Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO)
18
6
"Up" is the number of experts who agree that the nonprofit has had the most impact in the
field. "Down" is the number of experts who disagree that the nonprofit has had the most impact in field.
Headquarters Location: New York, NY
Founded: 1978
Mission: The Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO) is dedicated to providing immediate, effective and comprehensive employment services to men and women with recent criminal convictions in New York. Our highly structured and tightly supervised programs help participants regain the skills and confidence needed for a successful transition to a stable, productive life.
Tags:
national, workforce development, direct services, employment services, employment training, technical assistance, research
Summary
Stories
Expert Reviews
Leadership
From the Nonprofit
Leadership
Mindy Tarlow.
Ms. Tarlow began her association with CEO as a Program Director at the Vera Institute of Justice in 1994, where she managed the successful spin-off of CEO from Vera. Prior to joining CEO, Ms. Tarlow spent close to ten years at the New York City Office of Management and Budget where she rose from Senior Analyst in 1984 to Deputy…
See full bio.
Financial Data
Overhead Ratio:
21.88%
Total Revenue:
$13,233,639
From the Nonprofit
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Contact Info
Address:
32 Broadway 15 Fl
New York, NY 10004, USA
Story:
Wesley Thompson succeeded from shock parole to landing a full-time job, read more about his story:
After completing the Shock Parole program*, Thompson was set on getting his life together, but had no place to start. "When I first got out, I had no home. I considered going to a shelter" says Thompson. Thompson's situation is a typical one for most formerly incarcerated individuals coming home from prison.
Through CEO's transitional work program, Wesley was able to put some money in his pocket to help him travel and get situated to look for work. "Every cent I earned, I saved. I didn't need to commit crime to get by" Thompson says.
Soon after completing CEO's Life skills classes and transitional work program, Thompson was hired at Coldstone Creamery. After a little over a month of solid performance on the job, his Retention Specialist Metha Brown began what would be a year long process of exploring educational programs throughout the City University of New York (CUNY) schools.
"Wesley was so ambitious, much of the early counseling focused on capitalizing on his current job to rebuild longevity on his resume" says Brown. Eventually, after shadowing Brown's former employer which specializes in online marketing, Thompson landed an internship there and was offered to become a freelance production assistant for events and trends research.
All the juggling between a full-time job and internship paid off. At Coldstone Creamery, Thompson was promoted to Store Manager and now supervises many of the new placements who are CEO participants like him. Thompson says "The staff at CEO helped me be motivated and see the big picture. I am now focused on going back to school, moving forward in my career, and getting my life back together."
(Read more success stories at: http://www.ceoworks.org/index.php/t3/35/)
Expert Reviews of Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO)
Evidence of Impact Summary:
The Center for Employment Opportunities has a verified track record of placing ex-convicts into jobs and providing tools for them to stabilize their lives.See expert comments.
Organization Strengths Summary:
Experts frequently praise the organization's leadership and staff. Others note effectivive use of data tools in order to guide continuous organizational improvement.See expert comments.
Areas for Improvement Summary:
Experts generally see the greatest opportunity in expanding programming, optimizing impact, and scaling operations.See expert comments.
Expert Comments: Evidence of Impact
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Impact |
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They have reduced prison recidivism, in addition to anecdotal examples, and personal stories from participants. | ||
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They have had amazing and measurable success with formerly incarcerated individuals in New York City. | ||
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They have placed the high need re-entry population into the workforce. | ||
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They are one of most effective models for using work crews and wrap around services to enhance reentry pathway for formerly incarcerated. | ||
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A random assignment evaluation of its impact showed that they reduce recidivism for ex-offenders. | ||
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They get the hard to employ into work and reduce returns to prison and other measures of recidivism. They have participated in a gold standard random assignment control group study of their services. | ||
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Center for Employment opportunity reaches literally thousands of recently released formerly incarcerated men in NYC each year and provides critical transitional work opportunities. | ||
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Their impact can be understood through high-volume reentry attachment to the workforce through direct placement and transitional jobs. | ||
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They have honed the workforce development strategy of transitional employment and rapid attachment and made themselves a leading expert on that strategy. They crafted an expertise for a specific population and made it their own. They have made an imprint in the workforce development field and are nationally recognized. | ||
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They have placed more than 10,000 very hard to serve individuals (mostly ex-offenders) into full time employment over the past decade. They have demonstrated the value of transitional work experience in helping individuals transitioning out of incarceration reintegrate back into workforce. | ||
Expert Comments: Organization Strengths
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Leadership & Data Management |
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Their leadership, information management, and utilization are strengths. | ||
Leadership |
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Their leadership is outstanding and their commitment to outcome measurement high. | ||
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They have good leadership, evaluation evidence, and knowledge of public sector job creation options. | ||
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This organization is engaged in 3rd party evaluation and is working to scale and replicate in several geographies. It leverages government contracts for high need populations. Their leadership appears strong. | ||
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They have a strong visionary leader in Mindy Tarlow. | ||
Leadership & Program Design |
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The model utilizes public contract to create jobs for this very high need population which reduces the costs to run the program. The leadership has a strong vision and commitment to replicating the model in other geographies. | ||
Staff |
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Their staff are highly skilled. The organization is innovative both in funding and in service development. | ||
Data Management |
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They have excellent data management systems and rigorously tracks their performance. | ||
Operations & Leadership |
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Their operations, marketing, finance, capacity to manage many moving parts, mission, and leadership are strengths. | ||
Program Design |
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I like that it has created a unique approach to providing employment services and has identified the approaches that work best for specific consumers. The organization was not afraid to develop an expertise with a specific strategy and knows that it can't do everything for everybody. It never lost sight of its mission of being an employment services organization. It also has been willing to share its knowledge and experience with the field--the good and the bad experiences--but honest lessons they have learned. | ||
Continuous Improvement |
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They conduct rigorous evaluations of their work that inform continuous improvement (e.g., work recently around retention); although they operate in New York, provide technical assistance and consulting nationally; they are an example of a good and sustaining social enterprise. | ||
Expert Comments: Areas for Improvement
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Foundation Professionals (F)
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Researchers and Faculty (R)
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Other (consultants, journalists, policy makers) (O)
Impact |
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They have been working to increase their participants' job retention; the evidence is in that they are having some success in this. | ||
Operations |
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The contract procurement process is lengthy and different in every state which creates challenges in replicating the program. | ||
Scalability |
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They need to develop replication model, get deeper leadership, and develop a public policy agenda. | ||
Expand Programming |
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They should scale up, strengthen fatherhood services, provide management on child support, and strengthen job development services. | ||
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They could expand their work to reach more violent offenders. | ||
Knowledge Sharing |
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They seem somewhat guarded in sharing tools and processes they've created to help other nonprofit organizations improve their services. They are open to doing site visits and presentations but the devil is in the details for the programs seeking assistance. | ||
Program Design |
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They continue to develop approaches for longer service or support for longer retention. | ||
Advocacy |
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I think the organization has begun to recognize that it can play a role in informing and educating the community about policies that harm their consumers. I hope to see more staff involved in public policy and education activities. It is crucially important to meeting the needs of special populations. | ||
Communications |
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They could improve their website and communications about their work so that are better informing the field about what they've learned. They have recently made this improvement. | ||
Leadership
Mindy Tarlow
CEO
CEO
From the Nonprofit
The nonprofit has not added any comments yet. If you are a representative of this nonprofit and would like to leave a comment, please email us at
feedback@myphilanthropedia.org
with your request.