Home

The National Fund for Workforce Solutions is a partnership unprecedented in its scope. Nearly 200 funders are investing millions of dollars in local communities to help get people back to work and ensure that American businesses are able to compete. The economy is changing rapidly, as traditional jobs disappear and knowledge-based jobs, such as health care and precision tooling, take their place. That is leaving nearly 80 million Americans without the skills required to succeed. In 22 sites across the country, the National Fund is working closely with employers and leaders from the public and nonprofit sectors to find solutions, testing how the lessons learned from groundbreaking pilot projects can be applied on a national scale. The ultimate goal: helping employers and employees succeed in a post-recession economy.

Nine national investors lead the National Fund: the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the California Endowment; Ford Foundation; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; Microsoft; The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; The Hitachi Foundation; The Prudential Foundation; and the Walmart Foundation.

Most Recent Blog Posts

Employers & Employees
Funders

Knight Foundation invests $1.1 million in National Fund for Workforce Solutions

08/25/10

| by National Fund Staff

At a time when concern about job growth dominates the economic news, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded a new $1.1 million grant to the National Fund for Workforce Solutions to test local approaches to preparing jobseekers and workers for careers.

“Few things are more important to a person than having a job. This investment is critical to strengthening our job training programs in America and an important legacy program for Knight,” said Damian Thorman, Knight Foundation national program director and incoming chair of the National Fund. “We need to take chances and learn how change can be made, and then help communities adopt tested...

Funders

Podcast Features National Fund Executive Director; Boston Collaborative Pens Op-Ed in Boston Herald

08/10/10

| by National Fund Staff

The Workforce Institute, a think tank that helps organizations drive performance by addressing human capital management issues that affect both hourly and salaried employees, features the National Fund in its latest post. Perhaps most interesting, is a podcast interview with Fred Dedrick, National Fund Executive Director – Dedrick explains, in a good bit of detail, the strategic approach of the National Fund and its 23 sites.

Loh-Sze Leung, executive director of...

Employers & Employees
Funders
Policymakers

White House Selects National Fund for Workforce Solutions for Landmark Social Innovation Fund

07/22/10

| by National Fund Staff

First Lady Michelle Obama describes the Social Innovation Fund this way: “By focusing on high-impact, results-oriented nonprofits, we will ensure that government dollars are spent in a way that is effective, accountable and worthy of public trust.”

Today, the White House announced that the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, with its implementation partner Jobs for the Future, has been selected as one of those high-impact nonprofit organizations. (Click here to read the press release.) The National Fund has been awarded a two-year grant to help successful National Fund sites “scale up,” expanding their work in key...

Funders
Policymakers

NFWS Sites in the News: A Job Helps Mother Get Beyond Tragedy; New Study Cites "Middle Skills" Shortage

07/18/10

| by National Fund Staff

The 22 sites of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions are working at “ground zero” of a national crisis: unemployment that appears stuck at almost 10 percent. More and more, local media are searching for innovative, local solutions. What they are finding is the National Fund.

San Diego Site in the News for Changing Lives

The July 4 issue of the North County Times (CA) looks at one effort to change how the local economy creates jobs and careers. Featuring one mother’s moving story, it’s a quick but great read about the Medical Assistant Training Program of the North County...

Employers & Employees
Funders
Policymakers

New Evaluation Shows National Fund Helping People Build Careers – Like Keisha Monique Blake

06/15/10

| by National Fund Staff

New evaluation data reveals that the National Fund for Workforce Solutions is helping to redefine how America can prepare low-wage workers for careers.

Keisha Monique Blake, from Baltimore, tells us what the numbers really mean.

Implementing the National Fund for Workforce Solutions: 2nd Annual National Evaluation Report offers evidence that building partnerships with employers, focusing on career development for jobseekers and employees, and helping communities structure approaches that meet their unique business and economic needs can help put Americans back to work. In 2009, for...

Funders

National Fund Sites in the News

06/01/10

| by National Fund Staff

There are a thousand stories in the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. Well, actually based on our most recent evaluation data, at least 18,000 stories (that’s how many participants were served in 2009) – but it seemed like a catchy way to start a post about some of the recent press coverage generated by local National Fund sites.

This is a great segment that CNN recently ran about the Biotechnical Institute of Maryland, a project training low-income residents of Baltimore for jobs as lab techs in the biotech industry. The Institute is supported, in part, by the Baltimore Workforce Collaborative.

...

Employers & Employees
Funders
Policymakers

The Award Winning Meaning of Collaboration

04/27/10

| by National Fund Staff

Today, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions was presented the highest award bestowed by the Council on Foundations: the Distinguished Grantmaking Award for Collaboration. It speaks to the leadership role that philanthropy must take in helping America’s workers and businesses succeed in a post-recession economy. Even more important, it speaks to how the National Fund operates.

The National Fund is a partnership involving approximately 200 funders nationwide. It is led by some of the nation’s leading foundations. As Barbara Dyer, president and CEO of The Hitachi Foundation and Chair of the National Fund, discusses in this...

Employers & Employees

Listening to Employees

04/02/10

| by Fred Dedrick

Here’s something we may not always think about: how scary a new training and career advancement program can be for incumbent employees. Watch the three-minute video clip below. It’s from an interview with Timothy Meade, a mental health worker at Temple University Episcopal (part of Temple University Health System) and a participant in the District 1199c Training and Upgrading Fund.

Meade’s in an interesting position and offers a unique perspective. Not only did he participate in the training program, he’s a union delegate and helped put this project into the union contract. At the beginning of this interview he talks about the fear that was...

Employers & Employees
Funders
Policymakers

New National Fund Executive Director: A Marriage of Experience and Vision

03/15/10

| by National Fund Staff

Today, Fred Dedrick, most recently the Deputy Secretary for Workforce Development in Pennsylvania, takes over as the first Executive Director of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions.

He brings more than 20 years experience to a post that, as the nation remains stuck at almost 10 percent unemployment, offers great opportunity and truly significant challenge. Leading an effort to prepare America’s workforce to succeed in a post-recession economy has never seemed such...

Policymakers

From Rx for the Health Care Workforce: Going Big

03/02/10

| by Marc S. Miller Ph.D.

Day two at Rx for the Health Care Workforce, and the goal today is to think about the way the 90 leaders here—representing employers, labor, government, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sectors—think about scale up and sustainability. In other words, public policy.

The opportunity is great: as yesterday showed, future investments in building a skilled health care workforce can draw on many promising models from the education and workforce development sectors—on the job, in higher education, and in our communities.

At the same time, extending promising models broadly will require unprecedented action. Without strong public action, promising models cannot be implemented on the scale the nation requires in...