For the millions struggling with poverty, finding a pathway to a thriving and fulfilling life can sometimes seem like an unattainable dream. This group is full of people who are eager to work, ready to grow, and hungry for opportunity. While government programs and top-down approaches can offer short-term relief, the cycle of temporarily escaping poverty and slipping back into it persists.

CrossPurpose, a Denver-based nonprofit, believes the answer isn’t more aid, but more relationships. Its mission is bold: abolish poverty by equipping people with the skills, confidence, and connections to thrive.

While "building skills for a better career" is at the heart of the model, it's more than resumes or job training. It's about rewriting stories, rebuilding dignity, and restoring relationships. 

"There's no significant change without a significant relationship," said CrossPurpose CEO and cofounder Jason Janz.

For business leaders and hiring managers, CrossPurpose’s work transcends just "inspiring." It’s a powerful lever for tapping into a hidden workforce, reducing turnover, and building teams rooted in loyalty and resilience.

A different kind of intervention

Janz's personal journey shapes everything about CrossPurpose. Growing up in poverty in Green Bay, Wisconsin, he remembers the sting of being told "no" over and over again — to both opportunities and necessities. Later, as a pastor in suburban Denver, he experienced a different type of poverty. 

"I felt some form of spiritual poverty in my own life, like a lack of meaning," Janz explained. "I was in the center of suburban America, and my heart started to beat for people that grew up like me."

In 2008, Janz and his wife moved their family into Denver’s urban center, and committed to offering more than temporary aid. 

"Everything you hear about American poverty — food, clothing, homeless shelters — that’s topical ointment on a wound that needs healing from the very core," he said.

Instead, CrossPurpose was born with a different philosophy: helping people get out of poverty by walking with them all the way to prosperity — whether that’s career advancement, entrepreneurship, wealth building, or homeownership. 

"There’s the old saying: 'If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them to fish, you feed them for life.' But that only gets people halfway. We want them to own the pond," Janz said.

A holistic approach to poverty

CrossPurpose takes a unique approach to poverty. Their model focuses on abolishing economic, relational, and spiritual poverty. And they do it at no cost to participants.

As Janz explained, "poverty is often fruit on the tree of a broken world and broken system that holds people back." Traumatic experiences, a lack of relationships, and other complex issues are often at the root of that tree.

As such, CrossPurpose believes that simply placing a person in a job is not the pathway to true and lasting transformation. But building these three types of capital to abolish poverty is one route:

1. Spiritual capital: CrossPurpose believes that "spiritual poverty needs to be addressed in order for long-term transformation to take hold," and encourages spiritual development through a curriculum that teaches emotional awareness and regulation, healing from trauma, conflict resolution, and more.

2. Relational capital: Fostering deep relationships between "Leaders" and "Allies" (CrossPurpose calls participants "Leaders" and community volunteers "Allies."). Leaders chart their own path out of poverty, and Allies provide consistent encouragement, accountability, and connection.

3. Economic capital: Providing career training, job placement with credentials, and long-term financial coaching. CrossPurpose does not consider it a success until a participant lands a job paying at least $22 an hour — more than three times the income needed for an individual to be above the federal poverty level. Career tracks include the trades, IT, culinary, health care, sales, and transportation.

At the heart of this approach are the relationships. From the six-week "Launch" program that stabilizes immediate needs to the six-month "Leader" program for career training to the three-year "Legacy" program for wealth building, Leaders have a staff member who helps them navigate CrossPurpose and their journey "up the mountain," as Janz described it.

The organization also fosters peer-to-peer connections — Leaders who are walking up the mountain together and often form strong friendships. And there are the Allies — the community volunteers who whisper into a Leader's ear, "you can do this," throughout their journey. This connection is particularly unique: Allies are asked to identify their own poverty, and often learn as much as Leaders, in what Janz called a relationship of “mutual redemption.”

"In a world that's continually segregated, isolated, living in bubbles, you’re breaking down these relational silos that people have," Janz said.

And when those silos break down, worlds open up. Leaders are connected with individuals, ideas, and opportunities they may never have encountered outside of CrossPurpose, empowering them to rewrite their stories with confidence and clarity.

Unlocking the hidden workforce

For business leaders, CrossPurpose offers more than an inspiring narrative — it’s a recruiting strategy hiding in plain sight.

"Employers aren’t short on talent. They’re short on imagination," Janz said. 

"The workers they say they can’t find are often hidden behind the very filters they designed," he added, referring to an overreliance on conventional methods like degrees and resumes for finding candidates.

He points to what a Harvard Business School study called “hidden workers": millions of capable individuals — people who were previously incarcerated, veterans, young people without college degrees — who are often overlooked by traditional hiring systems. 

"These are people who could be loyal, productive employees," Janz said. 

Craig Hospital, a premier center for specialty neurorehabilitation and research, joined the CrossPurpose employer network in 2023 and hasn’t looked back. 

Introduced to CrossPurpose by Susi Szaltzer, a health care recruiter, the hospital was excited about the prospect of a new pool of Certified Nursing Assistant candidates. And then they saw the energy, drive, and ambition that CrossPurpose alums brought to the job.

"CrossPurpose alumni’s energy levels and desire to enter the workforce and improve their lives set them apart from others," Szaltzer said.

She points to one particular employee, Armilanie, as a CrossPurpose graduate who has made a significant impact on her coworkers and patients with her compassion and dedication. Armilanie credits the training she received at CrossPurpose, including inpatient care techniques and an emphasis on communication and professionalism, with her success at Craig Hospital.

CrossPurpose describes the Craig Hospital partnership as one that is "mutually beneficial, connecting passionate, well-trained graduates with meaningful careers … to truly transform lives."

Building the American Dream

For CrossPurpose Leaders, the transformation is often just as profound. Janz told the story of a woman who, just a year earlier, was living in poverty. With guidance from CrossPurpose on budgeting and savings, she built $38,000 in her account.

Another graduate recently purchased a duplex with her sister. “When I congratulated her, she said, ‘Yes, now on to house No. 2,’" Janz recalled. "That’s a real estate investor in her 20s — the daughter of immigrants. That’s the American Dream."

These aren’t anomalies. Over 1,600 people have graduated from CrossPurpose since its founding, and many are building generational wealth where there was none before.

Janz noted that what many Leaders praise about their time in CrossPurpose is more than just getting a job or building savings: It’s the human connections they’ve made. 

"I never thought I would have people like this in my life," said one Leader in a testimonial on the organization's website. "I gained guidance here, and I don't feel stuck anymore, and I was able to get a job as a medical assistant."

CrossPurpose’s story challenges traditional narratives. Poverty, Janz argued, isn’t a government problem to fix but a community problem to solve — together. 

"We still believe in the American Dream," he said. "Businesses need workers. Workers need jobs. Rather than fighting and isolating, what if we just said: 'Don’t we all care about our neighbor?'"

For employers, that means seeing beyond the resume to the person. For communities, it means forging unlikely friendships across class and culture. For the individuals CrossPurpose serves, it means reclaiming dignity, hope, and opportunity.

CrossPurpose is supported by Stand Together Trust, which provides funding and strategic capabilities to innovators, scholars, and social entrepreneurs to develop new and better ways to tackle America’s biggest problems. 

Learn more about Stand Together’s efforts to transform the future of work and explore ways you can partner with us.