Impact Entrepreneurs will help design materials to replicate DePaul’s successful business-driven model for employing people with disabilities
Business-driven Portland-based nonprofit DePaul Industries is partnering with Portland State University’s (PSU) Impact Entrepreneurs to develop replication materials for its unique social enterprise methodology. These materials will allow other organizations to leverage and scale DePaul’s market-driven model of employing people with disabilities.
Focused on transforming the landscape of employment for people with disabilities, DePaul Industries has evolved from a traditional, localized nonprofit since its founding in 1971 to an integrated social enterprise focused on solving business problems while simultaneously enacting social change. This unique business approach is why the nonprofit needs to document its strategy and tactics for future benefit, and what makes DePaul Industries a perfect fit for the Impact Entrepreneurs program at PSU.
“Developing a system for replicating DePaul Industries’ proven model for generating jobs and income for the disabled has enormous impact potential across the nation and perhaps worldwide,” said Carolyn McKnight, Executive Director of Impact Entrepreneurs. “It’s a joy to partner with DePaul Industries to scale collective impact and provide an aspirational future for some of our most vulnerable.”
Founded in PSU’s School of Business Administration, Impact Entrepreneurs provides tailored training and consulting to inspire, incubate and accelerate business-based approaches for generating social impact. Impact Entrepreneurs will assist DePaul Industries in strategically scaling its integrated social enterprise model by developing instructional materials to enable other organizations to leverage best practices DePaul has cultivated over the past 40 years.
“DePaul’s partnership with Impact Entrepreneurs has the ability to raise the profile of this method to employ a significant portion of people with disabilities, the nation’s largest minority group,” said Dave Shaffer, President & CEO of DePaul Industries. ”We’re thrilled to be combining forces with the experts here at home in Portland to help expand our mission and model nationwide.”
Last year, DePaul Industries employed over 2,000 people with disabilities and generated earned revenue of over $30 million through its primary business divisions of Clerical & Light Industrial Staffing, Security Services, and Food Packaging & Contract Manufacturing. The organization aims to significantly increase both its earned revenue and its employment of people with disabilities over the next five years.
