Forge City Works
Annual Impact Report
2025
Opening Doors
In 2025, Forge City Works kept opening real doors to work, dignity, and opportunity.
Dear Friends,
At Forge City Works, we talk a lot about opening doors.
Some of those doors are literal. The front door to Fire by Forge. The door to The Grocery on Broad. The kitchen door that leads into prep, service, teamwork, and hard work.
But the doors that matter most are the ones those places can open in someone’s life. The door to a first real job. A second chance. A paycheck. A reference. A new skill. A new level of confidence. A future that starts to feel possible again.
That is what you helped make possible in 2025.
This year, Forge City Works impacted 69 trainees, including graduates who are still getting support. Twenty-eight trainees graduated from Level 1. Nineteen graduated from Level 2. Seventy-five percent of Level 1 graduates were employed within 30 days of exit. And across the year, our team logged 4,112 trainee touchpoints through ladders, case management, and SOR meetings.
Those numbers matter. They help tell the truth about this work.
This work is not quick. It is not magic. It takes time, structure, consistency, patience, coaching, and a whole lot of follow-through. It takes people showing up again and again for other people. That is what our staff do every day. That is what your support makes possible.
I keep thinking about one trainee I’ll call Marcus, not his real name.
When Marcus first came to us, he was quiet and guarded. He was watching everything. You could tell he was trying to figure out whether this place was real. Whether he could trust it. Whether he belonged here.
But he kept showing up.
He listened. He worked. He learned. Over time, he built confidence, skills, and trust. The change did not happen all at once. It usually doesn’t. But little by little, a new door opened.
That is what I love about this work. Sometimes the first door looks small. Learning knife skills. Making it through a full shift. Greeting a guest with confidence. Following a recipe. Working clean. Showing up on time. But those things are not small. They open into bigger things: stability, self-respect, income, momentum, and a different story about what your life can become.
We saw that same kind of impact through food access too. In 2025, The Grocery on Broad served an estimated 1,107 people. We provided $170,246 in program-related subsidies, and received $67,950.22 in SNAP revenue. That means more than food sold. It means more families got access to healthy food. It means neighbors could shop with dignity. It means we kept building a model where food is not just charity and not just commerce. It is community.
And the model itself remains strong. In 2025, after accounting for an additional $1.5 million in grant revenue that came in this year, Forge City Works’ revenue mix was approximately 50% earned income, 12% government funding, 35% grants, and 3% individual donations. That matters because it shows who we are. We are building something practical and mission-driven. Something rooted in both enterprise and impact. Something that uses real businesses to create real opportunity, while also relying on public and philanthropic partners who believe in the work and the people behind it.
Thank you for helping us do that.
Thank you for believing in our trainees, our staff, and our city. Thank you for helping us keep opening doors that too often stay shut for too many people. Thank you for investing in work that is practical, relational, and rooted in dignity.
There is still a lot of work ahead. We know that. But every day at Forge City Works, because of your support, more doors are opening.
With gratitude,
Ben Dubow
Executive Director
Forge City Works
