Realize Impact and RiseKit partner to increase access to employment opportunities through technology that connects under-resourced jobseekers, community organizations, employers, governments, and foundations
RiseKit and Realize Impact have partnered to increase under-resourced job seekers’ access to employment opportunities, wraparound support, training programs, and events. As RiseKit’s software grows across cities and communities, their platform becomes a powerful community-organizing tool to notify under-resourced jobseekers in real time of new job opportunities, wraparound supportive services (legal counseling, transportation, food pantries, housing, mental health, childcare, etc. resources) and job training programs. Their technology can increase under-resourced jobseekers’ social capital by 1,000%+ just by signing up. At the same time, there software can save community organizations (nonprofit staff) four to twelve hours a week. This time can be reinvested into helping more job seekers. They are now proving that they can help employers tap into a talent pool they wouldn’t have found elsewhere.
As of December 2022, 90%+ of RiseKit’s job seekers are people of color, immigrants, refugees, ex-offenders, people with disabilities, veterans, or Native Americans. Over 70% of RiseKit’s job seekers have one of the following barriers to employment (lack of access to jobs, criminal record, transportation, child care, clothing, phone bills/wifi bills, food insecurity, mental health challenges, disability, and housing).
RiseKit built software that allows under-resourced job seekers to work with one or many cases across community organizations (job training programs, social services, reentry programs, veterans programs, refugee programs, disability nonprofits, and more). While working with case managers to resolve their barriers to employment and as the job seekers become job-ready, they also are able to discover employment opportunities of hiring companies on RiseKit’s platform. The employer, case manager, and job seeker can work together starting with the job application, then to interview prep, and ending with placement through retention. It’s critical to have all stakeholders involved since challenges often come up that the case manager can work with their job seeker to resolve. This helps the hiring manager at the employer lower their interview no show rate and increase their retention rate.
RiseKit collects massive amounts of impact data. This data can be aggregated for foundations and government systems to understand what is working and what isn’t working.
Since RiseKit builds online communities of employers, community organizations, job seekers, governments, and foundations, these communities tend to stack onto each other to eventually become citywide or countywide initiatives.
This means that foundations and governments can team up with Realize Impact to grow citywide or statewide initiatives by providing grants that sponsor licenses for community organizations and hiring companies. In return, governments and foundations can co-create a dashboard to measure the aggregate data of their investment. Some grantmakers are now asking to measure real-time data of target populations and specific nonprofits in their portfolio.
To date, RiseKit and Realize Impact have teamed up to raise over $250,000 to cover software licenses and dashboards. We have received grant funding from: Verizon Foundation, Chicago Community Trust, Chicago Workforce Funders Alliance, Hughes Foundation, Assisi Foundation, Stand Together Foundation, Zucker Foundation, and more.
