Part 3, An unconventional view of the veteran transition ecosystem

Part 3 of 5: An Introduction to Headlamp: Nonprofit Veteran Service Organizations (Okay, this is starting to feel like a manifesto.)

Over the past decade(+), nonprofit Veteran Service Organizations have emerged as the engine of veteran transition. There is really nothing else like the ecosystem that has evolved to support veterans. By virtue of their membership, their volunteers, their incredible breadth and depth of services, their funders and sponsors, taken together, they are the true veteran community. And, to the same (or even greater) extent that veterans are undervalued by the workforce, we believe that this veteran community is undervalued for the services it delivers and the value it creates.?

This is why we ask “What is the value of the veteran community and how can we grow it”.

But, the system is not without its faults. To say that this ecosystem is a “sea of resources” is not an overstatement (that is exactly what the Department of Labor and the VA called it in 2020 when they issued their “veteran employment challenge”). And like any sea, the veteran transition ecosystem is difficult to navigate without the right tools and without the right help.

For both employers and veterans.

The problem:

We will discuss why we think that employers don’t have a veteran hiring problem (spoiler: they just have a hiring problem) in our next paper. However, employers tell us that they are frustrated with trying to navigate (i.e. choosing which to work with from among) the thousands of nonprofits that prepare veterans for employment.?

And why shouldn’t they be frustrated? The fractured ecosystem is a result of necessary fragmentation to meet the wide range of veteran needs. That begs repeating: to meet veteran needs. Not employers’ needs. And with 200k+ veterans leaving the service every year, from 2 components (Active and Reserve), 7 services (Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard and the National Guard), hundreds of job specialties and as varied in demographics as the entire United States population, the needs of veterans are met by thousands of potential sources for talent for employers. Where should employers start to find enough of the right talent??

Surely all of the talent they need is not in one spot. So how many should they engage with?

With so many potential routes to navigate and so many talent-hungry employers, much of the system is siloed, just from the fact that employers have limited bandwidth. Veterans who come to the sea of resources now not only need to contend with “what services are best for me”, but also “what outcomes am I looking for.” A tall order for anyone who seeks help in the first place! So, with time being their most limited resource in transition, a veteran is forced to pick a silo (or two or three) and jump in, hoping for an outcome they can live with.

The solution:

We imagine a smoother system.?

Scale, not silos.

The best outcomes arise when employers can select from the largest number of veterans, and when veterans see the largest number of employers that want to hire them. It is a simple mathematical truth. The challenge is, attaining true scale is beyond the budget of most nonprofits, even those with generous sponsors.?

We want to scale things that any one nonprofit can’t do well on their own. This is why we are a “community of communities” - taking advantage of the scale achieved by a collective without sacrificing any autonomy. We think that a decentralized solution (aligned by incentives and connected with data) can offer veterans, and employers, the scale they need.

Stakeholder Capitalism

Our vision is to enable nonprofit stakeholders to share in the value creation unlocked by both the greater recognition of the value that veterans bring to the workforce, (in the form of veterans getting better jobs than they do now), and the incremental value created by being more effective at their mission by participating in the community (helping to scale, reducing information asymmetry).???

New technologies enable us to manage this process with fairly low transaction costs. The difficult part is establishing the economics to align incentives. We want to work closely with the nonprofits to define the requirements. We will implement the technologies needed as the requirements emerge. More on this as we get ready to relaunch our website.

Data Sharing

In addition to technology to help a decentralized group govern their incentives, we also see a need to enable greater data sharing. Data is the real currency that helps the veteran community we are imagining to create value. We think that all the data that can help a veteran needs to be readily available to ALL nonprofits and of course to the veterans themselves. We envision a system where veterans opt in to share data with those they trust, and where nonprofits get access to anonymized data shared by veterans and other nonprofits.

By making data accessible to veterans, (data that already exists but is not available), we can reduce information asymmetry.? Data sharing enables veterans to make better use of the resources available to them, which increases the probability of a successful outcome. For nonprofits, data sharing enables them to learn how to better serve veterans and gives them the ability to optimize and/or expand their services.?

Keep in mind that to make data shareable, we know this community will want it to be private and secure. Again, existing technologies can enable things like a single sign-on, secure profile sharing, and anonymized data aggregation.?

Community First

As we have previously stated, in no way do we want to provide services that are already available.? A lot of expertise has already been developed and is available in the veteran community. We just want to help make that expertise more available to veterans and make the outcomes more predictable and valuable to employers.

Our focus is to align incentives among and within stakeholders (i.e. among veterans, nonprofits, and employers, and within the nonprofit ecosystem) and provide tools that increase success. We see many benefits of joining a larger community: nonprofits get access to more veterans, veterans get access to more resources, veterans get access to more employers, and employers get access to more veterans.?

The network benefits of scale and community are incredibly powerful. And a community of veterans, nonprofits and employers creates much more value than any one entity could.