Aspen Institute Publications
Aspen Institute publications are listed below. Many are available for purchase through Google Checkout, a secure system for handling credit card transaction online. For assistance with ordering publications, please contact our Publications office by email or by phone at (410) 820.5433. Please note: Orders are shipped two times a week from our warehouse in Queenstown, MD, on the Eastern Shore.
Helping Adult Learners Navigate Community College and the Labor Market
This issue of Update looks at the challenges adult learners face as they attempt to enter community college, persist to completing a certificate or degree, and successfully transition to employment. The reports shares detailed examples of these challenges including how some adult learners struggle with financial aid and registration processes, inadequate career counseling, insufficient support services and a lack of professional networks they need to get a job after college among others. The report also offers numerous examples of strategies nonprofit-community college partnerships use to help adult learners overcome hurdles such as these. The publication draws on findings from Courses to Employment, a three year demonstration project funded by the Charles Steward Mott Foundation that AspenWSI conducted to investigate how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to support the success of low-income adults.
Microenterprise Development as Job Creation
This report, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of the “Big Ideas for Jobs” project, details the role that microbusinesses – firms that employ five of fewer workers – play in supporting jobs. Based on interviews with nearly 2000 microbusinesses that received assistance from community-based microenterprise development organizations, the report describes key findings including the numbers of jobs supported, wages paid to workers, and the income drawn by owners.
Income Patching among Microentrepreneurs
How are microentrepreneurs combining self- and wage employment in today’s economic context? This issue of our Trendlines series uses data from FIELD’s microTracker client outcomes survey to analyze how “income patching” has been used by microenterprise program clients in recent years. The brief publication discusses topics such as characteristics of patchers and their business outcomes, including hours worked, changes in revenues, and the creation of paid work for others.
Benchmarking the Performance of Business Development Services
This guide illustrates a step-by-step process that organizations providing business development services can use to generate benchmarking data related to these services on the microTracker site, and through consulting services with microTracker staff.
Leading the Pack, On Par, or Shaky? Benchmarking Loan Program Performance
This guide illustrates a step-by-step process that organizations engaged in microlending can use to generate benchmarking data related to lending on the microTracker site.
Courses to Employment: Partnering to Create Paths to Education and Careers
This publication summarizes research from AspenWSI’s Courses to Employment project, which studied how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to help low-income adults succeed in the classroom and the labor market. The report provides an overview of the approach and strategies these partnerships use, how these partnerships are structured in terms of institutional roles and responsibilities, what factors influence how these partnerships are structured, and describes the education and employment outcomes participating students achieved during the Courses to Employment project. This publication is geared towards policymakers and investors who are interested in supporting models that increase the success rates of adults in community college and to workforce development leaders who are interested in building or sustaining collaborative efforts to support workers in their labor markets as well as learning about innovative approaches to curricula, training and instruction, employer engagement strategies, and support services. This in-depth look at Courses to Employment (C2E) strategies will be useful to those already engaged in this work as well as to newcomers to this field of practice. Courses to Employment was funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.
A Strong Foundation: Key Capacities of Construction Pre-Apprenticeship Programs
This publication shares research from site visits conducted to construction pre-apprenticeship programs in Baltimore, Hartford, Milwaukee and Portland (OR). Findings from the site visits, which included interviews and focus groups with pre-apprenticeship program staff, public officials, philanthropic leaders, construction industry leaders and employers, and pre-apprenticeship participants, showed programs in these cities to be of high value to workers, employers and other stakeholders in the their regional construction labor market. The publication reviews how programs target a variety of education and employment outcomes for workers and use industry networks and staff expertise in order to meet a wide range of worker and employer needs in the construction industry. WSI also makes several recommendations about how pre-apprenticeship programs could be better supported to help their participants achieve outcomes that are aligned with participants’ interests and needs as well as the realities of the labor market. This research was supported by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of a project investigating how pre-apprenticeship programs are used to train low-income and disadvantaged adults for careers in construction.
Key Data on the Scale of Microlending in the U.S.
Drawn from data collected during the 2009 U.S. Microenterprise Census that collected fy2008 data, this report seeks to better understand lending institutions and the financial products that they offer. The report then compares the largest lenders to smaller lenders to draw out additional trends and information.
The Price of Persistence: How Nonprofit - Community College Partnerships Manage and Blend Diverse Funding Streams
This report describes how nonprofit - community college partnerships, participating in the Courses to Employment (CTE) demonstration project, leverage multiple funding streams to address the barriers of low-income, adult learners to help them persist and complete their educations in community college, and to ultimately succeed in the labor market.
Funder Guide 16: Microenterprise Programs and Job Creation
Summarizes recent research results indicating the success of microenterprises in creating jobs that provide income for owner and employees alike. It also suggests ways funders might support programs in their services that assist entrepreneurs to succeed and grow their businesses. (4 pages)
