Let me just say this plainly because I think it needs to be said.
There is a workforce asset sitting right in front of most technical organizations in this country and the vast majority of them are walking right past it. Not because they’re bad people. Not because they don’t care. But because nobody has framed it correctly for them yet. That’s on us. And that’s what I’m here to fix today.
So let’s talk about Persevere. And let’s talk about why if your organization touches technology in any meaningful way, you should already be in a conversation with us.
Here’s who we are. Persevere is a national nonprofit that trains people with justice involvement in full-stack development, data operations, technical support, customer success operations, QA, and AI-adjacent skills. We take people the system decided were done and we turn them into technical contributors who go out and outperform every expectation anyone ever had for them. That’s the mission. And the data behind it is frankly kind of stunning.
Our recidivism rate is under 3%. The national average is 68%. Let that gap sit with you for a second because it’s not a rounding error. That’s a complete transformation of outcomes. And 85% of employers who have hired our graduates say their performance matches or exceeds traditionally trained employees. These are not charity hires. These are performers.
Our graduates are landing starting salaries in the $55K to $65K range. In tech. Coming out of a program. That tells you everything you need to know about the caliber of what we’re producing.
Now here’s where I want to challenge the way most people think about this because the conventional framing is too small and it’s actually costing employers real money.
Most people hear “nonprofit trains coders” and immediately their brain goes to one place: junior developer. Entry level. Engineering team. Maybe. If we have a role. Let me know.
That’s the wrong frame. And I mean that with zero judgment because it’s the frame everyone defaults to. But it misses what our graduates actually are.
Think about your organization for a second. Think about every function that touches technology. Engineering, obviously. But also your customer success team that’s fielding technical onboarding calls and diagnosing why integrations break. Your help desk running Tier 2 support that requires actual troubleshooting, not just reading from a knowledge base. Your data team where your senior analysts are spending half their time cleaning pipelines instead of generating the insights they were hired to generate. Your operations people who are configuring tools and managing workflows and keeping the business running. Your QA function. Your AI-adjacent roles where someone needs to work alongside AI tools, validate outputs, test generated code.
Every single one of those functions has the same hidden problem. There’s a layer of work that requires a real technical brain, real contextual problem-solving, real judgment. It just doesn’t require a decade of experience. And right now in most organizations that work is landing on your most expensive, most experienced people because there’s nobody else who can handle it.
That’s the real cost center. And most companies aren’t even measuring it.
Our graduates are built to own that layer. I think of them as Lego blocks. Wherever you have a gap where technology meets the business and someone needs to think, solve, and execute, a Persevere graduate can snap right into it. Not just in engineering. Across the whole organization. That’s a fundamentally different conversation than “do you have any junior dev openings.”
Now let me address the thing that I know is already forming in the back of your head as you’re reading this.
You’re thinking about the process. The commitment. The overhead of a new partnership. The procurement cycle. The conversation with legal. I get it. I’ve seen what happens when workforce programs show up with volume promises and timeline commitments and hiring obligations attached and everyone’s calendar fills up before a single candidate ever walks through the door.
We don’t do any of that.
Our Preferred Employer Access model is structured access, not a staffing contract. Here’s what it actually looks like. You define two or three role categories across whatever functions are relevant to your organization. We monitor our candidate pipeline internally for release readiness and role alignment. When an aligned, release-ready candidate becomes available, you get priority notification. You have a defined window to evaluate. You have full discretion. You hire or you don’t. There is no hiring obligation. There is no volume commitment. There is no exclusivity arrangement.
And because we’re a nonprofit, there is no fee. Nothing. Zero. You are not paying us a placement percentage. You are not on the hook for a retainer. The access costs you nothing.
What you get is a standing seat at the front of the line for technical talent that performs. What you invest is a signature on a six-month access agreement and maybe twenty minutes on a discovery call.
That is one of the most asymmetric upside opportunities in workforce development right now and I genuinely believe most employers who haven’t engaged with us yet simply don’t know it exists.
I want to be direct about something else too because I think it matters.
The reason to partner with Persevere is not because it’s the right thing to do, even though it is. The reason to partner with Persevere is because it makes your organization better. The mission is powerful. The story of under 3% recidivism versus 68% national average is one of the most extraordinary outcomes in American workforce development. But none of that is why you should pick up the phone.
You should pick up the phone because your senior engineers and your senior CSMs and your senior data people are spending 30 to 50 percent of their time on work that doesn’t require them. That’s real dollars. That’s a real structural problem. And Persevere graduates fix it.
The mission supports the argument. It doesn’t lead it. That distinction matters.
If you lead a technical organization and you have people on your team doing work below their level, I’d genuinely love twenty minutes with you. No pitch deck required. No commitment on the other end. Just a conversation about where the gaps are and whether what we’re building at Persevere can help you close them.
Because the employers who are figuring this out right now are building something others are going to look back on and wish they’d seen earlier. The pattern is pretty clear to me at this point. The ones who engage first become anchor partners. The ones who wait are going to be calling us asking to get in line.
The line is forming. Come find out where you belong in it.
SPINMANTV.ME 
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