Young Veterans Career Transition

Junior enlisted service members experience a wide range of challenges upon leaving active service, putting them at high risk for poor transition outcomes. This project examines these challenges and proposes tri-sector strategies for improving outcomes. 

Welcome to the NewImpact.share pages for Young Veterans Career Transition, an innovation catalyst project led by NewImpact to address the challenges associated with the transition of junior enlisted service members from the military into civilian life.

This project, which ran from February 2022 - May 2022, with

USO⁠

and support from the

Schultz Family Foundation⁠

and, focused on the junior enlisted service members (E1-E4), with the goal of (1) discovering ways to leverage existing resources to create a more effective and efficient transition process, and (2) increasing the efficiency of organizations designed to support military personnel.

We invite you to explore these pages, and

connect with us⁠

if your organization is interested in learning more about this project or any of our work.

What’s Inside:

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Heard & Learned⁠

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About NewImpact⁠

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Creating Tri-Sector Strategies for Military Transition

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Of the over 200,000 service members leaving the military each year, an estimated 75 percent are junior enlisted members, a demographic facing significant challenges post-military transition. NewImpact’s research helped to validate several barriers for positive outcomes, including knowledge and agency barriers, administrative bottlenecks, lack of awareness of VSO resources, and the challenges of transitioning from military to civilian culture.

One of the major challenges currently faced by transitioning personnel is that despite the estimated 40,000+ existing organizations designed to assist them, the veteran support ecosystem as a whole is disjointed and difficult to navigate, making it challenging for individuals to find the support they need. NewImpact developed a tri-sector strategy for increasing the efficacy of the VSO/MSO ecosystem with the intended goal of supporting and enhancing post-transition outcomes for junior enlisted service members. This effort was focused on young veterans however, will enhance the experience for all veterans.

Recommendation: An MSO/VSO Ecosystem Co-op

This recommendation aims to leverage and enlist the robust veteran support ecosystem to create an Ecosystem Co-operative. Activating a thriving MSO/VSO ecosystem will better support and pay for the services required to make the transition to civilian life most effective. Focusing on workforce transition, an ecosystem with defined structure is key to ensure collaboration and inclusivity, while creating a culture where membership is seen as highly beneficial to the ecosystem and the individual member’s organizational success. A semi-decentralized governance model will set explicit expectations for responsibilities, accountability, and inform revenue sharing.

Resources Leveraged:

Private Sector: Businesses and organizations in the private sector offer expertise in hiring trends and also provide grant funding

Public Sector: Offers top-of-funnel referrals to VSOs while veteran is still in stable environment; provides grant funding

Social Sector: Nonprofit MSOs and VSOs offer free career services, including - resume review, interview coaching, networking, job placement, mentoring, assistive technology. Referrals and aggregate client data systems.

Benefits Realized:

Private Sector: Increased pipeline for strong job candidates, ability for private sector orgs reach DEI targets

Public Sector: Hand off to trusted and qualified MSO/VSOs, better long term outcomes for veterans, less spending on unemployment claims, an all-volunteer military force

Social Sector: Hand off to trusted and qualified MSO/VSOs, exposure to a broader network of services options for referrals (local and niche), funding opportunities

Project Recommendations: A Tri-Sector Strategy

The presentation deck below offers (1) a description of the high-level challenges faced by junior enlisted service members upon their transition into civilian life, (2) the desk research and tool outcomes used throughout the span of this project to help identify key leverage points in the system, and (3) the connecting of dots into two unique and connected tri-sector strategies designed with the goal of enhancing the outcomes for this underserved veteran population.

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