Opportunity knocked

by John Longhurst

Ten years ago a door opened in downtown Winnipeg. Now thousands have jobs.

A few weeks ago a tenth birthday was celebrated in downtown Winnipeg. It was a milestone for various “opportunity” groups that have worked strategically at creating employment options for people who have fallen off the job track. Behind its many successes has been the happy confluence of visions of numerous people of faith who are committed to sharing more widely the benefits of work and business. Former MEDA staffer John Longhurst has been following the Opportunities story since the beginning. In the following article he reviews the background and challenges of an urban phenomenon that bears replicating in other settings.

Sometimes, great things result from simple questions.

That’s what happened in 1996 when Art and Leona DeFehr returned home to Winnipeg from a trip to the U.S. While there they had become aware of America Works, an organization that uses a business model to help low income people find jobs – they only get paid if they produce results. They gave some promotional material about it to Garry Loewen, then the head of MCC Manitoba’s Employment Concerns program. They asked him a simple question: “Can we do this here?”

The answer was yes. With help from Eden Health Care Services, MCC Manitoba and MEDA, and through a contract with the Manitoba government for a two year pilot project, Opportunities for Employment (OFE) was born. Ten years later, over 5,000 people in the Winnipeg area have found meaningful work as a result of OFE.

“OFE has exceeded beyond expectations,” says Loewen.

“By every yardstick, OFE has been a success,” adds General Manager Ted Klassen.

Over 100 people found jobs through OFE in the first year, and the numbers rose steadily after that, nearly tripling by 1997 and growing to almost 600 in 2000 before beginning to level off. Among the reasons for the good results was the incredible dedication of the staff, the results-oriented model, and the support of employers. The latter was especially important, since employers liked the fact that OFE made sure the matches were good for both the job seeker and the business owner.


There were more people on welfare in Winnipeg back then – 20,000 in the mid 1990s, compared to only 5,000 today. As well, 1996 was the year the provincial government began to tighten welfare rules, requiring all able-bodied people to look for work or lose their benefits.

The large number of people looking for help to find work allowed OFE to be more selective about choosing clients – it practiced a kind of “tough-love” approach, telling job seekers that if they were late for class, or even for the first orientation session, they should come back another time and re-apply. In a 1998 interview about this approach, Klassen explained that since “the government only pays us if they stay at their jobs for six months, we can't afford to invest time and energy in people, only to have them quit after a week or get fired.”

OFE staff are happy to see fewer people on welfare today, and they know they can take some credit for that. “We had no problem seeing 1,500 people a year coming to check us out into the early 2000s,” says Klassen. “Now it’s closer to 1,000 a year.”

Clients who sign up today have more hurdles to surmount to find work – things like addictions, history of abuse, lower than average education and little or no work experience, in some cases the result of welfare dependency in their families.

“The profile of our clients has changed substantially since we started,” says Klassen, who left his position at OFE at the end of March. “The people who come to us today need lots more support and lots of extra help to develop stronger social and employability skills. Back then, barriers to employment were there, but they were fewer, and not so high. Today, most of our clients are less employable.”

Like any business responding to a changing market, OFE established the House of Opportunities (HOO) in 2000 to provide extra employment services and support. The program has worked; 1,000 of the 5,000 people who have found work through OFE have done so through HOO.

“HOO has been a tremendous success,” Klassen says. But even that comes with a cost; a high percentage of job seekers who have used HOO’s services are not welfare recipients, meaning that OFE doesn’t get paid by the government for finding them work. “We believe that it’s important to help anyone who wants to find a job – that’s our mission,” he says.

Some of HOO’s assistance comes from MEDA’s Winnipeg chapter. “We couldn’t do it without MEDA,” he says, noting that chapter members give around $25,000 to $30,000 each year to HOO.

In addition to HOO, OFE has created other ways to help people enter the world of work. One is 2nd Opportunities, a thrift shop that provides clients with retail experience, on the job training and – importantly – a reference when they leave. And, just this year, OFE created CORE Labour, a temporary job placement agency with a difference. “We’re different from other temp agencies in that we encourage employers to hire our clients full time,” Klassen says. “We don't have the disincentive of a finder’s fee – they don’t have to pay us if they want to keep an employee that we send to them. In fact, we encourage it.”

None of this would be possible if OFE wasn’t a results based organization. This financial arrangement allows them to develop and implement new programs and directions to better serve the needs of its clientele. “Our approach is riskier, but it has paid off with creative programs that are more effective in meeting the changing needs of our participants,” Klassen says.

It’s also more exciting. “It’s really great to sit with staff and think about new ways we can meet the challenges we are facing, find better ways to help people,” he says. “It helps that we don’t have to make a formal submission to the government to change the terms of reference for the grant – we can do it right away, if we need to.”

So, if OFE has been such a success, why are there so few agencies of its kind in Canada? Garry Loewen, who served as chair of OFE’s board for five years, and is now a consultant who helps agencies across the country implement programs to help people find employment, says there are four reasons. First, it’s not what governments are used to – and they are always a bit nervous about the unknowns that come with a change in direction.

Second, this approach gives government a little less control. Fixed price grants feel safer, since they allow bureaucrats to demand accountability for every nickel spent. Results-based programming may work fine, but what if an agency spends money on something that would seem questionable to the general public? “Even if something like OFE makes economic sense, politicians can still be smeared by unfair bad press,” Loewen says.

Third – ironically – too much success can be a problem. With block funding, people in charge of government programs know exactly how much they will be spending each year. But with payment for service, an agency that does exceedingly well at finding jobs for people on welfare will be owed more money, potentially causing that government department to go over budget. “Somebody has to explain at the end of the year why their budget is overspent,” Loewen observes. “That person gets dinged for spending too much on the next performance review.”

Last, the non profit sector isn’t clamoring for this style of programming, either. It requires a non-profit to take a business risk that they aren’t used to taking. But that’s not all, Loewen says. “It’s very costly to start a program like OFE. Since you aren’t getting paid until someone works for six months, you have to have the cash up front to start. For a start up, that can mean eight to 10 months before you see your first payment.” In OFE’s case, that meant asking MCC and Eden Health Care Services to put up a guarantee of a loan of several hundred thousand dollars to get the program going.

As for the future, OFE is facing some challenges. One is the need to constantly innovate. “We have to be better at lots of things to stay in business,” says Klassen. In addition to the new programs, OFE created an incentive system that rewards clients for staying at their jobs or checking in regularly with OFE.

Then there’s the issue of funding – the rate the government pays for each successful placement hasn’t changed since OFE began 10 years ago. “It costs more to help people find work today than it did when we started,” Klassen says, noting that OFE has asked for an increase in the payments it receives. The other is finding more donors to fund programs that the government doesn’t pay for – things like HOO and CORE Labour.

But one thing hasn’t, and won’t change – OFE's mission to help people find employment. “We are mission based,” Klassen says. “If we were just in this to make money, we’d think about reducing services since it’s getting harder to help people find work.”

The other thing that will stay the same is OFE’s desire to serve God by serving others. “Faith is key to why we do this,” Klassen says. “It’s the foundation to our success. After all, if God has opened a door and given us this opportunity, how could we not choose to enter?”

Sidebar: OFE snapshot

Year started: 1996
Founding organizations: MCC Manitoba, Eden Health Services, MEDA Winnipeg
Clients placed in jobs: 5,000 plus
Staff: 22
Number of employers who have taken graduates: Over 400

Sidebar: Two-way rewards

Everyone likes to be rewarded. At OFE, they believe that finding meaningful work is a reward in itself, but they also know that providing some incentives along the way can help encourage people with spotty work histories keep at the hard task of finding and keeping work. That’s why they offer various rewards to keep people going. For example, clients who stay at their jobs for three months get a reconditioned cell phone; those who stay for six months get a reconditioned computer. Clients who maintain weekly contact with OFE staff are entered into a monthly draw to win a color TV.

Of course, the reward system works two ways; the clients get something, but so does OFE – when clients stay at their jobs for six months, OFE gets paid by the provincial government. “It’s a win win situation,” says OFE General Manager Ted Klassen. “That’s why we say when our clients succeed, we succeed.”

John Longhurst is director of communications and marketing at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) in Winnipeg.