Nonprofit organization out to break the cycle of joblessness

By Las Vegas Sun Staff (contact)

Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017 | 2 a.m.

What does your organization do? The Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow’s mission is to provide job training, coaching and support based on job seekers’ needs and the skills employers tell us they are looking for.

When people can support their own family without public assistance, they gain dignity and self-respect. As self-sufficient, productive members of the workforce, people can give back to their community and provide a secure future for themselves and their families.

When and why was it established? FIT was established in August 1997. As of June 2016, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that Nevada continued to rank 50th of the 50 states and District of Columbia as far as unemployment. Although our unemployment had decreased, we still reported a seasonally adjusted 6.5 percent unemployment.

Unemployment may mean that you are forced to rely on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) and food banks. Without a job, you can’t afford gas or to fix your car when it breaks down. Eventually, even bus passes at $65 a month are out of your reach. Signing the kids up for soccer or violin lessons is out of the question. You can’t afford medical insurance, let alone new clothes.

In other words, being without a job doesn’t just mean unemployment. It is an aggressive downhill path to problems that invade every inch of a family’s life.

Who are your clients? They are people who want to work and need to work, but lack the education and job skills to get and keep a job that pays enough to make them self-sufficient. They are not the people you see on the street corner holding cardboard signs. They are the man whose company suddenly relocated to China or the woman who, after 35 years as a homemaker, found herself as the sole support for her family. They are people who were injured at work and can no longer perform the jobs they had their whole lives.

What services of yours does the community likely know about? The community may know that FIT has a wholly owned subsidiary named the Standards of Excellence Academy. Accredited by the Nevada Commission on Post-Secondary Education, this academy offers training that leads to industry-recognized credentials in the health care and logistics/manufacturing fields. Scholarships are available for appropriate candidates.

What services might the community not know about? We are frequently told that the Foundation for an Independent Tomorrow is one of the best kept secrets in Las Vegas. We participate in many community functions, but people just don’t know who we are and what we do.

I think the problem is twofold: First, we are strictly a local organization. We do not have a national name like organizations such as Red Cross or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Second, our mission takes a few minutes to explain. Unlike a disease-oriented or easily explained mission (a food bank or animal shelter), our goals and objectives take a few sentences to explain.

Unfortunately, our “elevator speech” requires an elevator ride in a high-rise building.

What sparked your interest in the nonprofit sector? By 1994, I had been chairman of the Colorado River Commission for a few years, and on Tuesdays during lunch breaks, I volunteered at the food bank at the Episcopal church. I was struck by the young women who were in line with their children waiting for whatever the congregation had collected that week. They stood in the summer heat to get what sometimes amounted to a can of tomatoes and a box of cereal. An idea began to germinate that we should be able to do something to stop the cycle.

For the next year and a half, I compulsively ran the idea by people I knew. By the fall of 1995, a friend of mine, Joyce Straus, had a luncheon for me and we invited 12 people who were interested. I described the mission I had in mind: to marshal our resources and move these women into well-paying employment and off of the food line. FIT was born.

What is the greatest success you’ve been a part of? Although the greatest reward of our efforts at FIT is seeing the faces of our clients as they become employed and self-sufficient, we measure our success through three objective, quantifiable measures:

• The number of clients employed annually;

• The amount to which clients’ annual income increases; and

• The amount by which clients’ demand for public assistance decreases.

1) In program years 2015-17, 316 people were employed as a direct result of the FIT program.

2) The annual income of those employed increased to an aggregate of $7,802,091

3) At the same time, these clients’ dependence on public assistance declined by $524,657.

Thus, the aggregate annual impact of one graduating class of FIT clients was $8,326,784.