Five Key Lessons for Five Core Groups Shaping Place-Based Policy

Governments set the stage for the creation of good jobs for residents. From unemployment insurance to workplace safety to economic development incentives, government agencies play a key role in providing incentives to businesses and employees.

1. Top-Down Pressure Can Break Through Bureaucracy
Ambitious goals often face roadblocks, but strong leadership and effective use of the bully pulpit from mayors, governors, or other top elected officials can remove bureaucratic obstacles impeding progress. Success, however, ultimately hinges on whether the resources and capacity are available to back these efforts. For example, mayors around the country have streamlined processes to build more housing. 

2. Break Free from the 'No Crisis, No Action' Mentality
Meaningful policy shifts require sustained momentum. Policy reforms during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that big changes are possible when the moment calls for it. For instance, Congress made the Child Tax Credit more generous and more inclusive—albeit temporarily— helping families better manage their child-care needs and reducing child poverty.

3. Good Programs Should Outlast Political Transitions
New leaders like to create new things. State and local initiatives tightly connected to a single policymaker thus sometimes struggle to survive after that person leaves office. Continuity of good programs should not depend on individual champions; these programs should receive enough attention and evaluation to become enduring efforts that are supported by professional staff. For example, the Tennessee Promise, a statewide tuition-free college program, was introduced and championed by a two-term governor. His successor had different priorities, and the Tennessee Promise lost its highest-level elected supporter. However, a strong infrastructure, secure funding stream, and track record of improved degree attainment would allow it to continue.

4. Life Doesn’t Follow Political Boundaries
People often commute across municipal boundaries, yet many nonprofits, schools, and workforce and economic development agencies are organized at the county or regional level. Building the capacity for coordination—through both cooperation and shared funding—is vital for these organizations if they are to work together effectively to meet regional needs. For example, several community partners collaborated to develop the Regional Transportation Plan for Southeast Michigan, which plans transportation strategy to prioritize equity, safety, and resilience.

5. It’s Harder to Dismantle Than to Add On
Removing old policies is often more difficult than adding piecemeal layers of new initiatives, even when everyone agrees the old policies aren’t working. These layered policies create a complex web that can be tricky to untangle. In Colorado, every new policy comes with an expiration date. Before it sunsets, a dedicated government agency conducts a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether that policy is still effective, and the legislature then decides whether to renew it. It’s a promising way to ensure that bad policies do not persist.

Businesses have dominated discussions about job creation—they are, after all, the ones doing the hiring. However, having more voices at the table can help business owners manage the challenges they face around talent development, recruitment, and retention. Businesses and their owners also benefit from being part of vibrant communities and thus have a role, beyond hiring, in helping their communities thrive.

1. Revamp Job Structures to Break Down Barriers
Evaluate how jobs are structured to identify and dismantle barriers that hinder applicants’ access, such as criminal records, education gaps, and transportation issues. Addressing these obstacles is crucial for creating equitable employment opportunities. For example, the HireReach process takes a holistic and structured approach to evaluating candidates. The focus on relevant skills has helped reduce unconscious bias, leading to higher-quality hires, less first-year turnover, and significantly greater workforce diversity.

2. Support Small and Mid-Sized Businesses
While large corporations often command the spotlight, most job growth occurs in small and midsized businesses—those with fewer than 250 workers. Sector partnerships and skill-development programs tailored to support these businesses can lead to more job growth for residents. Smaller businesses can be helped by entrepreneurship training programs, small business development centers, business incubators, and, for manufacturing businesses, by manufacturing extension services.

3. Value All Types of Work
Acknowledge and address the societal imbalance in how different professions are valued. While tech jobs often receive significant resources and recognition, vital roles like caregiving and teaching require equal attention and support. Push for policies that not only reward fields having high demand but also elevate those other fields that nurture communities and educate future generations. Some of the costs of such higher compensation may be recouped by gaining lower costs of hiring, staff turnover, and training. Other costs may be negated by improving quality more through hiring better workers and relying less on excessive regulatory oversight.

4. Engaging Business Owners is Key
Leaders in education, workforce development, and economic development need to be comfortable engaging with business owners. Not only do business leaders create jobs, they also have insights into the skills workers need—and possibly how to provide them. Incorporating input from business owners is one reason sectoral training programs are often more successful than traditional workforce programs. The WorkAdvance model demonstrates how meaningful engagement by these leaders can benefit both job seekers and employers by addressing their needs simultaneously.

5. Focus on Homegrown Talent by Creating Jobs That Elevate Residents
When developing economic initiatives, it’s crucial to not just focus on talent attraction, but to also prioritize programs that provide opportunities to existing residents. Investing in such job creation can raise the share of people with jobs without putting upward pressure on housing prices and the need to build new infrastructure. Residents can be targeted by investing more in workforce programs that try to help train and place residents in created jobs—for example, through customized training programs, or even through “first-source hiring programs” that require incentivized firms to consider candidates referred by the local workforce system.

Creating good jobs for residents is a complex and challenging task. Often this work is done best in coalition—with employers, educators, civic leaders, and funders all at the table. However, creating and sustaining coalitions can be difficult work.

1. Lead with Purpose
Strong leadership is the glue that holds coalitions together. Effective leaders maintain clear communication about the coalition’s goals and ensure that those goals are informed by data and community needs. They do this, in part, by building personal relationships and fostering an environment of trust and collaboration. Purpose serves as a guiding principle, helping leaders and coalition members stay focused and aligned in their efforts.

2. Invest in Trust, Not Just Resources
To achieve real impact, coalition members must acknowledge past failures and work to build trust among themselves through consistent communication and transparency. Share progress updates and challenges openly, using clear, jargon-free language that resonates with all involved. For example, the Ford Motor Company, as part of its community benefits agreement to restore the Michigan Central Station, engaged the Detroit community through an information center, public meetings, local grants, and volunteer projects.

3. Spot the Trouble Early
Partnerships can be a mixed bag, especially when there are clashing interests or a history of mistrust among the partners. It is essential to identify potential roadblocks and power dynamics right from the start. Addressing these issues early ensures that all voices are part of the conversation, making it easier to navigate conflicts down the line. Here’s an example: before training neighborhood leaders and nonprofit ambassadors in land use, water conservation, and other environmental issues, the Land + Water WORKS Coalition (LWWC) gathered insights from Detroiters—many of whom were facing mass water shutoffs and grappling with the Flint water crisis—in order to understand their views on land and water infrastructure.

4. A Shared Vision Drives Coalition Success
Like a house of cards, coalitions can easily topple—in their case, because of turnover or competing priorities. Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and a shared vision that everyone can rally around. Having members working at different levels, from senior leadership to those charged with implementation, can ensure that coalitions draw on a variety of perspectives. For example, the Michigan Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Coalition united a politically bipartisan group of nonprofits, business organizations, and other leaders to advocate for legislation expanding the state EITC, which passed with near-unanimous support.

5. Collaborate for Greater Impact
Don’t just stick to your own coalition or compete with others—pool resources, expertise, and influence for larger systemic impacts. Combining forces means you are able to tackle complex issues more effectively, leverage diverse perspectives, and share resources to create sustainable solutions. For example, the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs acts as a hub to educate and strengthen collaborations between labor, religious, environmental, and community leaders concerned about the challenge of mitigating climate change while creating good-paying jobs as part of a sustainable economy.

The philanthropic sector often helps pilot innovative employment policies, and other community development efforts usually rely on some form of “soft” funding. How can program funders best support creative approaches to community revitalization and to creating good jobs for all residents, even the most vulnerable? For programs that show valuable impact, how can foundations ensure that they are setting the stage for public funding once philanthropic investments end?

1. Consider Learning Communities to Foster Collaboration
Effective coalitions thrive on trust and strong relationships. Encourage the formation of learning communities where organizations can share best practices. The Council of Michigan Foundations, for instance, hosts several peer communities where individuals engaged in various forms of nonprofit work—from civic engagement to finance to rural philanthropy—can build relationships, collaborate, and learn from one another.

2. Invest in Capacity Building
Grants that help recipient organizations build their capacity—whether through additional worker skills or new software and technology—can overcome bottlenecks in service provision and often yield more substantive, longer-term gains. According to the Center for Effective Philanthropy, many foundation CEOs reported providing capacity-building grants to fewer than one-quarter of grantees. However, among nonprofit leaders surveyed, 82 percent found such grants to be very or extremely helpful in strengthening their organizations.

3. Empower Intermediaries for Long-Term Impact
Intermediaries operate at the intersection of education, workforce development, and community efforts, aligning efforts to support individuals through helping them acquire education that will lead to career pathways. For example, EmployIndy invests more than $20 million each year from public, private, and philanthropic sources to create economic opportunities and remove employment barriers for both youth and adults. Intermediaries crucially link education, career pathways, workforce development, and business and industry partners. However, their sustainability hinges on how funders and coalitions support them amidst changing public priorities.

4. Stability Is Key
Sustained efforts can prove fragile because of high turnover and the complexities of managing multiple or expanding partnerships. This is especially problematic for small nonprofit or advocacy organizations. High staff turnover can significantly undermine initiatives, especially when key leaders leave. Although it may cost more in the short run to increase compensation and staff support for individuals driving programs and initiatives, it will save money over the longer term by promoting continuity and stability toward achieving program goals. A focus on a few key initiatives can reduce staff burnout and maintain momentum.

5. The Timing and Management of Funding Matter
While funding is critical, its timing and allocation are equally important. Accountability is crucial for trust—however, overly burdensome reporting that takes staff time away from core program efforts can be just as risky as giving out grants without sufficient oversight. Staggered funding models with collaborative check-ins often produce stronger results. The Ford Foundation’s Building Institutions and Networks (BUILD) initiative is a good example of how funders can use multiyear support models to increase organizational and financial resilience.

In a societal environment where research and academia are viewed with growing skepticism, researchers can increase their policy impact and trust with policymakers and the public if they listen to—and regularly communicate with—the populations they study. Incentives to do so can help.

1. Communities Need Better Data Infrastructure
Officials and community leaders lack comprehensive data at the city and neighborhood levels, especially on detailed worker demographics and small business owners. Even when they have data, they are not always well equipped to make use of it. Researchers should volunteer their services to help policymakers collect and analyze community data if officials will consent to partner with them through data-sharing agreements for projects of mutual interest, such as occurred with the California Policy Labor the Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

2. Politics Cannot Be Ignored
When crafting policy recommendations, researchers should demonstrate an understanding of diverse perspectives on the issue. Taking the time to explore the political landscape—particularly in understanding why certain groups might oppose a proposed policy—enables researchers to develop more effective and nuanced recommendations. This is especially crucial for policies that directly affect people’s daily lives, such as housing, education, or career pathways.

3. Turn Research into Actionable Steps
The research with the greatest impact goes beyond data analysis to also focus on policy implementation. It’s one thing to know whether a policy “works”; it’s another to know how to build it and overcome political, budgetary, and technical obstacles along the way. When policymakers and practitioners have clear, step-by-step guides, they are more likely to turn research insights into real-world actions. The organization New America’s work on apprenticeships is one example of how this translation can occur.

4. Build Relationships for Real-World Insights
To have real-world impact, researchers need to leave the ivory tower and talk to policymakers and members of the populations they study. Building strong relationships outside the research community yields insights that improve research quality and impact. The Columbus Promise is a good example of how researchers, practitioners, and policymakers have collaborated to design and continuously improve the program.

5. Communication is Key
Present research findings in digestible formats that resonate with policymakers and the public. A combination of infographics, visualizations, social media, and experts who can explain concepts in plain language, will reach more people than long papers. When content is engaging, people pay more attention.