SkillWorks is the largest effort in Boston’s history to substantially improve workforce development services for both low-skill/low-income residents and for business. The initiative brings major new investment from a coalition of Boston and national funders, including state and local public-sector resources, to lay the foundation for sustained improvements in the city’s workforce development services.
Over five years, SkillWorks will begin the process of long-term, large-scale, sustainable improvements to the workforce development system by focusing on three key systems change strategies:
- Building workforce intermediary capacity;
- Workforce Partnership programs; and
- Public policy advocacy.
Goals
The goals of SkillWorks are to:
- Help low-income individuals attain family-supporting jobs;
- Improve the quality of the workforce for businesses in vibrant economic sectors with high-quality jobs;
- Increase the resources targeted to education and skills training;
- Increase the capacity of workforce development providers to meet the human resource development needs of employers and low-income individuals; and
- Promote changes to public policy that will support the advancement of low-income individuals into family-sustaining jobs.
Workforce Partnerships
Workforce Partnerships push the city’s workforce development system to demonstrate how it should operate in order to meet the goals of the initiative to serve employers and low-income workers. Workforce Partnerships are intermediaries that organize employers, workers, training agencies, and community organizations to provide easy access to career advancement services for job seekers and incumbent low-income workers. For these individuals, Workforce Partnerships provide advancement services consisting of basic education, vocational skills, career coaching, and asset development. Workforce Partnerships also help employers address skill shortages and challenges in hiring, retaining, and advancing their entry-level workforce.
Workforce Partnerships are supported by two levels of investment from the initiative: implementation grants to expand and enhance high-performing consortia with a wide range of partners; and planning grants to seed the development of new consortia.
Capacity Building
The Capacity Building component of SkillWorks is a multi-year program to address challenges that workforce development service providers face in providing career advancement services to low-income individuals. In SkillWorks’ first three years, the initiative awarded six grants of up to $135,000 for operational support and technical management consulting to strengthen the organizational structures, systems, and staff of community-based organizations. Four of these six organizations now participate in funded Workforce Partnerships.
The second phase of Capacity Building focuses on helping the Workforce Partnerships achieve the SkillWorks goals for serving employers and advancing low-income workers. These organizations need assistance in building their capacity to clarify employer skill requirements for career pathways and in developing strategies to access a variety of funding sources to provide a broad array of pre- and post-placement interventions leading to family-supporting jobs. The Capacity Building component involves customized technical assistance, peer learning networks, staff training workshops, and consulting resources to strengthen organizational structures.
Public Policy Advocacy
The Public Policy Advocacy component of SkillWorks seeks to achieve long-term, sustainable improvements in the workforce development system’s ability to help low-income residents advance to economic self-sufficiency and employers to have a skilled, productive workforce. The Capacity Building and Workforce Partnerships components raise the visibility of regulatory and policy issues that affect their ability to reach scale and provide sustainable efforts to reach these goals. Advocacy responds to these issues.
Systems Change Agenda
The workforce development system is highly complex, under-funded, and challenged to meet the needs of low-income neighborhood residents and of employers. Through the interaction of its three components, SkillWorks supports sectoral partnerships or intermediaries that develop strategies to reach into neighborhoods and recruit the “hardest to serve,” as well as strategies to reach into companies and recruit workers stagnating in low-wage jobs.
Public Policy Advocacy helps build support among legislators, public agency administrators, and grassroots constituents for strong, enduring workforce intermediaries capable of linking low-income individuals with basic skills, education, training, support services, and employment in vibrant sectors of the economy and of addressing the skilled workforce needs of business.
Financing
The initiative will commit $15 million over five years to planning, design, and the delivery of services.
SkillWorks creatively uses private foundation funds to challenge public workforce development programs to invest in:
- Bringing these innovations to scale;
- Integrating them into the delivery system; and
- Making them sustainable.
Financing for SkillWorks is an unusual public/private partnership that provides flexible, long-term investments to grantees. Thirteen Boston and national foundations are committed to the initiative: the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund and Carl S. Adams Memorial Fund, Bank of America, N.A., trustee; Boston 2004; The Boston Foundation; the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust; the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation; the William Randolph Hearst Foundation; the Hyams Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; The John Merck Fund; the Rockefeller Foundation; State Street Foundation, and the United Way of Massachusetts Bay. Public funders that contribute to the initiative include Boston’s Neighborhood Jobs Trust and the Governor’s WIA Discretionary Grant.
Workforce Partnerships are encouraged and supported to develop innovative alternative funding sources to meet the ongoing needs of participants. Among the options being explored are employer tuition reimbursements, direct employer purchase of training, tax credit investments, and revenue-generating strategies, such as fees for “temp-to-perm” job placements.
The Public Policy Advocacy grantee works to increase resources for workforce intermediaries through legislative advocacy for programs such as access to Food Stamp Employment and Training funds, a trust fund for workforce intermediaries, support for workplace literacy, and tuition grants for low-income workers to attend college.
Evaluation
SkillWorks has set ambitious goals both for services to its dual customers and for improving how the workforce development system delivers services. It has the potential to serve as a model for the state and for workforce development systems across the country.
A comprehensive evaluation of SkillWorks is being conducted by a partnership between Abt Associates and Mount Auburn Associates. The evaluation is testing SkillWorks’ assumptions about its three-pronged approach to improving conditions for employers and low income workers. It will document successful practices to replicate, barriers that impede systems reforms, and the overall impact on the workforce system of this significant investment in building economic opportunity for metropolitan Boston.
Initiative Management
SkillWorks is a program of the Boston Funders Group, which is the policymaking and oversight body. Regardless of the size of its investment, each SkillWorks investor has one vote on grant awards and decisions on the initiative’s strategic direction. Standing committees of the Funders Group—Workforce Partnerships, Public Policy Advocacy, Capacity Building, and Evaluation—provide oversight to the grantees and guide program design. SkillWorks is independently staffed to manage implementation, coordinate the three components, and support the funders’ planning to sustain the initiative.
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Boston Workforce Development Initiative Systems Reform 
