OUR STORY
Employment for Seniors, originally named "The Senior Citizens Placement Bureau of Franklin County", has served individuals 50 and up within the Columbus Metropolitan area for almost 50 years. The vision was conceived in 1972 by Mr. Julian Marcus, a retired businessman, who observed “the malaise affecting these alert and vigorous seniors” and stereotypes placed on older adults through his interaction with the Franklin County Council on Aging. He believed the emotional strain and mental anxiety that came with the limited income of the older adults he encountered could be “cured if they had something constructive and challenging to occupy their time.”
Through a partnership and support from Mrs. Ardath Lynch, Director of Central Ohio Area Agency, they “developed a task force to seek out the degree of interest in administering to various needs of aging [to uncover] a consensus” and “direction to go”.
Based on initial inquiries the task force determined that “A separate agency with the single purpose of bringing seniors and employers together for job interviews might hopefully result in a mutual agreement on terms of employment that would serve the need directly and precisely.”
Through generous donations from The Columbus Foundation that “considered favorably [the idea for the organization]…and funded its first year’s operation through the Clarence Thompson Reinberger foundation of Cleveland grant, [as well as a] fund created by the late Ralph N Hubbard of New York who was a member of a distinguished Columbus family and augmented by voluntary contributions from many Columbus individuals, corporations, financial institutions and other local foundations” the bureau was created.
Excited applicants arrived the first day, in September 1972, and have been aided in finding local employment ever since. MatureWorks still stands by that original initiative, in which “The operation of the Bureau is extremely simple. Both employers and seniors may register with it at no cost or binding obligation on either…The Bureau does not pretend to act as an employment agency in the usual sense of the phrase… It asks only that either the employer or the applicant informs it if the arranged interview works out satisfactorily, and the applicant is hired.”
Employment for Seniors, now under the name Mature Works, continues its original commitment today to build the community bond through providing services to both older adults and employers seeking experienced individuals.