Sam Schaeffer, CEO of the Center for Employment Opportunities: Keys to Building An Economic Future After Incarceration

Van Ton-Quinlivan

Hello, I’m, Van Ton-Quinlivan CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, where I interview leaders and innovators for insights into creating a future-ready workforce.

We’re going to take a look today at a part of the US workforce that faces perhaps more challenges than any other: formerly incarcerated individuals. Amongst the headwinds they face in finding employment includes social stigma, legal barriers, and lack of up-to-date skills, which explains an unemployment rate of over 27% for this population.

To learn more about what is being done to support people in this circumstance, we’re joined by Sam Schaeffer, CEO of The Center for Employment Opportunities. The Center is the nation’s largest re-entry employment organization with a presence in thirty cities across twelve states, and has been a trailblazer in providing comprehensive employment services with a focus on reducing recidivism through work.

Mr. Schaeffer brings deep expertise in politics, policy, and workforce development to the role, which he has held since 2009. Thanks very much for joining me today, Sam.

Sam Schaeffer

Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be chatting with you.

Van

Well, we would love for you to start by adding to that very brief sketch of this challenging issue. What can you share with our listeners?

Sam

I think it’s important to set the context for the criminal justice system and the challenges that people face when they come home. So, across the United States, there’s approximately 1.2 million people in state correctional facilities. 95% of those individuals will eventually come home. That’s pretty much everybody. And when folks come home, they’re often returning to communities with a high sense of optimism and eagerness to reengage with their families, to re-engage in civic life, and to find a job to support themselves. It’s that very moment where there is such enthusiasm, where there is such strong positive energy, where they’re going to face some of most significant barriers.

For someone coming home, they need to often connect with a parole or probation officer who’s going to give them a handful of conditions that they have to meet that can often be tremendous stumbling blocks. They’re going to have to find housing. They’re going to have to be able to secure some of the just basic needs, such as food and transportation. So, very quickly we run into this dynamic where the hundreds of thousands of people who come home every year with that energy, with that enthusiasm and excitement are just straight up running into the barriers of re-entry. And it’s, you know, depressing. It’s a sad comment on the support we don’t give people that in what most people would call failure happens in the first several days. Most recidivism — people being re-arrested, re-incarcerated – happens early because of that failure to give folks a support.

So, for the better part of, thirty years, it’s been a much more accepted sort of notion that re-entry matters, right? That if we don’t support people, we do it at our own peril. If we do it at the peril for the individual’s success, we also do it at the peril for public safety. There’s lots of barriers, which I’m sure we’ll get into in terms of how we scale evidence-based and solid re-entry work, but, I think that’s sort of an important starting point. A lot of people coming home, high enthusiasm and energy and lots of barriers from day one.

Van

And so give us an overview, Sam, of the CEO’s approach — and the CEO stands for the Center for Employment Opportunities — and how it’s designed to work from day one of re-entry.

Sam

Based on these challenges, again, of that first many days being so critical, based on the need for people to have a sense of hope and direction from day one, our approach is to engage people in the week, sometimes just days immediately after release. And so we work really closely with community organizations, we work really closely with probation and parole to encourage people to come to CEO as soon as possible post release.

Our program model, which has been validated through multiple independent evaluations to both increase employment and reduce recidivism, is standardized across the 30 cities, and 12 states in which we work. We give everyone access to a very brief paid orientation. It’s two days. It’s as much an onboarding to a job as anything. After those two days, which involves some of the basics of on work behaviors, some of the basics of safety, every single person who comes to CEO, that’s over 8,000 people a year, begins to work for us. So we run what’s called a social enterprise. That social enterprise generates contracts principally with public sector agencies that allows us to deploy teams, which we call work crews, to provide basic labor and maintenance.

For instance, across the state of California, we have a large scale relationship with Caltrans providing roadside litter abatement and other landscaping services. This means that someone, sometimes just a few days home from prison, is working for CEO. They’re learning the basic work skills that they need to be successful in any job. But also, and this is really critical, we’re paying them and we’re paying them every day. We’re trying to make that intentional connection between the effort they’re exhibiting — showing up to a demanding job — and being compensated for it while also giving them that income that they really do need to survive and be successful.

So, someone at CEO works on our social enterprise on average for three to four months. Concurrent with that experience, they’re also receiving case management and so what we’re able to say is that while someone is earning a daily paycheck, they’re also getting prepared for a full-time job outside of CEO. And again, while that average is three or four months, there could be someone who’s coming home, they’ve completed their associate’s degree, they have some previous work experience, and they might get a job quite quickly. Whereas some of our folks, half of whom have never worked before in the formal economy, might need little bit more time, might need a little bit more coaching to get that full-time job.

We then follow up with folks once they’re placed in a full-time job for an additional twelve months, providing them retention services, helping them engage in more skilled training to get jobs that help them move up in the labor market.

Van

What an impressive model. So, I heard some keywords in there. The fact that you can secure these paid contracts; the second keyword that there’s a training component; there’s case management not only during those three to four months, but another twelve months. Now, that model must have been iterated many times over the years. What were some of the big learnings along the way that led you to this combination of success factors?

Sam

It’s such a great question. I think every workforce program wishes they could hit it out of the park on day one and land on the model that would be immediately responsive to folks’ needs. And I think to your question, not only has it been iterated on, but we continue to have to iterate on it. But I’ll go back and answer some of the question about some of the big evolutions.

I describe basically four phases of the model, orientation, paid transitional work, job coaching/job placement, those three components. We didn’t have job retention at CEO twenty years ago. We didn’t have these dedicated services to help people keep their jobs. The workforce world at that time was much more geared towards immediate placement… just getting people into jobs rather than helping them keep the jobs. Contracts didn’t support and pay for that type of work. And it’s no surprise — and it was really exposed during our first randomized control trial – that we were seeing these big increases in employment in year one, right?

So, people are coming to CEO, they’re working at high rates in the transitional job, they’re getting placed, and then it’s falling off if you didn’t have retention services. It’s really not a huge surprise, but having that evidence was so critical to validate the need to invest — first with philanthropy and then to make the case to government – that investing in 180 day, 365 day retention and upskilling of folks was absolutely critical for this population.

You know, we were seeing people at the time not go back to prison, but also not achieve economic mobility. There was some behavior change happening, which was really positive, but we don’t want people to live life struggling in poverty, even if they’re not back in prison. So that was a huge evolution for CEO.

Van

Can I ask a clarification? When you talk about job retention services, what does that look like to the individual?

Sam

It’s a handful of things. It is one on one engagement. I can’t support you if I’m not talking to you about your challenges, right?  Half of the folks who come to CEO have never worked before and at the very least, many have been years removed from the labor market. So some of these basic work success factors — just being able to communicate with your coworkers and peers — can be the difference between keeping a job and losing a job.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ve helped coach someone through a dynamic where there’s a childcare issue, so they would consistently be fifteen minutes late to the start time of a job, two or three times a week. If that actually is communicated to their manager, there’s often accommodations that can be made, especially for a strong employee. If you don’t have the confidence, if you don’t have the skills to, one, identify that challenge and then proactively address it, it can result in job loss. That’s an example of a core function of a retention specialist who’s providing that case management.

Van

And are those retention specialists someone with lived experience who was formerly incarcerated? Is that part of their background?

Sam

It may be. We find great, great success with people who had been participants at CEO bringing their lived experience and their expertise to bear, on our case management work in particular. It’s not exclusively so, but it’s really important. I would also add that one of the functions here that can be really important is just to be able to deal with job loss when it does occur and get someone immediately re-engaged. Again, this may be a first job. It may not be the best fit. The employer might be contracting. If we can stay in close contact with somebody, what we can do at CEO is get them back working on our social enterprise so there’s no interruption in pay. There’s no real deflation of progress. You were working for three or four months at CEO, you were placed, maybe you lose a job in four months, come back and work for us while we look for another job and replace it. That’s really critical.

The final thing I would say on retention that’s been really helpful is we give cash incentives. It’s a twofold function. It’s first to, you know, engage people, right? Because we can’t solve the challenge unless we’re talking to you. So, if you can show us a pay stub at certain key milestones, we will give gift cards and checks to folks, which helps engage them. But also it’s like, it’s encouraging, it’s motivating. It’s a thing that we think people really have earned and deserve at this point, given the tremendous strides they’ve made.

Van

That’s so clever. Tell us some more about the paid work part. How did you come to structure those contracts and convince the public entities to award those contracts?

Sam

When I came to CEO, I didn’t know much about public sector procurement. It’s not the topic that I always want to bring up at cocktail parties or at someone’s barbecue, but it’s a fascinating and absolutely critical part of the work that we do and so important.  I used the example earlier of Caltrans, but other examples of our partners are public housing authorities, parks departments on a city county level, state parks departments — and so many more – which are looking for supplemental labor that’s highly flexible, that can do tasks that are necessary for the functioning of a state, city, or county.

It’s really interesting. Using the transportation example, a state DOT — and I think we work with eight state DOTs around the country — does not have a criminal justice budget, but they have a maintenance budget, right? And that’s really been one of the keys to CEO scaling is to go in and make the case that you need this work and we can provide it in a cost-effective way. We act then as the conduit to pay folks with our daily payroll.

Many of these partnerships that we’ve had predate even my time at CEO and it really is a testament to the amazing work that our supervisors and social enterprise crew members are doing every day. That once we’re in and people see how strong the work is, it is very, very rare for us to not have that be a multi-decade relationship.

Van

Was there any other learning that you wanted to highlight?

Sam

Yeah, I think on this issue of public sector support for re-entry, I think it’s this really interesting dynamic where it’s really hard to scale re-entry employment. There isn’t dedicated funding across federal sources. It can really vary state to state in terms of what resources are available. And so CEO’s ability to generate earned revenue from these diverse sectors — that, again, don’t have dedicated criminal justice funding —  has been really the key to our scaling. About 40% to 45 % of our total revenue comes from these work group contracts. If we were trying to just scale and support our work through government grants and philanthropy, it simply wouldn’t be possible. There are not enough resources in this dedicated space for re-entry employment, period, but certainly not to do what we’re doing every day.

Van

It is such a brilliant set of concepts that came together. Congratulations. So, you talked about the first job back being so pivotal in the re-entry journey. Are there any other elements that you’d like to highlight or stories you’d like to highlight to give the listeners a feel for the work that you do?

Sam

I think one piece that’s really important to note is what is in that first job and what are people’s expectations? You know, we have a lot of folks who might come to the door and have a mental model of what’s possible and think, okay, based on my conviction and maybe my limited work history, I think I can work only in these jobs. And I think one of our responsibilities as providers is to help break that mental model. When we really go deep with people, I can’t tell you how often there is a profound sense of wanting to give back, of wanting to connect with civic life in a positive way.

I’m thinking of so many people, but one gentleman in particular that I’ve participated on a number of panels with who came through CEO is Dion Johnson. It was his notion that I want to be engaged in my community, I want to be politically active, I want to have a job that gives me meaning. And so how do we figure out how to meet people where they are and their real wants and sort of say, yeah, by all means. If it’s logistics work or it’s construction work that you find meaning in, that’s fantastic. But if it’s something different, let’s also find that space.

And so, one thing that CEO developed in the last several years is something we call internally our emerging leaders program. Every department within our organization — from our program delivery teams to legal and compliance to finance, IT —  host twelve-week long internships for people who are in our program. It has this amazing dual function. First, it ensures that a department like IT has someone with lived experience in their department. I can’t tell you how much that’s informing their decision making, how we structure our CRM, how we structure our technology systems, making sure that they’re aligned with the needs and desires of folks is critical. But for the beneficiaries, this experience is so important. It’s showing them what working in a nonprofit is like and all the ups and downs in our sector. It’s giving them a real path to get a job that can give back in a way that’s meaningful to them.

Where Dion started was getting involved in some of our policy work. He worked in our policy department advocating for legislation across New York State and now he’s doing incredible messenger work in a hospital in New York City and he finds such great value and meaning in that work.

Van

Sam, in terms of the job market, how do the individuals get coached or get supported to navigate the fact that they are formerly incarcerated? Once they do the three to four months as an employee of the CEO, how do they navigate the job market they go into?

Sam

We’re using that three or four months with our continuous coaching to prepare them for those challenges that may occur. For instance, preparing people that hiring managers still often hold significant stigmas against convictions…how can they best address their conviction in a transparent and open way is a critical part of that coaching. It’s almost invariably going to come up at some point in the interview process. And there can be a great answer that people have about how they made a mistake, they’ve done great work in the past, and they’re really motivated and excited to be re-engaged in the labor market and this job is a great fit for them. That’s just one element of the coaching that people will face.

I think the workforce has changed as well. So even if you did have work experience prior to your incarceration, you are likely entering a labor market that is just profoundly different. Even just the way we handle applications. Everything is gonna be online. Many of the folks we’re now working with are digitally native, so that doesn’t present quite the challenge, but making sure that they’re doing that effectively and accurately, and being coached through how to do an online submission in a way that’s gonna best present themselves is absolutely critical for that preparation.

Van

So, it sounds like the coaching can help them once they get the interview, but how do they even get past the applicant tracking process, which does such an automatic job of screening people out?

Sam

Yeah, it’s so interesting. If I go back sixteen years ago when I started working at CEO, our core employers were small and medium sized businesses where we could talk to the hiring manager directly, where our job developers — which we now call business account managers — could pick up the phone and they could reach in and say, “Hey, I’ve got a great applicant. This person is working for CEO. They’ve been with us for three or four months. They’re getting great reviews from the supervisor.” You know, they were able to build that trust, show them an applicant.

If we fast forward 16 years later, there’s a lot more enthusiasm and openness from large employers through fair chance hiring commitments. We’ve seen companies like JP Morgan take really impressive leadership roles in saying that we want to be second chance employers. At the same time, it’s still absolutely so much easier for us when we can still pick up the phone and call the hiring manager. So, it still keeps us in that sort of small to medium sized business range.

We’ve seen some evolution where more applicant tracking systems will see people through, but it does exist as a barrier, and it’s not just a barrier for those individuals. It’s a barrier to scaling re-employment more generally, right? If we’re only able to work in certain sectors with certain size businesses, that is really limiting the opportunities of folks.

Again, I’ve seen some really good progress on this front with large businesses, the Second Chance Business Coalition trying to work with Fortune 100 companies to change their hiring practices. But I think we need to see more in that domain. We need to see more companies making these commitments. And not just reducing barriers, but also proactively trying to recruit folks who have convictions, because it’s often very hard for them to even know they can get even their foot in the door or their application read.

Van

So Sam, where would you like to take the CEO and all of your good works right now? What’s on the horizon for you?

Sam

It’s a great question. For many years, CEO’s goal was to grow and expand. We started providing services just in New York City across the five boroughs. It was the randomized control trials and evaluations that were showing that we were having an impact in reducing recidivism and increasing employment that gave us the confidence that we could grow, and it was also responding to the need.

You know, I remember traveling around the country fifteen years ago and just not appreciating the lack of coordinated re-entry services in so many communities and the high demand for our services. That led us to a multi-year strategy that really focused on the expansion of our model. What helped us get to work in twelve states and thirty cities was we had this financially sustainable model for which there was a significant demand because there’s really a lack of coordinated re-entry funding.

As we think about the next phase for CEO and the next phase for re-entry, we could continue to grow. You know, I could see a scenario in which CEO was in sixty cities in twenty-four states, and that would be great, right? I think we could serve a lot more people. But again, if we go back to the 600,000 people coming home every year and CEO serving 8,000, I don’t think it can or should be a single organization who is providing these services. Individuals coming home should have choice. We may very well not be the program for everyone.

I think workforce development generally is most effective when there is a multiplicity of programs, a multiplicity of options for job seekers. In the re-entry space more generally, I think we have a responsibility to share some of these lessons. How do we not just scale our organization, but scale the field of re-entry? How do we bring more public sector dollars into this space? It could be a local organization in Memphis growing; it could be a statewide organization in Illinois growing.

I can give you some specific examples. One source of federal money that’s just vastly underutilized right now is called SNAP Employment and Training. It’s a source of dollars that supports people who are on nutrition benefits find up-skilling opportunities and it goes directly to nonprofits. It has been expanded in recent years to support paid learning opportunities like the one we have. So, one of our big missions is how do we expand SNAP E&T, not just for CEO, but to states that are not maximizing its drawdown? How do we get more money into the field?

So, I think really the evolution for us in the coming years is not so much growing — we’re gonna grow at CEO, we’re gonna open a handful of more offices I’m excited about — but really how do we grow the field of re-entry? How do we go to a place where in the top 100 cities across this country in terms of population, someone coming home from prison can expect to have one or two or three great options to help find jobs through nonprofits?

Van

When I was with the California Community Colleges, there were always periodic grants that came to the colleges to work with this population. I’m wondering aloud about your methodology and how you think about the coaching, the paid work, the case management, and being able to share your comprehensive model…what it really takes for someone to land and get back on their feet because the training component is just a subset of all the things that you had mentioned.

Sam

That’s right. I there is often a multiplicity of needs. We talked about this at the very beginning, whether it’s housing or connecting with family or dealing with an outstanding civil fine or penalty or dealing with probation or parole. Even if your primary, or even your exclusive orientation, is workforce development, if those barriers exist to finding employment, you can’t be successful without addressing them. So, that could be as simple as helping someone find interview clothes to something much more complex, like helping enroll their child in daycare or helping them submit housing applications and coordinate their living arrangements. Because yes, we want everyone to work and have the autonomy and agency that comes with employment, but if there are these barriers standing in the way, it’s just not going to be successful and those have to be addressed first.

Van

So, let me pull some on some of the threads that you mentioned about scaling. For all those who are listening and want to scale their impact and services, it sounds like the randomized controlled trials — as well as the figuring out the sustainable business model – were sort of the two key components required for you to scale.

Sam

That’s right.

Van

I was wondering if you could talk about how you approached the randomized control trials because by definition, some of your clients couldn’t benefit from the services.

Sam

That’s right. I mean, these are incredibly challenging evaluations, right? We’ve done two, and we’ve done a handful of quasi-experimental evaluations. It’s actually really important to recognize that in the criminal justice space, there have been interventions which are intuitive, which seem common sense, which have actually backfired and created more problems than they’ve solved. And so I think that there’s a really strong ethic for engaging in these types of evaluations to make sure that the work you’re doing, that you’re pouring your heart into every day, is actually working and at the very least not doing harm.

I say that because they can be incredibly challenging depending on where you randomize that individual. And so in CEOs first trial the randomization was at the front door, meaning people who came in. There was such an over enrollment challenge. There’s so many people who wanted CEO’s services. So, ethically on that front, we couldn’t accommodate everyone at the time and so some people got in a control group, which was a modified set of services, and some people got the full program experience at CEO.

That was incredibly hard for staff…to see people who were counting on this program and weren’t able to fully participate. At the same time, you know, it allowed us to understand that we were actually doing good work. But these are the very real trade-offs and the very hard conversations that organizations have to go in when looking at evaluations.

We’ve done a subsequent randomized controlled trial that did the randomization actually prior to release. It had its own set of challenges methodologically, because it meant we had to try to find people post-incarceration, convince them to come to the program and sort of raise questions around what was voluntary and not voluntary. The questions around evaluation are not to be taken lightly. I think one thing that we did in subsequent years was form an evaluation advisory board to give us outside expertise on what are the key questions? How are we ensuring that we’re doing it ethically?

Van

And then do you have any thoughts or learnings from developing your financially sustainable revenue model?

Sam

So many thoughts. For any nonprofit, it’s hard. I think we’re sitting in a space right now at a moment that I recognize is so challenging for so many organizations, and I fear that some of the challenges may be just emerging. CEO did quite well in the last two downturns, 2009 recession and post COVID really because there was a government and philanthropic safety net that helped support us. We saw actually some of our first big scaling grants come in the 2008-2009 recession because providing workforce services is a whole lot cheaper than incarcerating people. So the states were sort of seeing this, like, “Okay, let’s get on board this train. It’s a cost savings mechanism.”

Similarly with COVID, the philanthropic response was tremendous. It’s too soon to tell, but if we face real strains on state budgets in the coming years, I just don’t know what that safety net looks like and that’s much more up in the air right now. I know your question was about a sustainable economic model, but I just want to acknowledge that for organizations like CEO who’ve achieved that to some degree today, I think it’s going to require a lot of creativity, a lot of iteration and a lot of evolution in our funding models potentially in the next two to three years.

Van

Well, I’m cheering on the CEO. I don’t know if you know this, Sam, but when I was in the private sector — which was like two sets of careers ago – I had first learned about the CEO at the Clinton Global Initiative. So, I’m so glad to be interviewing you now.

Sam

Oh, fantastic. Yeah, I remember that event. That’s awesome.

Van

Yes, yes, yes. Keep up the good work. All right, so let’s end today by giving you the opportunity to just say what gives you the most hope about where the re-entry movement is headed and where CEO fits into that future.

Sam

Where I’m most excited is that – and I think I made references earlier – re-entry has established itself as a key component of the justice system. It is no longer questioned. It doesn’t mean that states and philanthropy always fund it to the levels that we think is appropriate, but we’re not at a place where in recent years we’ve seen backsliding — this doesn’t work or this isn’t the right approach — which is really encouraging because in the broader criminal justice space, there’s has been a lot of shifting attitudes and concerns around different sentencing reforms or bail reforms. But re-entry has really solidified its place as a key component. Everyone, just about, is going to come home. Let’s support them.

So to me, that gives us such an important foundation to build on even in a moment where government and philanthropic funding might be less secure. It gives us the foundation to launch a really ambitious plan that would say, let’s build a national re-entry infrastructure where if you’re coming home to any community in this country, you can and should expect that there’s a quality job training program for you. That’s an incredibly bold vision, but I think the progress we’ve made collectively — not just CEO, but all the advocates, all the policymakers, all the on the ground workers providing the job coaching every day — have shown that this works to the extent that we can now be bold in our thinking, and I’m really excited about that.

Van

Well, we want you to be bold, Sam. Your work is so good and we want to see the organization continue to have its fantastic impact. Thank you very much, Sam, for being with us and just sharing your wisdom and learnings and best practices with our listeners.

Sam

Van, it was an absolute pleasure to be in conversation with you today. Thank you.

Van

I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future-focused workforce in America.