Member Profiles


Dawn Williams, Director, Employment Services
Emerge Staffing
Minneapolis, Minnesota


Year program began: 1995
Program sponsor: Emerge Community Development (affiliate of Pillsbury United Communities)
Jobseekers placed last year: 400

Pillsbury United Communities in Minneapolis grew out of the late 19th century Settlement House Movement, a community-based approach to improving living conditions in urban slums. Today, its affiliate Emerge Community Development upholds that tradition through its social enterprise Emerge Staffing, a full-service staffing agency in north Minneapolis where many of the city’s poor are concentrated.

We spoke with director Dawn Williams to learn more about Emerge Staffing’s 12 years of service connecting neighborhood jobseekers with Twin Cities employers.

How did you personally get into the alternative staffing business?

I began my career in the non-profit world with a job program at the Wilder Foundation. Later I went to work for a large, for-profit staffing agency where my counseling background and instincts to help people succeed were not welcome. Candidates who took a misstep on the job or needed any form of assistance or extra attention were marked “do not use” and not called again. Alternative staffing is a good fit for me. I am much more at home in this environment.

What population does your agency mainly work with?

We assist disenfranchised residents of our community, mainly African-Americans who are unemployed and face multiple obstacles to employment, beginning with low skills due to a high dropout rate. Lack of transportation is another big challenge, and we work with many people who have criminal records, a history of drug use, unstable housing situations and/or family issues.

How are participants referred to your program?

We are co-located with the Minneapolis Family Investment Program (the local TANF program) and several job training programs, so we receive numerous on-site referrals from these case managers and job counselors. Word-of-mouth brings us many people, and our new facility is highly visible in the neighborhood. Attendance at our weekly orientations has recently increased, to the 20 to 30-person range.

What types of support services have you found to be most critical to your workers’ success?

Transportation is a huge factor. Emerge offers a 24/7 van transportation program that connects people to suburban job sites and supplements public transportation for weekend and late night shifts. The van program is federally funded and free to riders.

What types of employers do you serve?

We supply staff to a variety of firms – manufacturers, transport companies, tech businesses and retailers. Our employees do jobs in assembly, commercial food processing, air cargo handling, digital imaging and food service, for example.

What marketing messages have you found to be most effective in attracting new customers?

Unlike some alternative staffing agencies, we emphasize our social purpose to lift people out of poverty. Our message to employers is the value we add through comprehensive pre- and post-placement supports. We tell them we work with same people as conventional firms, with the key difference that we acknowledge individual barriers and help people address them so they can be more effective, reliable workers and break the cycle of failure. Our ability to offer workers reliable transportation is also a selling point.

Alternative staffing managers need to think and act quickly as the situation requires. Can you give us an example of Emerge’s resourcefulness in addressing an unexpected challenge?

A few years ago, Fingerhut (a catalog sales company) needed 85 workers to help with order fulfillment during the 4-month holiday season (September through January). All were required to wear steel-toed boots, which none of our candidates could afford to buy. Our staff scoured the city and bought all the boots we could find, fitted the workers and charged them back the cost ($40 to $100 per pair) through payroll deductions over the next few weeks.

What are the biggest challenges of operating a staffing service program in your market?

It’s difficult to compete with our for-profit counterparts who don’t have our costs for employee supports and whose staff are more business-oriented and aggressive in their approach to sales.
What about your staffing program are you most proud of?
All of it, but in particular, our ability to do more with less.

What are your program’s main goals for the future?

We want to achieve breakeven sales, and we hope to be the pilot for a state re-entry program for people with criminal histories because we work well with this population.

What advice would you offer to someone considering alternative staffing as a strategy in their community?

People need to understand this is hard. That said, identify a target population to serve well and be well-capitalized to cover payroll and to finance growth. Understand that the staffing program needs to act like a business in the sense that you need to create and perpetuate a high-energy environment and recognize and reward staff for their hard work.

What else would you like people to know about you or your program?

I love what I’m doing.

For more about Emerge Staffing, visit
www.emerge-mn.org/FocusAreas/Ventures/Staffing/tabid/135/Default.aspx