Dog Tag

Dog Tag Inc. (DTI) empowers transitioning veterans with service-connected disabilities, military spouses, and caregivers to find community and purpose outside the military through an unexpected combination of a bakery and classroom. Our social enterprise, Dog Tag Bakery, acts as a living business school. Our high-touch, high impact approach allows us to provide individualized attention to our fellows, connecting them with the resources and tools needed to achieve their version of success. 

With a holistic focus on developing the whole person and facilitating the military-to-civilian cultural shift, DTI’s innovative business and entrepreneurship-focused fellowship program reflects the needs of today’s transitioning veterans, military spouses, and caregivers. Fellows gain business skills in both the classroom and in practice at Dog Tag Bakery. We integrate holistic and experiential learning, challenging our Fellows to apply their knowledge in our thriving, real-world bakery.

We seek to ignite the human spirit and help those we serve define their individual versions of success and build a roadmap of next steps towards achieving their goals. Our five-month program provides Fellows with the time, space, and resources to develop real insight into where they have been, where they are today, where they’d like to be in the future, and how to get there. The power of our program extends beyond individual personal and professional development; our program allows Fellows to find a community within their cohort, among our alumni, and across our diverse network of partners. 

We serve transitioning veterans with service-connected disabilities, military spouses and caregivers through our fellowship program. DTI has enrolled 205 Fellows across our first sixteen (16) cohorts to date, achieving a 93% graduation rate. Of graduates:

• 48% are either full time or part-time employed at another organization
• 22% are either full time or part-time entrepreneurs 
  • 52% of all respondents (not just those who self-identify as entrepreneurs) noted that post-fellowship they were actively working on a business idea, with 53% of those individuals specifically working on a business idea they began while in the fellowship
• 14% are pursuing education either full or part-time
  • 57% of survey respondents have pursued additional education since the fellowship, and of those that did, 63% indicated they made that decision directly because of their fellowship experience
• Over 80% of alumni feel more confident in the decisions they make about their professional life and have greater clarity about their professional goals thanks to the fellowship
• 88% of alumni felt that the fellowship gave them the tools they needed to seek new professional opportunities
• Over 75% of alumni feel that the fellowship helped them chart a path that builds on their strengths, approach their professional life with more flexibility, and increase their access to new career paths