A career Pipeline at Washington park
Today, Washington Park, a public green space with 170 years of neighborhood history threaded through its roots, is becoming a hiring floor. Folding tables are replacing park benches. Employers are replacing foot traffic. And hundreds of people are geared up, resumes in hand, ready to change the direction of their lives.
That is the Cincinnati Works Career and Resource Fair. And if you are not paying attention to what this organization is building, you should be.
A Nonprofit Built on One Stubborn Idea
In 1996, Dave and Liane Phillips did something unusual for the time. Rather than launching another job placement program designed to get people hired and then move on, they built Cincinnati Works around a single finding from their national research: the organizations that actually eliminated poverty were the ones that focused on what happened after the hire. Retention. Advancement. Real wages. Benefits. The long game.
That insight became the organization's architecture. Every person who walks through the door becomes a member, and membership lasts a lifetime, for as long as they are employed or actively looking for work. There are no intake fees. No costs for employers. Just coaching, connection, and a commitment that does not expire after 90 days.
Between 70 and 80 percent of Cincinnati Works members hold their job for at least a year, a retention rate that outperforms most government-run workforce programs. A University of Cincinnati study found that membership reduced an individual's probability of felony indictment by nearly 50 percent. Members have collectively earned $184.9 million in wages. They have generated $9.8 million in income and sales tax revenue. At an average cost of $2,011 per member per year, the return on investment is almost absurd.
The Fair Is Only the Beginning
The Career and Resource Fair is one of the most visible expressions of Cincinnati Works' strategy, but it represents the culmination of preparation rather than an isolated event.
Before job seekers ever walked into Washington Park, Cincinnati Works put them through training. A session called "Hustle 'Til You're Hired" covered professional attire, the right questions to ask employers, and practical reminders like bringing extra resume copies. That kind of preparation reflects the organization's broader philosophy: a fair is only as useful as the readiness of the people walking into it.
The fair itself draws employers across healthcare, technology, trades, retail, and finance. Some conduct on-site interviews. Some extend job offers before the afternoon ends. Past participants have walked in unemployed and walked out with a third-shift offer that fit around their independent contracting schedule. That is what a well-designed event actually produces.
The event is open to Cincinnati Works members and the general public alike, which means the reach extends beyond an existing client base into the broader community of people who may not yet know the organization exists. For Cincinnati Works, a job fair is also a recruitment tool for the mission.
Washington Park Was Chosen for a Reason
Washington Park sits at the center of Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati's most historically layered neighborhood. The city acquired the land in 1855. The park hosted fountains, bandstands, and swimming pools through its prosperous decades before falling into serious disrepair through the Depression, World War II, and the decades that followed. A $48 million renovation launched in 2011 returned the park to its role as a civic anchor, expanding it from five to eight acres and restoring it as a genuine gathering place.
Over-the-Rhine's population history mirrors the population Cincinnati Works exists to serve. German immigrant workers built the neighborhood in the mid-1800s. Prohibition erased their jobs and scattered the community. By the 1960s, the area had become home to many displaced African-American residents forced out of adjacent neighborhoods by interstate construction. Disinvestment compounded over generations.
Hosting a career fair in a park with that history is a deliberate act. Bringing employers and job seekers together there connects the organizational mission to the physical memory of a neighborhood that knows what economic exclusion looks like.
Coaching as Infrastructure
Most workforce programs treat coaching as supplemental. Cincinnati Works treats it as the core product.
The one-on-one coaching model has been embedded in the organization since its founding. Members receive support during the job search and, once employed, ongoing guidance around skills development, financial literacy, and advancement planning. The goal is for members to reach 200% of the federal poverty level with health benefits attached.
The wraparound services extend further: legal advocacy, transportation assistance, and partnerships with community organizations that help members address barriers like childcare costs, credit issues, and debt. Because Cincinnati Works is primarily privately funded, it can serve people who fall outside the eligibility requirements of government programs, including men and women without dependent children, populations that many publicly funded efforts cannot reach.
Fair Chance Works Expands the Circle
The organization's newest initiative takes the mission to its logical extension. Fair Chance Works targets individuals whose histories with incarceration have locked them out of conventional hiring pipelines. The program incorporates Community Violence Intervention strategies, addressing the connection between poverty, joblessness, and cycles of violence at the community level. President and CEO Tianay Amat described the program as being about "fair chances," framing it as a pathway to healing, contribution, and transformation rather than a transactional workforce service.
The program reflects an understanding that poverty and violence are entangled systems that require entangled solutions. Cincinnati Works is designing those solutions and deploying them in the same neighborhoods where the need is most concentrated.
Career Professionals Pay Attention
If you work in human resources, talent acquisition, workforce development, or economic policy, what Cincinnati Works has built is worth studying as a replicable framework.
The organization demonstrates that retention-focused programming produces measurably better outcomes than placement-focused programming. It demonstrates that removing cost barriers for both employers and job seekers creates a higher-quality participant pool. It demonstrates that coaching, when delivered with consistency and longevity, changes not just employment outcomes but public safety outcomes.
The Career and Resource Fair is one public-facing expression of that system. Employers who participate are not just filling open requisitions. They are entering a relationship with an organization that has already done significant preparation work on their behalf: screening, coaching, and readying candidates before the first conversation happens.
For job seekers, particularly those carrying barriers that other programs will not engage with, the fair represents a point of entry into a lifetime relationship with an organization whose commitment does not have an expiration date.
Cincinnati Has Something to Teach the Rest of the Country
The employment crisis in American cities is not a pipeline problem. There are workers. There are employers. The gap is structural: inadequate preparation, inadequate support, and inadequate follow-through once a hire is made.
Cincinnati Works has been solving that structural problem since 1996, with results that show up in tax revenue, reduced incarceration, and generational mobility. The Career and Resource Fair at Washington Park is the most visible face of that work, a few hours in the open air where the system becomes visible to anyone who walks through.
What happens in those hours is straightforward. A person shows up. An employer shows up. A conversation starts. And behind that conversation is nearly three decades of infrastructure built to make sure what comes next actually sticks.