New York City Workforce Innovation Fund

New York

, New York

The New York City Workforce Development Funders Group is a consortium of foundations and corporate philanthropies that have pooled their philanthropic resources to address a range of workforce development issues. In 2005, the Funders Group joined with the New York City Department of Small Business Services to create the Workforce Innovation Fund (WIF). The first initiative of this Fund was the New York City Sectors Initiative.

The goal of the Workforce Innovation Fund is to create a new model of workforce development that links workforce development services to economic development strategies and investments. The WIF serves as a model for other sectoral and intermediary strategies of the Department of Small Business Services to foster intermediary capacity in key economic sectors. By helping workforce development policymakers, employers, and practitioners gain an understanding of business hiring practices and internal pipelines, the initiative aims to create more employment and advancement opportunities for New York City residents while meeting the needs of employers.

Funding Collaborative

In 2004, the Funders Group approached the Department of Small Business Services, which manages the city’s adult and dislocated workers services under the Workforce Investment Act, to suggest working together to develop their customized training initiatives by jointly investing in sectoral employment initiatives and intermediaries. Together SBS and the Funders Group formed the Workforce Innovation Fund, which is comprised of SBS and members of the Funders Group who are investors in workforce development: the Altman Foundation, the Clark Foundation, the Ira W. De Camp Foundation, Deutsche Bank, Bernard F. and Alva B. Gimbel Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, New York Community Trust, Rockefeller Foundation, Tiger Foundation, and United Way of New York City.

The Workforce Innovation Fund has commitments of $500,000 in private funds and up to $1.3 million in public funds annually. Grant making is done on a consensus basis by participating funders. The Workforce Innovation Fund is staffed by Public/Private Ventures, who works with SBS and the Funders Group to manage the initiative. In addition, the funding partners have contracted with P/PV to conduct a project evaluation. The project is supported by WIA funding for customized training, as well as by funding from the participating private foundations.

Key Strategies and Interventions

The central approach of the Workforce Innovation Fund is to support sectoral employment efforts and increase sectoral intermediary capacity. The Workforce Innovation Fund believes that sectoral intermediaries can create true partnerships with employers by developing an acute understanding of a given sector or industry and meeting the needs of the industry’s employers—for example, providing incumbent worker training, improving productivity, and meeting key personnel needs. The WIF provides two types of grants: planning grants and demonstration grants. Planning grants allow intermediaries to identify employer and service provider partners and to understand employer needs before implementing full demonstration projects. Demonstration grants, which require 50 percent employer match, are used for the implementation of the sector initiative. Additionally, the initiative provides technical assistance from both P/PV and SBS to the funded intermediaries.

The initiative has invested in three planning grants and two demonstration grants to sectoral workforce intermediaries, which are responsible for:

Managing a planning phase, which includes analyzing employer needs, assembling partners, and structuring the collaborative partnerships;
Leading collaborations of service providers and employers during the demonstration phase; and
Collecting outcomes data.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the New York regional labor market. The analysis is intended to provide a picture into overall employment conditions and structural changes in this local economy, focusing on the period from 2001-2007. Though this data does not capture changes associated with the recent 2008 recession, it should still provide useful insights into medium-term demographic and employment changes.

The data analyzed here comes from two major sources: The American Community Survey 2007 (and 1990 & 2000 Decennial Census for some charts) from the U.S. Census Bureau; and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For a full guide to the data content, structure, and how it might be used, please listen to the June 16, 2009, recorded webinar available here.