SkillWorks: Partners for a Productive Workforce

Boston

, Massachusetts

SkillWorks is a collaborative effort of public and philanthropic funders concerned with the capacity of the greater Boston workforce development system to meet the needs of job seekers, incumbent workers, and employers. This five-year initiative seeks to:

Help low-income individuals in Boston attain family-supporting jobs with adequate benefits and opportunities to build assets;
Provide accessible pathways to advancement for low-income job seekers and low-wage workers, particularly those in Greater Boston;
Increase the resources available for education and training services;
Address the human resource needs of employers, particularly employers in growth sectors, so that they can be more productive and more competitive; and
Support long-term changes to Massachusetts’ workforce development system to meet the goals of the initiative on an ongoing basis.

Funding Collaborative

The SkillWorks Funders Group blends investments from fourteen foundations and public sources of workforce development funding into single public/private grants to service providers, providing a model for simplified, coordinated program support. SkillWorks funders include the City of Boston’s Neighborhood Jobs Trust, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development, and 12 Boston-based and national foundations: the Boston Foundation; Bank of America Charitable Gift Fund and Frank W. and Carl S. Adams Memorial Fund, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee; Boston 2004; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the William Randolph Hearst Foundations; the Hyams Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the John Merck Fund; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Paul and Phyllis Fireman Foundation; State Street Trust Community Foundation; and United Way of Massachusetts Bay.

The funders have allocated nearly $14 million to the initiative. Over five years, $1.5 million will be invested in public policy advocacy, $2.8 million in capacity building, and $6.15 million in workforce partnerships. The balance supports evaluation, program management, and a contingency fund for technical assistance.

The Funders Group has three standing committees to oversee its investments: the Public Policy committee; the Workforce Partnerships committee; and the Capacity Building committee. Ad hoc committees are formed to respond to topics as they emerge. Currently, there are two ad hoc committees: Communications and Evaluation. SkillWorks is staffed by a full-time director and contracts with Jobs for the Future for technical assistance, and with Abt Associates and Mount Auburn Associates for evaluation. Additional consultants are retained for capacity building and special projects as needed.

Key Strategies and Interventions

SkillWorks is designed around the premise that system improvement requires a three-pronged approach, in which each component interacts with the others in mutually reinforcing ways:

Supporting intermediaries, called “Workforce Partnerships,” that demonstrate improved service designs through both planning and implementation grants;
Promoting public policy advocacy that removes the barriers to institutionalizing the improved service designs; and
Fostering capacity building that helps the delivery system implement the improved service designs within the partnerships and across the system.

To implement these strategies, SkillWorks has:

Provided three $50,000 planning grants to evolving workforce partnerships, to help them achieve the capacity necessary to receive an implementation grant;
Funded five sectoral partnerships, with implementation grants of $330,000 per year for three years, to demonstrate more effective workforce development practices and to promote institutional and system changes within sectors;
Funded the Workforce Solutions Group, a partnership led by The Women’s Union, the Massachusetts Workforce Investment Board Association, the Massachusetts Communities Action Network, and the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, to develop a policy advocacy agenda and raise the visibility of workforce development as a contributor to the economic well-being of the Commonwealth; and
Funded two phases of capacity building work. Phase I provided technical assistance to five community-based organizations to strengthen their organizational structures and improve outcomes for their constituents. Phase II provides cross-site networking, technical assistance consulting, and training to help the Workforce Partnerships provide career advancement resources that build career ladders for low-skilled workers with employers in specified industries.

The SkillWorks Funders Group itself is an intermediary that fosters a common systems change agenda among public and private funders and encourages coordination among funding streams. The partnership funded to lead the SkillWorks public policy advocacy activities has played a central role in brokering agreements among multiple interest groups relative to state legislation to increase resources for workforce development.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the Boston 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.