Half Business, Half Mission, Fully Sustainable: Rethinking Urban Workforce Investment

Allyson just bought a car which might not sound like a headline. But for someone who came through Baker Industries’ transitional employment program after years of struggling to find stable work, it represents a life gaining traction. Today she’s a valued employee at a Philadelphia-area manufacturer that took a chance on a Baker graduate and found exactly what they were looking for: someone determined, capable, and ready to work.

Stories like Allyson’s are why fair chance hiring matters. People with records, people in recovery, people with disabilities, they’re the people we hire and they want to contribute. What makes the difference is what surrounds the job: the coaching, the wraparound support, the lived experience of showing up and being trusted. That infrastructure takes years to build and it takes sustained investment to maintain.

Right now, a lot of that infrastructure is under real stress.

Federal support for workforce programs is contracting sharply. The proposed FY2026 budget included a $4.6 billion reduction to the Department of Labor — a 35% cut — with workforce development programs facing reductions of nearly 30%. Whatever ultimately passes, the direction is clear. Programs built on federal dollars are feeling instability and the dominant response has been to ask philanthropy to fill the gap. It’s an understandable instinct. But this disruption is bringing into sharp focus, something worth paying attention to.

Baker Industries has been serving the greater Philadelphia region since 1980. We run real light industrial production work — packaging, light manufacturing, fulfillment and third-party logistics — for real clients. Participants earn real wages from day one. And in 46 years, we’ve never received federal funding. We don’t say that to boast and that’s absolutely not a statement about what federal investment can or can’t do, it’s simply our path. Federal workforce funding comes with timelines, eligibility categories, and priorities set in a far away city, Washington. 

Roughly half of Baker’s revenue comes from earned income: contracts with businesses that pay for our services. The other half comes from local philanthropic investment, foundations, individual donors, and civic partners who believe in what we’re building. The earned revenue side matters because work itself is a form of intervention. But earned revenue alone can’t cover everything. The individualized support, the job readiness coaching, the patience required to let someone progress at their own pace, that’s where local philanthropy comes in. Not as charity, but as investment in the full cost of doing this work well. 

When a Philadelphia foundation or a regional business invests in Baker, they’re investing directly in their own community and their own people. Sometimes a funder or a client walks through our doors because they live or work nearby and they see the outcomes firsthand. Local philanthropy is more responsive, more flexible, and more aligned with what communities actually need because the people investing in it live here too.

The results are visible in Baker’s growth. This year we’re opening a new facility in Norristown, expanding our capacity to serve more people across the region. Our board and supporter community are building an endowment fund together, a long-term investment in Baker’s ability to do this work for generations to come. That kind of stability comes from right here in our community.

We’re not sharing this to suggest we have all the answers. We’re sharing it because the model works and we believe it’s replicable. What it requires is a business community willing to contract with social enterprises, treating them as legitimate vendors rather than charity cases. It requires local funders willing to invest in operational sustainability, not just programs, but the infrastructure that makes programs possible year after year. And it requires cities and civic leaders willing to see workforce development not as a social service, but as urban infrastructure worth serious investment.

The businesses that contract with Baker aren’t doing us a favor. They’re getting quality work at a competitive price and they’re getting employees like Allyson, who bring a level of commitment that’s hard to manufacture. Fair chance hiring isn’t just good values, it’s good business. This moment is asking hard questions of every organization doing this work. At Baker, we’ve been living inside those questions for 46 years. We don’t have all the answers, but we’ve found something that we can hang on to and right now feels like exactly the right time to hang on real tight. 

Nic Watson is President of Baker Industries, a Philadelphia-based workforce development social enterprise serving the greater Philadelphia region since 1980. Learn more at bakerindustries.org.