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Abilities United champions people with developmental and physical challenges and provides the training, education, and support they need to lead the lives they choose.

Research shows that employment is a chief "trigger" in aiding those with the greatest barriers to work in their transition from poverty to productivity and greater prosperity. Nearly three-fourths of poverty spells end with a rise in earnings and employment occurs twice as frequently as any other event associated with an exit from poverty. Employment also encourages social mobility in addition to providing an economic benefit. A job strengthens human capital, facilitates access to financial capital, builds interpersonal skills, and enhances social networks. Having a job boosts employees' self-confidence and is source of dignity and pride. But entering and staying in the workforce is extremely difficult for many people who live in protracted poverty and have also confronted homelessness, health problems, fragmented families, incarceration, and inadequate access to a good education. The private sector is often unwilling to hire employees facing these barriers or provide adequate support to address the many challenges that can undermine their success once on the job. Few workforce development programs have achieved positive outcomes preparing those workers that are most disconnected to jobs, or creating durable pathways to employment. MDRC, one of the premiere researchers in this area, summarizes this consensus: "For at least three decades, policymakers, researchers, and program operators have developed and studied strategies to help people who face serious obstacles to steady work. Despite the broad policy interest in serving the hard-to-employ, knowledge about effective program strategies is still relatively undeveloped." REDF is uniquely positioned to address this problem. Our successful track record of building the capacity of nonprofits to operate social enterprises and the success those businesses have demonstrated in employing, retaining and advancing their employees is a solid foundation to build on as we invest in our new portfolio and expand the role we play with the organizations that we intensely supported for many years.

JVS Los Angeles offers hope and opportunity to our diverse community through job training, mentoring and education, combined with expert career guidance, employer partnerships and comprehensive resources, transforming lives and empowering individuals to achieve dignity and independence.

Step Up delivers compassionate support to people experiencing serious mental health issues, and persons who are experiencing chronic homelessness, to help them recover, stabilize, and integrate into the community. Through dynamic partnerships, we provide positive social and learning environments, vocational training, permanent supportive housing opportunities, and recovery services to empower individuals to cultivate lives of hope and dignity. We exercise innovative leadership and advocacy to increase public understanding, support and acceptance of all people living with serious mental health issues.

Catch Up & Read's mission is to equip at-risk elementary children to read on grade level by the third grade in order to have a strong foundation for academic and lifelong success.

Fortify former foster youth with personal and professional skills, employment and the supportive community needed to lead a sustainable independent lifestyle.

Per Scholas' mission is to open doors to technology careers for individuals from often overlooked communities. We envision a future where individuals from any community can access well-paying career positions, and where talent is recognized and recruited from many diverse sources. Our formula is simple: We partner with the largest IT employers and learn everything we can about the jobs they need to fill. Then we invest in talented young people and adults who can effectively use our free, high-quality job training and support services: first to get those jobs, and then advance in them.

Our mission is to transform the lives and amplify the voices of Boston residents who have been excluded from prosperity by an inequitable economic system. We develop affordable housing that allows people to thrive, provide services that help people build on their strengths, and organize people to pursue the changes they desire. Based in Jamaica Plain, we envision an equitable and inclusive Boston in which all people have access to secure housing, economic prosperity, safe and vibrant neighborhoods, political power, and opportunities to fulfill their potential.

The Carroll Center for the Blind's mission is to serve the needs of individuals who are blind and visually impaired by providing rehabilitation, skills training, and educational opportunities to achieve independence, self-sufficiency and self-fulfillment, and by educating the public regarding the potential of persons who are blind and visually impaired.

Founded in 1976, Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH) engages youth and adult community members as leaders in promoting safe, secure jobs and healthy communities throughout eastern Massachusetts. Through education, leadership development and coalition-building, youth and adults gain the skills and support to address dangerous work conditions and prevent work-related diseases and disabilities. MassCOSH has a special focus on immigrants and other lower-income adults, and young people of color who often work in jobs that are the most unsafe and unhealthy.

Upwardly Global’s mission is to eliminate employment barriers for skilled immigrants and refugees, and integrate this population into the professional U.S. workforce.

The Greater Houston Disability Chamber of Commerce is committed to supporting businesses with an interest in providing career and employment opportunities for Houstonians with disabilities. It will establish for individuals with disabilities a pipeline that will present employment opportunities and increase their independence, self-determination and inclusion within the community.