 Today, we have Mariana and I'm very excited to talk about this conversation. So Mariana McNeil, Executive Director of the Career Catchers, is sharing with us today on the episode about leading a community career services program. And this is a very timely conversation. So I'm looking forward to today's episode. And of course, we start every episode by saying, thank you, thank you, thank you. So much appreciation to our presenting sponsors. These companies exist with one main focus in mind, and that is you. That is you and your mission-driven goals. So please do check them out. They are here in your corner and in your community all across the globe to help and support you to do more good. And thanks to Julia Patrick for always being here. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I get to show up every day and play with Julia and our amazing guest. I'm Jarrett Ransom, also known as the non-profit nerd CEO of the Raven Group. And today's amazing guest is Mariana. And again, welcome. We're so glad to have you here. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jarrett and Julia. I am very pleased to be here today. Now, Mariana, tell me where you're located. So we are located just outside of DC. Our main office prior to COVID was Silver Spring, Maryland. And now it's spread across the DMV. We have our main office in Silver Spring. And then we have an office at the Family Justice Center in Rockville. And we are currently looking for some office space up in Gaithersburg so that we can cover more areas of Montgomery County, which is where we primarily do our work. Okay, so talk to us about career catchers. And what is it that you do? So what we do in a nutshell is career counseling. But our mission really has three focuses. The first focus is to help people find through individualized services. We work one-on-one with people. It's not like all group things, it's usually one-on-one. And our mission is to help people find employment that's stable and has a career path. Then we also work with people because we stay with somebody long term. We also work with people to find some skills building classes they can take or maybe they could get a certificate or that kind of thing. So we look at what educational things they could do to build their skills and advance even more in their career. And then the third, which is not the least important, actually it should probably be the first thing that we do, is we help our clients enhance their self-esteem and their empowerment. A lot of the people with whom we work have been homeless or are currently facing difficulties. They might be recent immigrants. And so you can't underestimate the need for really helping people get self-esteem and believing that they can do what we think they can do. So those are the three things. I love that you say that. I've worked in 20-plus years. I've been in the nonprofit sector. I haven't always been the nonprofit nerd though. So I'm really just taking on that. But I love that you talk about the confidence and the self-esteem because I have heard all too often of employment opportunities for someone. And it wasn't successful perhaps because these soft skills I'm going to call them weren't addressed and really weren't supported. So that's wonderful that this is an organization that sees that blend. And I'm going to call it like that holistic approach. I do have a question and I'm curious is you talked about individuals that might have been experiencing homelessness and there's there's a lot of different constituency bases. I'm sure that you support. What about I mean, is this all age range? So is it like at any point in their career? And then I guess I'm going to add another layer of question here. What about individuals that have been incarcerated and having that second chance employment? So when we started career catchers, we actually started with domestic violence victims and with people in a homeless family shelter. And so that was our initial focus. But what you find is those aren't exclusive groups and it can hit anybody. Right. So we found that we were serving predominantly women. Now, 80 percent of our clients are women, but we still also serve men. But what we were finding was that often somebody had a lot of education, but they had never worked. OK, so you might even have a graduate degree or a PhD, but you never work in that domestic violence situation that can happen frequently. So that would be someone who's really at the beginning of their career, but highly educated. Right. Then we also found that often people found themselves, you know, in their fifties and they couldn't get another job. And they weren't ready. They didn't have the financial ability to retire and they weren't ready to retire. So that was another group we found. And then, of course, the bulk of our clients fall between the ages of 24 and 39. That's kind of a group we mostly have. And that tends to be a lot of single mothers who fall in that group. So they could have a high school degree. They might not. They could have previously been incarcerated. They might not. They could have, you know, had any number of different. They could be a recent immigrant. They could be here legally or illegally. They could, you know, there's all kinds of things that overlap with that age group. And then we also have we worked. We've worked with a couple of programs in the county that work with what, I guess, is called disconnected youth, you know, youth who are no longer part of their nuclear family. They may not have finished high school. They may have had some gang involvement. And so we've worked with those kinds of programs as well. So we don't turn anyone down because of age, gender, race, you know, anything. And it just always the main focus is those people who are disadvantaged in some way and need additional support to be successful in a career. Well, OK, so my mind is spinning because when you just described all of these different constituencies, your teams are having to really react and pivot quickly because the situations are different. I mean, I was saying it's the whole spectrum of the whole spectrum. And, you know, I've been I started career catchers in 2007. We were originally sort of a program under another nonprofit. And then as we realized that this was something people needed, you know, most organizations will have case managers to help clients get housing or whatever else they might need. But they're not experts in the in the role of helping them find a job, even though that's the pivotal thing, right? In order to afford housing, you need a job to get out of a homeless shelter. You need a job to to leave your abuser. You need a job. You know, that's the pivotal thing. So we found that we could supply that to these other groups where the case manager was working on other things with the client. And so initially, it was just myself and another person. And then about five or six years ago, we brought on a third person. And I'm happy to say that we are now at twelve individuals who work with career catchers. And we are very cognizant of the whole case study approach, you know. So I'm working with you, Julia, and I help you find a job. And in the process of that, I, you know, maybe I said, she got this kind of training. She could do a little better or she did this. I had some things that I did. And then somebody else on the staff says, you know, I'm working with someone. And it sounds just like Julia to me, because no one is exactly like Julia, but close enough. And so then we share best practices, you know, what worked, what didn't work? And I think that we also realize that it's a long term relationship. You know, I'm not just going to help Julia find a job and then say, see you later. Good luck. I'm going to check in on Julia, especially the first month after employment. If you haven't worked for a long time and your self esteem is not quite there. Having someone check in with you to say, how's it going? Is anything I can help you with really changes everything in terms of success. And I had a client just last week who I hadn't seen in five years, call me back. Covid happened. She had a baby. She lost her job. So we were able to pick up again. I had a resume. I helped her update it. And now I'm confident that she'll find something. But, you know, she didn't lose touch with me. And over the years, I, you know, send her an email every once in a while. How are you doing? How's it? How are things going? Yeah. Talk to me about the resume, because I was I was talking to a friend the other day about how, you know, she kind of by default is helping. Sorry, some of her colleagues that want to do a transition, really beef up their resumes. Talk to us about those resume opportunities that you provide through your organization. OK, so a lot of organizations have like resume writing classes, right? So people go into the class or even were forced to go into the class in order to be able to collect unemployment or whatever, right? And they walk out of there with their head spinning. Like, first of all, they might not even know how to use word. So that in itself is a big problem, right? But then when someone's saying, put this there, put that there, you know, it's very hard for a lot of people to understand what that means. So I use the red the resume as a metaphor for building self esteem and rapport. Right. So if I meet you for the first time, Jared, and you come in and you say, you know, I haven't worked in six months. I have three children. I don't have a car. Will I ever find a job? You know, so I can see you're already dejected till we get started. So I'm thinking to myself, OK, the best way to build someone up is to show them what they've done before and how it's valuable. So I always use that first experience with a client to do a resume. It's also it feels like when you and I are doing a resume that I'm not asking you anything so personal. Or I'm not trying to get into your business. I'm just trying to help you get a resume so you can get a job, right? And I remember one time, one of my first experiences where there really was a young woman who was in a homeless shelter with her six month old child and recently graduated from high school and she said, I've never worked. I've never done anything. And and she said, I don't think I can make a resume. And I think I can't let her walk out of here thinking she can't have a resume. You know, so I started talking to her and I said, so you were in high school, that's great. What did you like in high school? What classes did you take? What did you do after a little bit of conversation? It turned out she was like the president of her dance club at her high school. And I said, so what did you have to do when you were the president? Did you have to like get new members? Did you have to collect dues? Did you have events? And sure enough, before we knew it, we had created all these great skills and we also put it as a job. You know, she was we we didn't bake it. It was the president of the dance club in her high school and she went from being this dejected, you know, young woman who thought I'll never get a job. This is me on paper. You know, she was so excited. So I tell that story all the time to new staff members because everyone has something they've done in their past that you can help them make them feel good about and can figure out a way to put it on resume. So that's powerful. Well, I got to ask you, given what we're all talking about every day and things have changed so quickly, what is the current market for your clients and people coming in? You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, we have we had so many guests, we even have a sponsor staffing boutique. Everybody was like, whatever you do, keep your job, be afraid to lose your job because we don't know what's going to happen. And now we hear nothing about nothing but the, you know, the great resignation, people just walking out of their shifts and just the absolute opposite of where we were. And so what are you seeing? So I think that the the effects of covid on, you know, closing down sort of all the kind of service industries and, you know, restaurants and hospitality and then home, having school be virtual. So all of a sudden school, age, children were home. I think those things shown a light on problems that always existed. And those problems were number one, child care in our country is a travesty. It's a travesty. I thought I could say about it. And for people who have no resources, you have maybe you don't have the support of an extended family. You might not have a partner. You might be a single mom or a single father. How are you going to swing child care that's going to meet your needs and be able to fit in a budget that you're when you're making a minimum wage? Right. So I think it's shown light on that because all of a sudden, what was the rate? I don't know. It was like 80 percent of the women dropped out of the labor force last year. Some huge number of women, mostly Hispanic and black, but lots of women dropped out of the workforce because all of a sudden what previously was hard and maybe you could make it work was just untenable. There was no way if there's no child care outside the home and your child is home, it's doing school with you. How are you going to work? Even if you could find a job, even if you had the skills to do a work from home job, it couldn't happen. So that's number one to me that, you know, child care is the biggest barrier to finding meaningful employment with long term prospects and a livable wage. If you don't have adequate child care, you can't do it. There's no way you can do it. Anyone who's tried to work at home with a three year old, which I did during the part of the when they were when daycare was closed and my husband, my son and his wife were struggling, I would take my granddaughter thinking, oh, I can do some work. You can't do anything. Forget it. So that's number one. Number two is we were asking people, first of all, if you worked in a restaurant, you lost your job because the restaurant probably closed or their takeout wasn't enough to keep your job. But then if we did ask you to come back and you were working in a grocery store or in a restaurant, you know, we said, OK, people are going to come in with COVID and you're probably going to get sick. Hope you like it, you know, and didn't, you know, there were some sort of small stipends or whatever additions to salary for what they called hard work or, you know, because you were hazardous pay, I guess it was called. But it was was not everywhere and it was not that much. Not sufficient. Right. Not sufficient. So, you know, you had that problem on top of it. So I guess what I'm trying to say is a lot of our clients, who people who we work with are unemployed, they're unemployed. Things happened last year that caused that to happen. And now I think they're at a point where they're thinking, how am I going to make this work? How am I going to find the right child care, the right job that's safe enough that I can that I have the skills to do? So one of the things when we started hearing from our clients, we went from working with about 500 people a year to last year, working with 800. And the reason was there were so many people now who were at Witsend. Right. What do I do? So we first helped them file unemployment claims. That was our first thing. We hired actually hired someone through a COVID grant. We got to just help people because the unemployment system is so messed up. So we help people do that. Then I said, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to focus on getting people training if they're at home, even if their kids are doing virtual school, they can do an online class. They can do something. So we had something like of the, you know, of our 800 clients, 700 of them, let's say, took some kind of class last year to improve their workplace skills and nominal that statistic in and of itself. Because I remember when, you know, COVID happened and it was I mean, literally overnight, you know, I know we all have that date in our head. And then it was all of a sudden, what do we do? And I remember, you know, the economic downturn of 2008 to 10 ish that time frame. And it was, well, I guess we go back to school, you know, like, how can we better ourselves? And I was amazed by the number of people, Mariana, or I should say, you know, institutions that provided coursework online, like Harvard, you know, like these really renowned institutions providing something for the communities across the globe to do something not only with their time, but to like, you know, use that opportunity to better themselves. So 700 out of 800 of your of your, you know, I don't know, individuals that you're supporting, that is a phenomenal number. And some of them were taking just we we also realize that, you know, not everyone has technology, but almost everybody has a smartphone. So we did a lot of Zoom classes for clients that we produced, that we provided. And when you were talking initially, Jared, about those soft skills, we have a weekly class that we used to offer in person. And maybe we had three or four people come a week, we now offer it virtually and, you know, show people how they can do it on their phone or their tablet or whatever they might have. And we have from eight to 15 people come every week. And it's all on soft skills. You know, how do you how do you interview? How do you get dressed for the interview? How do you how do you write a resume? What can we do to help you change your resume? How do you search for a job? You know, in this market where there's job scams all over the place, people are, you know, how do you safely search for jobs? And then, Mariana, what about time management? Is that something that we talk? We talk about time management. We talk about organization of your calendar and your email and your, you know, everything that's required in order for you to present. Be successful. Yeah, to be successful. So I'm really I'm really interested because obviously you're doing, as I would say, you know, the work of the angels, you're doing really important things. But we have one point eight million nonprofits in this country doing a lot of great things, all different things. How have you, Mariana, gone out to your community and said, we need your support because I can see a picture where there are a lot of folks that are viewing. What the heck? There's so many jobs. We why are you important? You know, how do you make that argument for funding and for engagement from the donor base or building even a donor base? Yeah, so I just want to go back to the one thing you said about, you know, why do we need you when there's so many jobs? So even in times when, you know, when there are so many jobs, you still find this disconnect, right? There's a whole group of people who cannot seem to get themselves on a career path or find a job that makes enough money to do all the other things they need and you can't keep that job. OK, why is that? Because we're looking at this from our lens, right? My lens is I grew up in a family. Yes, we were my parents for immigrants and we didn't have a lot. But I had my mother and my father and knew I was going to go to college. It had the support of my community. And so when it came time for looking for work, I had all those people to depend on. Our clients don't have that for the most part, right? They don't have it. And so if you never mind, don't know how to put a resume together. Don't even know what a resume is good for. I mean, how are you going to be expected to find a job? If you don't know how to present yourself on time for a job interview, how are you going to get that job? So I think that what we were able to show in the beginning, it was a struggle, right? We've got one little grant, another little grant. But as we showed what our model could do and the outcomes from our model, we were finding that people were supporting us more and more. And so our partners come in three flavors, I like to say. The first flavor is those partners who are serving individuals who can use our services, like I mentioned originally. So, for example, Montgomery County has something called the Family Justice Center. There are like 10 of them throughout the country. And it's sort of a one stop for domestic violence victims. So they come in and there's a victim's advocate, the sheriff's office is there. They have lawyers. They have all these different people. And we offer them support with helping those individuals find employment. So the individuals needing employment don't have money to pay us, obviously. But the Family Justice Center raises money. The Montgomery County government raises money. They pay us to provide that service. OK, the same thing happens in a lot of the homeless shelters we work in. Then we also get money from Montgomery College. As I mentioned, we're always trying to encourage our clients to better their workplace skills. So Montgomery College has a similar. It's a community college that is trying to help the community. And so they have a lot of scholarships for the same clients that we would serve in other. And so they come to us and say, look, we've given these 10 scholarships. Can you make sure that these individuals successfully complete their classes and get a job afterwards? So we have a lot of relationships with mostly Montgomery College, but other learning institutions as well. And then clients will tell their friends, right? Somebody will say, oh, Mona, help me get a job. She can help you get a job, too. And then they'll call us. And so we, yeah. So those are sort of the buckets of who who pays us to do the work. Now, when I said a client refers a client, obviously, they're not going to have money either. But we ask for a small copay. And then we use our general operating grants to pay for the rest. So we probably raise, I don't know, three thousand dollars a year from people paying us, you know, twenty dollars to get services from us. Then on the other side, we have partners who provide us, you know, jobs like Holy Cross Hospital looks to us to provide them with people where you now have a relationship with Starbucks, which we're hoping will help more of our clients get employed. And then, of course, we make referrals for food, clothing, et cetera. So you've been doing this, you said almost singlehandedly in 2007 is when you started and you've grown to twelve staff or support staff, I'm assuming there. How has this really grown, you know, throughout these partnerships and support? Because I can't imagine in 2007, you know, Starbucks was like, yes, sign us up. Exactly. You want to help? So what were some of your your techniques that you found to be very fruitful in these partnership conversations? So I think, as I mentioned, when we first started, it was me and a partner who she retired since then. But we realized that we had an idea, but it wasn't like you said, no one knew who we were. How can we say? So we started doing pro bono work at a couple of shelters and with the Abuse Persons Program at Montgomery County. So pro bono, right? And we applied for one grant and we did get a grant. Don't ask me why anyone would give us a grant at that point. So they knew nothing, right? Now that I know more about grants, I'm like, why? Why did they give us a grant? Right. Anyway, the the outcomes that we had at those shelters and at the Family Justice Center, they then said, look, we're going to find you money so we can continue to use your services. So they helped us initially by providing us with it. I guess you would still call it a grant, but it wasn't really. It was fee for service, right? You help 10 clients will give you ten thousand dollars. You help this many clients will give you that. So and that just grew and grew and grew. Our reputation in the county grew. And so we're still very localized to Montgomery County and a little bit DC and a little bit Prince George's County. But the players in the county know us and they have asked us to do this work. And we just got a huge unsolicited grant from the county because of what happened with COVID. And all these people who they're afraid are going to lose housing. They want us to support them in finding employment so that they don't lose the housing that they're getting through this HUD program. Sure. So I think it was really just. I mean, if I had known it was going to take that long, would I have done it? I don't know. I don't know. But now that I'm sitting here, yes, it was great. It's all wonderful, right? Right. Well, that's I'm sorry, Jared. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say just accolades. That's phenomenal. And thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, it's amazing. Well, you know, it's hard to believe our time is almost up. Mariana, what a great conversation that we've been able to have with you today. Being someone that's in the trenches, dealing with real labor inputs that have changed dramatically over the last 18 months. This is a once in a lifetime situation. And so it's really amazing to hear about how you and your nonprofit have been able to I don't want to use the word weather the storm, but you've been able to flow and navigate some choppy waters. And that's really exciting. I think that it's very inspirational for so many of our viewers to see how we are all doing, you know, different things and navigating such tremendous change. So it's been a lot of fun. I really am super excited to talk with you at some point. Again, as a founder, I Jared and I are always very interested in the concept of how founders navigate changes and founders syndrome and all of those things. And so at some point, we need to get you back on the nonprofit show to have a heart to heart about that. I'm going to put up, Mariana's information about career catchers, careercatchers.org, really an interesting organization. I mean, I think there are a lot of things that you have done, Mariana, that we can all learn from. And so we're very, very appreciative that you come on the show and talk with us today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Julie and Jared. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's been a lot of fun. Again, I'm Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy, been joined today by my interpret co-host, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd. I always like to say she's the nonprofit nerd, but she's my nonprofit nerd and your nonprofit nerd. So there is so much to go around. Well, I'm always asking her questions and giving her thoughts on things. And so yeah, she really is the nonprofit nerd. It's pretty amazing to see. Again, we want to thank all of our sponsors. Without you, we would not be here having this discussion. And as Jared has reminded us so many times, you know, a lot of these folks have been with us since the beginning. And that was a real tenuous time. Nobody really knew what was going on. And I kept saying, don't worry about it. It'll only be a two week sponsorship because this thing will be over. So it's kind of crazy that they're still here with us, but very exciting. And we are very, very full of gratitude. So thank you to our sponsors. I really enjoyed this conversation. And, Jared, it gives me a lot of perspective on how we're moving forward. Yes, absolutely. It's been interesting to watch. And, Mariana, ironically, today I am on a panel for our local YNPN, which is Young Nonprofit Professional Networks, talking about the Great Resonation and also how how our young professionals can, you know, really take advantage and be on the move and make some career moves. So so I was I was jotting some notes and I really appreciate your time and expertise. And thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's really great. I mean, I think this is a discussion that is going to continue to flourish because we are in such dramatic changes. I think my takeaway today, Mariana, is you said, you know, these problems were systemic. This is just amplified. Yes, what was already there. And I appreciate you saying that because I think a lot of folks are just like, well, this is just a new thing. And this is now COVID. And it's like, yeah, not really. This is just something that has been, you know, dusted off and amplified. So hey, everybody, we want to thank you so much for joining us and we want to end our show today as we do every day. And that's with the mantra, stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.