Foundations Must Work With Business on Job Training

Despite the importance of business to society, foundation support for business organizations has been rare. But as the economy continues to evolve and as government shrinks in size and scope, the nation can no longer afford estrangement be tween foundations and business.

A rapprochement is in order, and the best place to start is where the agendas of foundations and business have finally intersected — at the education and training of the work force.

The tightest labor market in decades poses a distinct challenge to businesses seeking qualified workers — and an opportunity for foundations looking to promote the well-being of the nation’s poor. Both foundations and businesses want the disadvantaged to succeed in employment and, on an allied front, both want high-school students to be better prepared for the careers of the future.

For business to meet those challenges, it will have to develop an American equivalent to what business does in Western Europe, where trade associations play a strong role in both education and job training.

American business is beginning to sense that it must move in that direction. Local business groups, such as chambers of commerce and management associations, are the natural vehicle to carry out such programs, in large part because businesses already look to them for peer leadership and supportive services.

But unless foundations step in to support work-force development efforts at those organizations, the process is likely to be much slower, of lower quality, and less extensive than it needs to be. Indeed, foundation efforts to get business groups more deeply involved in work-force development would probably do more for the poor than all the special job-training programs now financed by grant makers.

To be sure, there are serious barriers to foundation involvement with business. A tension, if not a deep suspicion, exists between the two worlds. Although some foundation grants go to business schools and to a few business-research associations, for the most part foundations tend to work on rather than with business, supporting charities that confront business on issues like the environment and affirmative action.

What’s more, foundations have questions, as well as some unexamined biases, about financing business groups. Many wonder why they should take charitable dollars away from directly serving the poor to subsidize industry, whose behavior and attitudes arguably have caused some of the poor’s problems. Corporations control the capital in this country, and they have far more money than foundations do, the thinking goes. If businesses are interested in the training of the work force, then they should pay for it.

There are good reasons to challenge that thinking.

Currently, all of our education and training programs focus on the supply, or work-force, side of the labor market. We badly need to devote some attention to the demand, or employer, side of the equation.

The nation — and the economy — need increased employer involvement in both work-force development and school-to-career programs. For one thing, the recent welfare overhaul presumes that businesses will hire, make employable, and retain people being moved off the welfare rolls. For another, the school-to-career movement presumes that business will provide large numbers of internships and other work-based learning opportunities for students.

But business is not structured to take on such roles. To be sure, industry already does do a lot of training. But that training takes place largely at big firms and for mid- to high-level employees. Small and medium-sized employers, who employ over half the work force, have few if any personnel and training staff members to meet the new demands.

Traditionally, business has met its labor-force needs from the labor market and, with some exceptions, has little competence in preparing people for entry-level work. Further, business people are not social workers and don’t know how to provide the social supports that much of the welfare population requires. Finally, beyond the retail and hospitality industries, employers have little experience with kids and little positive experience working with schools.

Businesses needs help on those matters if we want their involvement to be successful.

Some people may argue that economic forces will eventually push business into those new roles and that foundation intervention is unneeded. Maybe. But foundation support now can speed the process and shape it in salutary ways.

Eventually, business associations probably should pay for much of what is needed. But getting to that point is a classic case of the need to prime the pump. Foundation support can provide association leaders with the time needed to demonstrate to their members — some of whom are still resistant to spending their dues on such programs — both the case for employer involvement in work-force development and the return to them on such investments.

Foundation support would not involve subsidizing individual companies.

Instead, the object would be to build an extensive and effective system of business-based intermediary organizations that would help small to mid-sized employers hire and retain the disadvantaged (including welfare recipients), welcome high-school students into the workplace, and improve the academic and other skills of incumbent low-wage workers, over 10 million of whom are at risk for losing their jobs.

To date, only the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Ford Foundation have made a few tentative, small grants of that nature, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has issued a request for proposals on employer involvement. Those overtures make a welcome beginning to tapping the enormous potential of employer involvement. But much more is needed.

Business attitudes clearly are changing, but business needs partners to meet those challenges. Foundation attitudes must change as well to take advantage of what is a historic opportunity to help business take on new and badly needed roles.

Basil J. Whiting is an organizational consultant based in Brooklyn, N.Y., and a former foundation program officer, government official, and railroad executive. He recently studied the potential for employer involvement in work-force development with grants from the Ford Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.