The “Making the Business Case” Toolkit is designed to help people with disabilities get jobs. This Toolkit demonstrates ways to better connect with businesses and potential employers to discuss the benefits of hiring people with disabilities. The Toolkit serves as a “how to” guide for communicating using a business-focused approach to increase job placements.
As a service provider, this Toolkit can help you operate your employment placement program more effectively. Program managers and job developers will learn to conduct more effective outreach to potential employers. This Toolkit provides information about educating employers on the benefits of hiring people with disabilities, including sample language, relevant statistics, and recommendations for making your case. Other topics explore sales techniques, management strategies, and maintaining employer relationships.
This Toolkit also addresses some of the obstacles and hidden fears that service providers encounter when connecting with businesses and ways to overcome them. Companies are often overwhelmed by the accommodations they might have to provide to employ people with disabilities. Since businesses are often focused on their bottom line, pitches about hiring people with disabilities need to address this concern first. Additionally, shifting our focus to market personnel services, not social services, is an important distinction to make. For nonprofits trying to secure employment for people with disabilities, we need to move beyond appealing to corporate responsibility and improve our ability to make the business case to companies.
You can download this toolkit for free here.
