Sam's Club gives to Dallas nonprofit for workforce training

• About 4 million 16- to 24-year-olds are either not in school or not working — a number that started growing after the pandemic.

State of play: Sam's Club is giving $1.5 million to Dallas-based Big Thought and another $1.5 million to Atlanta-based SHRM Foundation, the company announced Thursday.

• Big Thought estimates more than 200,000 young North Texans are not working or in school.

Between the lines: Sam's Club appears to like North Texas. The company has 22 stores in the region and its first all-digital store in Grapevine last year.

• The company also had an innovation center in Dallas, but it closed last year.

Context: Sam's Club launched a 10-week high school internship program in 2022, focusing on youth from low-income communities.

• The interns get professional training and are introduced to different Sam's Club jobs — like those in the bakery or at checkout.

What they're doing: The Big Thought grant will build on the internship program.

• The nonprofit, which offers literacy and learning programs, will connect other community-based organizations with employers to offer career development and options to underemployed teens and young adults.

• Sam's Club has already offered a 10-week workforce training program to nine young adults in the Dallas area while working with Big Thought. The goal is to expand to a larger scale.

The big picture: The company sees the effort as a "call to action" for other employers to invest in community workforce development, Sam's Club chief people officer Claire MacIntyre tells Axios.

• "We hope to inspire, we hope to encourage, we hope to give confidence to other employers to get involved and to start to put these kind of programs in place as well," MacIntyre says.