CCWBE Report

As of December 2024, we are thrilled to report that 13 unique organizations successfully completed the Early Warning training with Manufacturing Renaissance. The participating organizations reflected a wide array of manufacturing eco-system stakeholders. Included among the group were clergy, community economic development professionals, industrial services representatives, manufacturers, financial industry practitioners, worker and community cooperative leaders, individuals interested in acquiring manufacturing companies, and industrial policy stakeholders. We believe that we achieved our goal of training a sizable swath of the manufacturing and community development stakeholder communities. The closing ceremony was held on Wednesday, December 4 from 5:30-7:30pm at the Vu rooftop bar in the south loop. At least one person from the list of stakeholder groups mentioned above attended the ceremony. In addition, some attendees brought family and friends, and one of the ministers brought two additional clergy who pledged to join the movement. The atmosphere was lively and collegial and led to a follow-up meeting to discuss forming an ongoing committee to further advance the work—with or without additional funding. A photo from the closing ceremony is attached. The Final Advisory Committee Meeting was held on December 17. The meeting's goal was to allow advisory committee members to reflect on the project work done over the passed year. A post-reflection was completed by 5 of the 6 committee members and found that four of those five found the training to be exceptional. We issued a post-survey to the training participants. The group unanimously agreed that the training was extremely valuable. In fact, several of them suggested that this training would be useful for other communities and industrial development practitioners. One of the respondents would have liked to see less on-line activity, more in-person activities and more field trips to relevant companies. Several in the group also agreed that the experience would have been even better if they were able to apply the lessons learned in a real-world ownership succession project. Lessons learned for the duration of the project. Each participant reported finding something useful in the training. Groups involved with industrial retention and supporting manufacturing appreciated learning new ways to identify and approach company owners and their networks to facilitate discussions around retention, micro-political advocacy, and access to workforce development. Those involved in advancing worker or community cooperatives reported that the training will help them facilitate discussions with community members, business owners who may not have considered a cooperative business model, and local political leaders. Clergy reported that they were invigorated by being involved more intimately with the business and industrial community because they recognize the power companies have in creating and retaining high-wage jobs which helps improve the quality of life for the communities they serve. All participants agreed that more public investment in early warning systems can help drive wealth creation in communities. The consensus on this led to the creation of an advisory group that will continue to meet and advance these ideas. Recommendations for next steps. 1. Organize an advisory committee including industrial retention advocates, ownership succession practitioners, community economic development proponents, cooperative advocates, and clergy. 2. Draft and send a joint letter to the Mayor and the Department of Planning requesting a meeting or hearing on these issues and to advocate for additional funding to bring the work to scale. 3. Coordinate strategic outreach to political and community leaders to share the work and the mission. Our Project Deliverables D1: Identify and recruit 5-7 Advisory/Technical Assistance Committee members to guide project development and support implementation. We recruited 6 Advisory/TA Committee members who reflected the manufacturing and cooperative eco-system. While each member was unable to attend every meeting, on the whole, they were instrumental in revising and updating the training manual and were very supportive and active throughout the training. D2: Revise MR's Early Warning Business Development System Manual and training guide (1996) and related current conditions and program parameters. A digital draft of the updated manual was completed by December 17. We also printed a handful of hard copies for distribution to select individuals and groups. The manual is considered to be an evolving document, and we agreed to revisit content periodically. D3: Develop training program: syllabus, instructors, schedule, etc. Complete. D4: Identify up to 30 organizations (and individuals) to recruit for participation in training and recruitment and intake process. We identified over 50 potential participants and of those, 23 signed up to undertake the training. We created one training course for the leaders of organizations and a second, longer training course for staff and community stakeholders. D5: Implement workshops and training sessions for the participants, one cohort of 12 individuals per year. (The numbers range from 24-30 in various documents (e.g., the logic model and the MSS proposal). The contract with the city was delayed, forcing grantees to squeeze two years of programming into 18 months. Nonetheless, we were able to achieve and exceed our training goals and objectives. One part of the agreement that never materialized was the commitment by the city to help locate additional funding to extend and expand the project for additional cycles. D6: Prepare program updates, reports, proposals as needed, identify additional funding. We have never missed a report deadline, attended every conference or convening, and remained available to answer questions or provide additional information to the city or to our grantee network. We also gave a virtual presentation on our model and our work to the entire hub. The city did not provide assistance to identify additional funding sources.

N/A

Pauline attended the CCWBE closing event. The reception style event was great for connecting with the other CCWBE grantees to celebrate the work done over the duration of the project. It was helpful to receive updates on what's next for the project beyond the grant funding. It was also great to be able to connect with our fellow grantees. One opportunity we're excited to explore is further working with the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) in 2025 as we reconvene our group of participants and build out the Early Warning Network.

No

Yes

Revolution Institute

Sequane Lawrence of the Revolution Institute completed the training and remains an Advisory Committee member. Revolution Institute has also asked MR and Early Warning Network to assist them in finding a manufacturer to acquire and convert to a worker coop. We are continuing to converse about the details of such an arrangement.

Yes

5 extremely useful