October 2007
Georgia Trend Magazine
By Shannon Wilder

As it celebrates its 30th year, the Marietta based Tommy Nobis Center estimates it has helped some 15,000 disabled youths and adults in the Metro Atlanta area find work.

That's no mean feat, says President and CEO Connie Kirk, who's been with the organization since its inception.  "Seventy percent of adults with disabilities are unemployed," she says.  "Compare that to the general population with a 5 percent unemployment rate.  There's a significant need for assisting people to assist themselves."

The Nobis center employs a variety of means, from providing job skills training to placing clients--many referred by its close partner, the Georgia Department of Labor's Vocational Rehabilitation Services--on site with other partners, performing functions ranging from clerical to janitorial.

The center operates a production center (warehousing, packaging, shipping) at its headquarters.  Business services are also offered onsite for clients, who include NAS, Social Security Administration and HUD. 

Though the center receives payment for these services, all funds are plowed back into operations.  That's a boon, says co-founder and former Atlanta Falcons linebacker Tommy Nobis, because it means the center doesn't have to spend all year fund raising.

The center kicked off its fourth decade by branching out, establishing a base in Rome (at the Department of Labor's request) from which it will enhance its community based efforts.  Such programs, Kirk says, include a partnership with Kroger that involves training clients in an actual store.  Other partners include WellStar, DHL, Owens & Minor and First Data.

In the end, however, it's about more than just getting someone a job; it's about changing lives for the better.  So many clients, Nobis says, "never thought they'd be able to make it on their own...driving an automobile, having their own apartment, buying their own clothes, just being self-supportive, making down payments on a home.  To know that we have played a small part in that, you can imagine how gratifying that is."


May 2007
Marietta Daily Journal
By Rebecca Fowler

A Success Story 30 Years in Making

CEO Connie Kirk has been with the Tommy Nobis Center since its beginning in 1977 when the staff started training people with disabilities to learn new job skills in an old trailer donated by a construction company.  Now, with 16,000 clients having been placed in new jobs, Ms. Kirk praises the Cobb business community for welcoming Nobis alumni into the work force.

Nobis Center landmark anniversary celebrates helping 16,000 with disabilities find new jobs

Marietta--Sometimes, as in the case of the Tommy Nobis Center, the numbers just add up.

This year, the center celebrates an impressive milestone--30 successful years of assisting metro-Atlanta residents who have disabilities.  But an even more impressive number is the 16,000 clients, as the center calls them, who have been trained and placed into jobs since it opened its doors three decades ago, some 117 in the past year alone. 

Through its job training, the center has helped save $1.4 million in public assistance money that would have been paid to newly independent clients.

But Tommy Nobis, the former "Mr. Falcon" and the center's namesake and co-founder, insists that, "the dollar amount isn't the real importance here."  The real importance, he said, is the pride these people feel in what they've accomplished. 

Nobis, along with Joyce Slaughter and Bobbie Knopf, founded The Tommy Nobis Center in 1977.

Ms. Knopf taught Ms. Slaughter's daughter, Karen, in special education at Northside High School in Atlanta.  The two women soon realized the limited opportunities available post-graduation for people like Karen Slaughter.

Instead of waiting for something to be done about it, they took matters into their own hands.  Ms. Slaughter and Ms. Knopf conducted a needs assessment, Nobis said, and then invited him to a meeting. 

"It was a pretty easy sale," Nobis said, who was widely known as a staunch supporter of the Special Olympics.  "I went to one meeting and in that meeting I saw that there was a great need for this in this area."

In only 30 years, the center has grown from its humble roots into a nationally recognized program.  "The center started in a trailer donated by an old construction company." Nobis said.

In 1991, the program moved to a brand new 52,000-square-foot facility on Bells Ferry Road.  "The community supported it so much that the day we moved in, it was completely paid for," said Connie Kirk, CEO of the Tommy Nobis Center.

"If you have a disability, you want to live in Cobb County," Ms. Kirk said.  "So much is available here.  This is the friendliest, most responsive community to the needs of people with disabilities."

Ms. Kirk should know--she has been with the Tommy Nobis Center since its beginning in 1977.  "I didn't intend to be here this long when I first started.  This is the best career, because there's so much job satisfaction and success around you."  She plans to stay with the center until her retirement, which she hopes will be within the next four or five years.

When asked if she'd noticed any changes in the center's program in 30 years, she proudly described its recent switch to community based services.  "One-hundred percent of what we did in 1977 was housed in the facility."  Clients were trained in and employed at the center, she said.  Recently, however, "our referral services and our clients said, 'We want to train in a real world, not a simulated environment,'" center vice president Karen Carlisle said.

Today, the majority of training and employment opportunities are conducted in the Cobb community.  To illustrate, Ms. Kirk described a six-week training program partnering with Cobb Kroger stores.  "We take a crew and a training supervisor...they're there for six weeks," she said.  Clients spend two weeks testing out the various departments within Kroger and then decide on a specific area in which to train for the remaining four weeks.  At the end of the program, clients are placed in a job with a grocery store near their home.

"Our tagline is 'Abilities at Work,'" Ms. Kirk said.  People with disabilities really do have abilities at work."

2006
NISH Workplace

Department of Labor Honors Tommy Nobis Center

The Nonprofit Agency, Tommy Nobis Center (TNC) of Marietta, Georgia was one of just seven organizations honored recently by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) for creating opportunities in the workplace.

At the U.S. Department of Labor annual awards ceremony hosted by the department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao presented Connie Kirk, TNC president/CEO, with the Exemplary Public Interest Contribution Award (EPIC) for TNC's support of federal contractors in their Equal Employment Opportunity efforts.  The EPIC awards are the most desired equal employment opportunity awards ever instituted by the OFCCP.

"It is an unexpected honor to receive this award and to be recognized for exceeding national standards for equal opportunities and diversity in our organization," Kirk said.  "NISH's support with federal contracting enables the Center to expand our mission by offering integrated employment at multiple worksites.  As the national unemployment rate among people with disabilities hovers at 70 percent, we are proud to serve individuals to affect change in the Metro Atlanta area."

TNC Vice President of Human Resources, Linda Mosher, and NISH South Region Executive Director, Micky Gazaway, also attended the DOL awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.

"These employers are to be commended for their efforts to promote equal employment opportunities at their workplaces," Secretary Chao said during her remarks at the awards ceremony at the Department of Labor headquarters in Washington, D.C. in April.  "Their commitment to ensure that people with disabilities, veterans, people of color and women have access to gainful employment and the American dream is laudatory."

Each year, the Secretary of Labor, Assistant Secretary for the Employment Standards Administration, and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Federal Contract Compliance Programs present these awards at a ceremony honoring federal contractors and non-profit organizations that exemplify best corporate practices.  This furthers the OFCCP mission of nondiscrimination and equal employment opportunity.  It is also consistent with the agency's efforts to form alliances with corporations and public interest organizations.

The Tommy Nobis Center provides a variety of services to government agencies and manages eight federal contracts through the Javits-Wagner-O'Day (JWOD) Program that employ approximately 60 people.  TNC Federal Government customers include: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Social Security Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency.

TNC was founded in 1975 to assist youth and adults with disabilities transition from school to work.  At that time, a need for services in the north metro Atlanta area was identified and the advisory board approached one of the most visible sports celebrities in Georgia, Tommy Nobis, for support based on his commitment to Special Olympics and other programs for people with disabilities.

From those early years working out of a portable classroom, TNC has developed into a 52,000 square foot state-of-the-art facility in Cobb County.  Training and employment opportunities are provided at the facility and at 13 community based work sites throughout metro Atlanta, GA.  Today, TNC is one of the largest private, not-for-profit community services agencies in the state, serving more than 800 people annually and a total of some 13,000 people since it opened its doors 30 years ago.  Even more impressive, it consistently maintains 90 percent ratio for direct labor hours being performed by people with disabilities and nearly half of its workers are minorities.