"More than Just a Way to get to Work"—Revolution Workshop & Sheryl Morris

Revolution Workshop is a nonprofit out of Chicago that is truly living up to its name. It began as a way to help Black and Brown people, and in particular women, enter construction and earn family-sustaining wages. What they realized was the issue of unemployment for underserved Chicago communities went deeper than just trying to find a job. Many of the clients they worked with had the same hurdle–transportation. So, they set out to do something about that. 

In this special episode of The Apprentice Perspective, Sheryl Morris, CEO of Avail Yourself Consulting Group and Co-Chair of WBLA’s Apprentice Ambassador workgroup, interviews three members of the Revolution Workshops’ leadership team: Manny Rodriguez (Co-Founder & Executive Director), Jackie Gallo (Sr. Program Director), and Jasmine Thomas (Career Growth Director) about their revolutionary program “RWheels” which not only teaches their clients the financial literacy skills to buy a car, but eases them into the process by setting up savings accounts for the client to contribute to, and partnering with local banks to provide non-predatory loans backed by Revolution Workshop and how this program is bridging gaps in workforce in underserved communities. 

To learn more about apprenticeships, go to ApprenticeshipIL.com and follow Apprenticeship Illinois on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

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Revolution Workshop is a nonprofit social enterprise that provides construction and woodworking workforce development to Chicago's underserved communities. Through its R Wheels program in partnership with Self-Help Credit Union and First Eagle Bank, it offers low-interest car loans to trainees. The Apprentice Perspective is proud to share how this program came to life with you, our listeners. Hello and welcome. My name is Cheryl Morris. I am the founder and CEO of Veil Yourself Consulting Group. I'm also a voting member of the Illinois Workforce Innovation Board and the co-chair for the Illinois Apprentice Ambassador Program. And today I will be your host for this episode of the Apprentice Perspective. Today I'm joined by representatives of Revolution Workshop. Hello, I'm Jasmine, the Director of Career Growth Services for Revolution Workshop. I've been with RW for seven years now, and I currently manage alumni services as well as our financial growth services. I'm Jackie Gallo. I'm our senior director of programs at Revolution Workshop. I've been here since we started seven and a half years ago, and now I oversee our programs, alumni services, business engagement, and I'm also a member of the Work-Based Learning and Apprenticeship Committee. And that last but not least, uh, I'm the Manny Rodriguez, the founding executive director here at Revolution Workshop. You know, I've known Manny for more than 10 years now, just seeing Revolution Workshop and how it's grown over the years. Um, I remember when it was just an idea. It's uh such a proud moment, Manny, and congratulations on your growth and you're well respected in the workforce, uh in the workforce footprint. And we're just happy to have you today. So thank you for joining us. I'm honored to be the person to actually be interviewing you for this. So I'm just really want you to share a little bit more about how Revolution Workshop came to be. It really comes down to uh we really wanted to help Black, Brown, and women get into construction with the end goal of breaking the chains of poverty. And how we do that is we have two different pre-apprenticeship pre-employment tracks. One, if you want to be a carpenter, a laborer, electrician, et cetera. We have a 12-week pre-apprentip trades pathway program. We also have a professional pathways program. So if someone wants to be in architecture, engineering, or construction management, college doesn't have to be the first stop out of high school. And sometimes it's not possible for people coming from the communities that we serve to be able to do that. And so we created this pathway in saying, hey, let the let the company pay for you to go back to college. Now we do a lot of robust technical skills in both pathways, but that's not our secret sauce. And really what Jasmine does for our team a lot is those wraparound support services. It's it's no good if we place them and a week later they're gone. We're engaged with just about 70% of our alumni, which it's not just enough for these individuals to get theirs. We're talking about let's go get ours. And when you're saying that, you're trying to build a sense of family, a sense of community, a sense of power. For me, construction is personal because it's what helped my family get into the middle class and beyond in some cases. It's an industry that doesn't have some barriers to employment that other industries do. You know, like you can not have a high school diploma, you can have a criminal record, you can, in some cases, not have a car, and you can still find a pathway to the middle class. I started Revolution Workshop when I was 22. So we all know what those early 20s mean. Um you know, just like in the midst of trying to figure out um who you are as a person. And one thing that like our push is like to celebrate and forgive. We always make sure that our trainees are in a space to recognize where they have been and where they're going and to celebrate the small wins, even if it's just putting $5 in a savings account. Hey, you had the five dollars and you put it in your savings. If you take it out tomorrow, uh, that's a whole nother story, but you started the original habit. RW has been that place for a lot of our trainees, and still that place for our alumni. You know, it's interesting for you to kind of lead in with the fact that you were 22 when you started there. You're like the director of uh, what is it, growth and development, but then you also oversee some of the financial literacy work too, right? Yes. So we're here today to talk about um R Wheels or Revolution Wheels. It's a low-interest car loan program that you all have built for your trainees. If you could walk us through what the program uh actually entails, that would be helpful. The story of R Wheels. You know, we were in the thick of helping our alumni navigate like barriers when it comes to employment. So we had one alumni come in and he needed help clearing his car note. So, of course, we all know that you can't pay a car note with credit. So we was like, you know, just having little conversations so we can figure out how to get this car note paid. We realized that we were driving the same car. The only difference between our car was his was black and mine was blue. But the biggest difference was I was paying $230 and he was paying almost $700. Oh my gosh. And uh, the bottom line of the difference was the loan that we both were able to have access to. Before I um purchased my car, I had the privilege of, okay, let me clean up my credit. He was probably in a situation where it's like, hey, I need a car to make things happen in my life. That is when we sat down and said, hey, we need to create something for our alumni because we know that having a car is necessary to succeed in this field. So we partnered with First Eagle Bank. So it was like, hey, let's communicate on when their car notice leave. Let's have monthly 101s, let's talk about what this loan is for. This is what a car loan could look like if you had that typical credit score. But first Eagle and RW pulls their credit score just so they can see where they are at, what's on that report, and they can be working on building the credit while paying back that car loan. I believe it started off with 10,000 per person, or was it 15? It was 10,000 per okay. Now we have fortunately been able to increase that to 20. This program has helped the total of six people. Okay. And uh with one of those participants, he has took his car everywhere. This is an alumni who wanted to, he was an awesome, awesome alumni. And you could tell that he was really serious about his career, had a lot of potential, but um the job that he wanted required him to have a car, and he didn't have a good financial situation to come from to get a credit loan traditionally. He recently gave us an update. He makes over six figures now. And this is an individual that actually came out of homelessness before joining RW. Oh my God, what an amazing story. Yeah. We know that one of the biggest barriers to successful employment is having a car, right? I mean, you may be able to get into a project that's close to where you live, but oftentimes those better projects and those better wages are a little bit further away. And a lot of places don't have really great public transportation, like everything is not like Chicago focused, right? So um, so that's actually a really great story. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, and I think like especially in construction, Cheryl, to your point. A company wants you on one job site today and it could be a different job site tomorrow, and that's often in the suburbs, and and then it's a different suburb, and you can't rely on public transit to get you there. And if you don't have that ability to be agile, then most companies can't afford to hire you all. And like just even the smallest things like now I can feel comfortable with dropping my kids off earlier in the morning so I can be to work on time, other than I have to call an Uber at 4 a.m. to get my kids to school by five. And once again, like having access to a car loan that is not predatory is more than just how can I get to work? But it's a peace of mind. You know, we also know that poor people pay more for the basic essentials, just basics, utilities, like you mentioned, like car notes and those kinds of things. Um, can you talk a little bit more about what that looks like in terms of your training? And maybe like, you know, how do you how do you kind of get to the nuts and bolts of that for for your apprentices? We connect these financial topics because we all know that talking about money is not the easiest. So we um we start with the basic of like what is a budget? And uh people say like, oh no, I don't budget, I don't budget. But then we ask, like, hey, have you ever been down to your last $20 and you made it stretch? And they all say, Yes, yes, I have. Oh, so it sounds like you budgeted to me. Yeah, you made it work. We talk about savings, credit, taxes. Just recently in a class, one of the questions was like, Hey, how did you learn about credit? And one one person was just like, No one told me anything. Like, no one told me. So we make sure that we provide that baseline knowledge of like, this is what gets you to point A, point B, point C. And we allow them to talk to us about how the information is relevant in their lives. That way they can connect those changes that they need to make to like their real life situation, other than oh, society says that I have to have this amazing credit score, this savings account, this, that, and then this, but more so that okay, what can I do to get to a place where I am comfortable, not someone else's standard. So throughout training, they have those financial classes um for the first 10 weeks. And um, and then like the last two weeks is normally like a um a recap of what they have learned throughout the week. But the real work does not start until they become alumni, when they are placed on a job. That's when, okay, I know that I get paid in two weeks. These are all the bills that that that I have to pay. And uh, when it comes to them being on the credit products, we require them to have been on a job for three months. So you you mentioned uh credit products. Can you just unpack that just a little bit for us so we understand and our general audience can kind of understand what that is? RW, as we have built out our financial department, we have created two different credit products. The first product was the R Wheels, and then through the um lessons that we've learned with our wheels, we created the R Credit product, which is a former known as like a twin account, but it's a credit build and savings account, where so they're able to take out a loan up to $1,000, NRW matches half, and pay back, I mean pay that loan back over the course of six months. And the reason why we chose six months as a minimum is because that's normally how long it takes for a credit product to have some impact on your credit score. So after I mean at the end of that six months, they receive everything that they have saved along with the 50% match. Once they complete that, then they can move on to the R Wheels program if they would like. The R Credit program was created as a step to get to the R Wheels program. So you mentioned that RW uh doesn't match, right? And so I'm curious about how does the financial aspect of this program work? How much capital is RW investing and and what risks does Revolution Workshop actually have to take on in order to have a successful like R Wheels or R Credit program? Well, I will say this for all the listeners. I never thought I would be in the car lending business. Um, and nor do I, you know, really want to be in the car lending business. But uh to answer your question directly, you know, right now, uh what we did with First Feagle Bank first, and I got to give them props. They didn't do this type of stuff before, they really did this before anybody was willing to do it. So I want to give them a lot of uh credit and and pub. But what I want to also share with your listeners is it really takes partnership to do these things, right? Not only it's not only the holistic approach, and sure, you mentioned that when Jasmine's walking through, but it really is okay, I can't do this all as a nonprofit, right? And I I have to go out and work with those partners that are out there that can really do this and bring a different level of expertise that I don't have in-house. And so we said, hey, listen, we're running into this problem. We we we we gave that story that Jasmine told about one of our alumni, and and they they it resonated with them too. And they were like, let us work with you to figure something out. And so how we did it was we we started a collateral fund. So I put my own excess general operating into an account at first ease, and then that was what they were using as the collateral. So if someone defaulted, they would just pull it out of that collateral fund, and uh so that allowed us to get a fixed interest rate at the time with 5% regardless of credit. Um but it was, and this was before inflation, so that's why the dollar amount was lower because you could get a used car for $10,000. Now forget that that world has gone and come and gone. So, you know, now that's why we raised it to 20. What then prohibited us to stay in our partnership with First Eagle is they had to do a one-to-one, they didn't have repossession services because they never did consumer auto loans before. Oh, this was really outside of their wheelhouse, and that's why I really want to give them props because they were willing to work with us, they were willing to try it, and you know, and it was it was a great partnership, but then self-help came along and they're a nonprofit credit union, national, they're in multiple states, and they were like, hey, you know, uh we do do these types of loans, and we are willing to give you a three to one on your collateral, so like as opposed to a one-to-one, so you know, first eagle was only like if I had 65,000 in the collateral, then we could only have 65,000 max as uh as loans. I have hundreds of alumni now, so you guys understand that's not gonna make that's not gonna move the needle. So I needed somewhere where I could expand this program, and so it was really that collateral fund, that ratio that I needed to get change. And so self-help said, Hey, you know what? For every dollar you put in, we'll be willing to lend out three. And oh, by the way, we have repossession services, so we'll do that in case of default. We will handle all of that. We already have that in-house, we will take that over, and so then it kind of protects the account because you know, unfortunately for Steagle, and again, I I can't say enough positive about them. This it was just that that account was very exposed and it was very risky, you know. This way, there's a little bit of insulation and a little bit of protection and a little way to hold our folks accountable. And it's some things that again, Jasmine alluded to. We've learned a lot, a lot in the five to six years we've been running this program. I think it's about six years now. You know, another lesson that we learned is hey, we gotta limit you on what you can buy. Like, you can't be buying a luxury vehicle off of this uh thing, even if we found a good deal off of it. So it's that kind of stuff, you know. Those financial mechanisms allowed us, you know, now with this new deal that we're gonna have, you know, with 50,000, now I can give out 150,000 in loans. And we, you know, a lot of funders and a lot of our individual donors are very excited about this program again, because the car is such a critical thing in construction. The job site changes, it could change daily, it can change within a day. And so if you don't have a car, it is very difficult. Uh, your your opportunities are very limited. I am curious, right? Because, you know, we know that it takes a while for us all to learn a different set of behaviors. And, you know, with you having the R credit that is um, it's a program that's a six-month like credit building program, essentially, right? Um, what happens when a trainee defaults on their payments? Like, how do you make sure that Revolution Workshop stays in a good financial spot, uh, knowing that you are that you're really putting your you're backing your people, but how do you kind of how do you how do you manage that? Well, it was tough in the beginning because in in the beginning we it exposed us, right? We had to pay the defaulted loan, um, which was you know a bummer and that happened a couple of times. Um, but I think, you know, now with self-help, them having the repossession services, I think protects the loan. So now whatever they end up selling back the car for, that'll go back to paying the loan, and we only have to pay the difference, which again allows us to not be on the hook for the full amount. Um, and the way these cars are going right now, you can auction and get a pretty good value off of them at the auctions. Um, and there's a whole you know back end that does that piece of it. And so we just didn't have that expertise, right? We were, I mean, Jasmine, I remember us tossing around the idea of like somebody in our circle getting a dealership license and going to the auctions and doing it ourselves, and it was just like, no, we can't, like this is not this is not gonna be possible for us. So uh, you know, it was good to find self-help and that they do this. And you know, again, that would be my advice, you know, find these partners, they're out there, you know, talk to these credit unions, talk to the community banks, you know. And and the way we were doing with First Eagle is we were, I mean, they were reporting the loan. So when they defaulted, I mean, that really hurts their credit, you know. Like, yeah, and so we want to make sure that's why we did the R credit thing. That's why Jasmine was like, No, we gotta do another step, yeah. Okay, and um Manny spoke from the business side of things, so I'll um speak on how we manage it on the um alumni front of things. So we have it set up where so they have to have a monthly one-on-one with us, like, hey, okay, how's your budget? What you got going on? Can you make this payment? Um, and you know, they they the favorite thing to do is yeah, I got it, like I got the money, I'm gonna pay it. And then the moment that they don't pay it, we call and hey, what's going on? So we we we turn into those like accountability partners, um, but we don't approach it from a sense of like we're better, but more so like, hey, like friend to friend, like, where your money going? Let's let's talk about it. We approach it lightly so they can feel comfortable with okay, I actually made this mistake. I was partying, I was doing this, I was doing that. And that has been helpful because it helps them realize their patterns. Is it um it it helps them hold themselves accountable, other than me calling, like, oh, you was partying again, why you didn't make your payment, but more so of like, hey jazz, something um something came up and I may need some help this month, or they just flat out on like I didn't make the right decisions. It creates a habit. Let me get myself in order, let me check myself, check my priorities. In terms of like how we're talking about the importance of partnership with this, too, when Jasmine's team is working with alumni in those one-on-one financial meetings, she knows the situations of those alumni. So one of them who's in the car loan program is a bricklayer. And if you're a bricklayer in Chicago, it normally means you work probably a ton of overtime in the summer, and then four, five, six months in the winter time, when things really slow down, you're off in unemployment. Yeah. And so this one alumni was able to proactively communicate with Jasmine, saying, like, hey, my work is about to slow down. And because of that partnership with First Segal, we were able to get her loan deferred for the three hardest months of winter when she wasn't working. And they added those three months onto the end of her loan, but at least it's one less bill to worry about when she knows she doesn't have income. Let's say that you're meeting with another business and they're hesitant to take this kind of program on. What would you say to convince them that this isn't a one-off solution that this could work for them as well? In some ways, this program can sound crazy, but when you look at like most of our employer partners, the number one reason that they're firing someone is because of attendance. And when you look at the cost of hiring somebody new, onboarding somebody new, and training them, this entry-level job. So you're investing a lot of time into training. And then if they ultimately don't work out on the job because of attendance, which the number one reason people aren't attending is because of transportation. Look at all of those costs stacked up, and this program started to seem a lot less crazy, you know? True. We have money for social support for trainees when things pop up and they can't get to work. We have money through grants that we can say, Hey, here, take care of your flat tire with this $60 if you don't have a savings fund and go get to work so you can make money. And this Program, when you look at it, if we gave a car loan, someone made some payments, say the worst case situation happens and they do default, then we auctioned off. So we lose some portion of that loan. But in all the other cases, we get our money back into that collateral fund to be recycled and reused. And so I think it's something that actually more and more of our employers are getting behind. Um, we just had an employer organize a fundraiser for our collateral fund to raise $50,000 for that fund so that we can now congratulations $150,000 more. Yeah. But yeah, it's expensive to fire people. Yeah. Oh, hey, yeah. And I and I in and I'll I'll say this too, you know, Jackie made some really great points there. And I I just think, you know, ultimately, if a little nonprofit, because when we first started this thing, we were probably two million dollars in operating. You know, if we can do it, you can do it. Like, you know, but again, like it does take some partnership, it it does take some conversation, it does take some uh willingness to be uh a little risky and a little uneasy, right? Um, yeah. I do think that there's better models, you know. I do think that we are very fortunate in Illinois to have some large, very large foundation partners that may be able to do this at a much better clip for the entire system than we can do uh as a small little nonprofit or credit union by themselves. And and you guys have have done a phenomenal job in just the short amount of time that you've been doing it, right? So I think that, you know, it's building like you've got a new partner now that's actually going to be able to help you guys to take you to the next level. And so, you know, because we really want to see how we can expand your reach. Um, you know, what about cars? Like what what's something? How can we help you with um with expanding your reach and actually getting access to more resources for revolution uh workshop and our wheels? Cheryl, you brought up the car thing and I gotta tell you. It's the biggest. So right now I feel like we have a good handle on the financial, the credit, the financial coaching that's necessary. I think all of those, you know, I'm feeling very good about. You know, right now we still don't have a really good answer to where can our trainees and alumni find reliable vehicles, you know, anywhere, you know. Is there a partnership here to be had with a CarMax, you know, or an enterprise or a budget, something like that, where they these have large fleets that then they're turning over, or CarMax, which is the largest used car dealership in the entire country. You know, those are things that, you know, I think is what's missing from our thing that could really help take it to another level. Right now, our alumni, they buy a lemon, which unfortunately Jasmine could tell you one of our defaults was exactly that situation. Bought a lemon, it crapped out on them two months later, and then they needed to use that down payment to go get another car, you know. So uh, you know, they defaulted. And that was as much as I was upset about that. I understood, right? Like I understood it, you know, and so again, this is another caveat that I think uh is missing in our model that I, you know, we could really use brain power and connections and other ideas. When a person sees that someone is willing to invest in them and they they even have the opportunity along to have access to something that can help them remove multiple barriers. I personally think that it allows people to continue to like to fight. So if one thing could come from this, I would say for people to remove the actual item and look deeper into like what the investment can be. We are just so excited about your growth and your innovation around continuing to serve our our folks that are uh really striving to, you know, become stronger and building careers that are sustainable for again for themselves and for their families. Um, Manny, how should we uh how should we have people to reach out to you if they're able to support your work? Uh check us out at www.revolutionworkshop.org. Um there's you can contact us, our staff, find out ways to donate. Uh all of that stuff will be there. I also forgot to mention that we also happen to run two social enterprises. We have a uh a custom wood shop. So we make beautiful custom wooden furniture and sell it. If you're interested in those items, that helps, you know, with the mission. And then we are a general contractor where we're doing housing development uh on that end too. So uh either way, please check us out. Uh, that'd be the best way to get a hold of us. Well, thank you all again for joining us for the apprentice perspective. And uh we look forward to the growth, and we will definitely be sharing this with our committees. Thank you. Thank you. Tune in next time to hear Betty L Mish, an end user computing enablement apprentice at Allstate, in conversation with Taylor Black, an apprentice at the American Job Center in Champaign, Illinois. To learn more about apprenticeships, go to apprenticeshipillinois.com. Thank you for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to seeing you next time on the Apprentice Perspective.