The Pennsylvania Convention Center, an SI member, has long had a close relationship with OIC Philadelphia, one of the city’s most impactful workforce development nonprofits. Both entities benefit, but the biggest winner is the community.
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Editor’s Note: The Satell Institute’s Nonprofit Summit will take place March 12th at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Over the next few weeks, we’ll highlight some SI Nonprofit Affiliates and the powerful partnerships they’ve forged with SI corporate members.
Since its founding more than 60 years ago by civil rights leader Rev. Leon Sullivan, OIC Philadelphia has had a straightforward mission: to overcome discrimination and lift people up by giving them the job skills they need to succeed.
“Dr. Sullivan was very much about self-help,” Sheila Ireland, OIC Philadelphia’s current president and CEO, says of the legendary minister (who, coincidentally, was close with SI founder Ed Satell for many years). “And he believed that integration without preparation leads to frustration.”
For decades OIC has successfully given people that preparation, literally training tens of thousands of Philadelphians for careers in everything from healthcare to culinary arts.
Crucial to its success have been strong partners, including the Pennsylvania Convention Center Authority, an SI member. The Convention Center is a major supporter of OIC’s Culinary Arts program, which trains people for productive careers in the world of food and hospitality.
It’s a perfect example of the amazing multiplier effect of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Convention Center funds a program that not only changes individual lives and benefits the community, but also supports an industry that helps the Convention Center itself succeed.
In this new conversation, Ireland — a longtime workforce development leader who’s served as Pennsylvania Deputy Secretary of Labor — talks about OIC’s transformative work and its deep ties with the Convention Center. She also explains the valuable perspective nonprofits get when they become affiliates of the Satell Institute.
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The easiest way to describe OIC Philadelphia…
…is to say that we’re an agency that stands at the intersection of workforce development, social justice, and economic empowerment. Dr. Sullivan was very much about self-help. And he believed that integration without preparation leads to frustration. That’s the tag line that we’ve used.
I took this job in part…
… because OIC helped my father. When my father returned from serving his country, he had a hard time reconnecting to work, and OIC helped him. And you can consider me a child of civil rights. My parents were active in the civil rights movement in Chicago, which Dr. King described as the most virulent pocket of racism north of the Mason-Dixon line. My family had a first-row seat to see what was going on in America in the 1960s.
I truly believe in my core that once the playing field is leveled, it’s a better society for all of us. That’s the American Dream when it’s all said and done: if you work hard, the dream is yours for the having.
I’ve spent my whole career…
…connecting organizations who are seeking talent to talent who are seeking opportunity.
Once you get into this work and have the opportunity to do it, you see the impact of changing people’s lives. There’s really nothing else I would find as rewarding.
At OIC…
…we’ve had explosive growth. We’re trying to elevate the organization to focus on middle-skills jobs, with family-sustaining wages and career-ladder opportunities. The kind of work that we are talking about takes more effort, more time, more money, and more commitment. But there’s greater reward.
Without the space that having a middle-skills job gives you, you can’t progress. You’re just stuck. You see it all the time, people bouncing from here to there. So that focus on middle-skills jobs is really around economic empowerment for us.
We have a unique opportunity…
…to be a voice for the community and, more importantly, to help the community strategize in a more cogent way what they want to see happening.
Some of the folks I meet can be 22 or 23 years old and never had a job. If you think about all the life and work experience many of us get in our formative years — that’s not going on for some people in poverty.
We’ve created…
… our own customized financial literacy curriculum that’s part of every program that goes on at OIC. Last year alone we moved 450 people from unbanked to banked. We’re not just talking about income, we’re talking about building wealth. If you don’t have a career path and career trajectory in mind, and understand the need for further education, it can be tough to keep aligned in your mind where you’re going to go.
Without the support of the Pennsylvania Convention Center…
…our culinary institute probably wouldn’t have been able to hit its 35th year. It’s not just that they fund us, they partner with us. Their people sit on our board. Our classes go to their kitchens to get a real idea of what a commercial kitchen looks like. They have kept the door open to us so that we can really demonstrate the different places you can go in the field. Every workforce agency is looking for that kind of partner.
There’s a difference…
…between a funder and a committed organization with people that care. John McNichol, the Convention Center’s CEO, is an amazing leader. I’ve seen him give his personal cell phone number to some of our students. He’s leaned in in ways that people don’t lean in.
When nonprofits become part of the Satell Institute…
…they get exposed to an important perspective. I sometimes get irritated by nonprofits’ unwillingness to understand the real world we exist in. I’ve been in rooms where I hear people say that funders are being unreasonable in asking about results. I say, well, if it was your money, wouldn’t you ask about it?
Nonprofits benefit…
…when they hear the perspectives of others. The more nonprofits can be exposed to how business thinks, the better off they’ll be. It’s like the Convention Center — yes, they want to help. But they’re still running a business. And so if we can help them, we can be great partners.
What Satell does, in a very gentle way, is put that proposition on the table.