For nearly 30 years, Redefine Alliance has invested in employment social enterprises (ESEs) – mission-driven businesses that hire and support people overcoming the steepest barriers to employment, including histories of incarceration or homelessness.
Over time, we’ve seen that even the strongest individual ESEs face structural limits when operating alone. ButÂ
when ESEs grow in connected regional networks – alongside other inclusive employers, funders, and public partners – the surrounding systems start to shift.
That insight is behind a central pillar of our 2026-2030 strategy: we are working to build and strengthen regional ESE ecosystems.
Today, we’ll define what we mean by ecosystems, why we believe they matter, and where we’re focusing first. Future posts will go deeper into the how – including the specific levers, tests, and regional activities now underway.
What is a regional ESE ecosystem?
A regional ESE ecosystem is a dense, place-based network of interconnected ESEs and inclusive employers, supported by public, private, and social-sector partners working together to drive direct employment and broader systems change.
A few elements of this definition matter:
- Dense means a critical mass of organizations – not just one standout enterprise
- Place-based means rooted in a specific geography where stakeholders can align
- Interconnected means organizations share referrals, coordinate strategy, and advocate together
- Supported means capital, policy, workforce systems, and employers are increasingly aligned around inclusive hiring and support
As ESEs in a region reach critical mass, something powerful begins to happen. ESEs gain the collective standing to advocate for policy change. They can coordinate procurement bids that no individual organization could win alone. They can produce a track record compelling enough to attract funders and public investment. And over time, they can begin to influence how conventional employers think about hiring and how policymakers design and fund workforce programs.
All of this kickstarts a flywheel of reinforcing actions that enables the region to become increasingly self-sustaining over time, extending impact far beyond the workers directly employed by ESEs.
We believe that ecosystems will be the most reliable path towards achieving transformative impact at scale.
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Our long-term ambition – and where we’re focusing first
By 2040, our ambition is to help catalyze upwards of 20 thriving regional ESE ecosystems, supporting roughly 250,000 individuals annually in quality jobs and on pathways to lasting economic power.
Over the next five years, we’re focusing deeply on three priority ecosystems, as we work to build a practical playbook for how ecosystems develop. We selected these ecosystems both for their long-term impact potential and their differing stages of development. These ecosystems are:
- Los Angeles / California (more established): How can coordinated action unlock larger-scale opportunities no single organization could capture alone?
- Chicago / Illinois (expanding): Can policy change unlock the funding and infrastructure needed to accelerate ecosystem growth?
- Central Appalachia (emerging): Can repayable capital help seed a new ecosystem faster and more sustainably than grant funding alone?
Over the next several weeks, we’ll be introducing more about each of these ecosystems, sharing more about our approach and background, and highlighting where partners like you can engage.
