Overview
Bringing over 20 years of expertise in the employment social enterprise sector, REDF is looking to continue building the field of transitional social enterprises within Southern California through a new program. The SoCal Regional Technical Assistance (TA) Program offers employment social enterprises throughout the region an opportunity to apply for specialized technical assistance projects that focus on business growth, employee outcomes, or organization sustainability.
While the main goal of this program is to enhance employment social enterprises’ overall capacity, we are also excited to build a potential pipeline for other REDF programming such as: LA:RISE, Growth Portfolio, Impact Loans, Strategic Grants, and the REDF Accelerator.
Requirements
To benefit from a REDF TA project, your organization will need the following in place before working with us:
☑ Reviewed the Technical Assistance Menu below to ensure REDF services are a good fit
☑ Located in one of the following SoCal Counties
-
-
- Los Angeles County
- Orange County
- San Bernardino County
- Riverside County
- San Diego County
-
☑ 501(c)3 non-profit organization status
☑ Interested in growing an existing employment social enterprise (ESE): a mission-driven, revenue-generating business that sells products and services in the competitive marketplace and employs people striving to overcome high unemployment barriers, providing paying, transitional jobs, skills training, and supportive services
Your organization must (1) sell a product or service, (2) employ people facing barriers to employment listed below, and (3) pay wages to the people employed.
☑ Currently serve/employ any of the target populations below
-
-
- People who are or have been homeless
- People impacted by the justice system
- People with mental illness and addiction
- Young people who are not working or in school
- Refugees
- Survivors of domestic abuse and trafficking
-
☑ Willing and able to submit REDF reports twice a year for one year. Reports would include data in the following areas: people employed demographics, finances, benchmarking information, and program/business line updates.
Interest Form
Before expressing interest in a project, please review our requirements listed above to ensure that our TA program is the right fit and will benefit your organization. If you have any questions about this form, please email Trini Rios.
Technical Assistance Menu
Programmatic Technical Assistance Topics
| TA Project | Description |
| Theory of Change | Refresh the SE’s TOC to reflect current program and growth opportunities or support defining the SE’s TOC and program model |
| Determining Wrap Around Services Participants Need | Design and source support services that helps participants overcome barriers including collecting participant feedback and locating community partners (consider community resources) – Also inhouse vs. partner considerations |
| Retention Service Design | Design service offering for participants in retention services and cadence for outreach and support case management planning activities |
Business Technical Assistance Topics
| TA Project | Description |
| Product-Market Fit Analysis | Identifying product-market fit across competitors and customers. Solidifying value proposition |
| Pre-feasibility/Feasibility | Market analysis of potential expansion options for products and services, conduct a feasibility assessment and if a go then develop at a pilot and launch plan. May also include an assessment of entirely new business line(s) |
| Cost Driver Analysis | Analyze what is driving major costs for the SE and determine ways to eliminate cost that do not impact the impact the SE is making |
| Pricing Analysis and Strategic Pricing | Analyze current pricing, competitor pricing, and customer willingness to pay to develop a pricing strategy for all products |
| Marketing / Promotion / Advertising Plan | Develop plan with channels, campaigns, and cadence of marketing activities. Support for Social media cadence of posts. Marketing Plan PR Plan (Promotion / Advertising Plan) Digital Advertising Experimentation Design / Scaling Communications plan for retention of customers |
| Double bottom line accounting | Research comparable businesses and/or social enterprises to see how their cost structure compares. Help identify how to determine enterprises costs, including percentage of social cost for the business line Identify a process for implementing DBL financials |
| Business Model Plan & Documentation | Develop a document covering ESE mission/vision and core components of a business plan (business model canvas) and establish cadence for regular yearly goal setting/revision |
Other Technical Assistance Topics
| TA Project | Description |
| Fundraising Strategy | Refine fundraising goals utilizing net loss, fundraising ability, and pros and cons of trialed strategies. Narrow down to 2-3 core strategies to focus on, and establish process to regularly review goal to actuals and reforecast |
| Human Capital | Executive Leadership Coaching |
