workers well was not just a social mission, but it made good business sense. Elsas said, "Many of the people we were seeing were women, particularly women of color. The thought was if we train people longer and really spend time with them, if we prepare them for an entry-level position and get them ready to work and remove those barriers to work, and, if we provided a lot of support for those workers both before and after they were trained by us, we could create quality, full-time jobs. And then as a result of that quality job, we would be providing quality care that we could, in fact, provide better services."

CHCA has been a co-op since the company started in 1985. Going from a co-op model to also certifying as a B Corp was an easy decision and made a lot of business sense, Elsas said. "Distinguishing ourselves as a B Corp would be helpful in marketing to be able to say we are the only B-Corp certified home care company. We thought that would be helpful for those entities that want to do business with a B Corp. Quite honestly, it was a natural for us. There was very little that we had to do to get certified because we were already a worker-owned company, we already had everything in place."

Elsas said that CHCA is successful not because it is a co-op but because of the best practices they employ. Currently, 90 cents of every dollar that comes into the company goes to the worker. While paying workers less would result in higher profits and better dividends, Elsas said higher dividends is not what has made the company successful for 30 years. Instead, what makes CHCA successful is "how we train, how we supervise people, how we respect people, how we let people participate in what we do."

Companies like CHCA and Ben & Jerry's show that businesses can make a profit and embrace socially responsible practices. Higher wages and better work environments help working families reach economic security. Consumers can support B Corps and environmentally and socially conscious businesses by buying their products and services. A full list of B Corps can be found here.