Case Study: How the United Way & Communities United helps 200 job seekers in Edmonton, with limited resources

The Organization

Communities United is an organization and project in five Edmonton neighbourhoods that is building connections to strengthen the lives of individuals and families. This work brings together 16 community & nonprofit organizations with the United Way, Edmonton Community Foundation and the City of Edmonton as funders. 

The Challenge: Scaling needs assessment of job seekers & getting better workforce data, with limited resources

The organizations within the coalition all have different focus groups they support in finding work. Collectively, they did not have enough data to create a clear picture of job seekers in the communities they were working in and what their needs were. They had some historical data from Statistics Canada. But this was already a few years old and they needed to get a better sense of the current makeup and needs of job seekers today. In the midst of this project, the Covid-19 pandemic hit hard, making it even more challenging for the organizations to connect with and help job seekers.

The Solution: A powerful yet easy to use platform to scale up their team

Communities United needed a platform that would help them connect with job seekers, get clear information on their needs and help them create a workforce profile about the population they would be working with. They came across MyMatchWork (MatchWork), an online platform which helps nonprofit organizations connect people to meaningful work while giving the organizations the insights they need to focus on services which matter for their job seeking clients.

The Result: Onboading 200 job seekers and counting. And, a better understanding of the vocational needs of their communities.

With MatchWork, Communities United can now:

1. Connect with job seeking clients either in person or virtually.

2. Get a clear picture of each person’s work needs, employment barriers and employment opportunities.

3. Get a clear, real time workforce dashboard showing what the community as a whole needs from a work context, what their employment barriers and opportunities are collectively, and other key data points including how long it takes them to find work, what industries they can focus on and what strategies are working.

Their dashboard provides a simple yet powerful lens on the workforce population they support. This also makes it easier for them to share outcomes and provide reports to the project’s partners and funders.