SkillWorks: Partners for a Productive Workforce is a five-year public/private investment of approximately $15 million on the part of philanthropy, government, community organizations, and employers to change how workforce development is done in Boston and in the state of Massachusetts.

SkillWorks Initiative Goals:

	Help low and moderate income individuals attain family supporting jobs
	Help businesses find and retain skilled employees
	Increase the resources targeted to education and skills training, especially for low-skill, entry-level employees
	Build the capacity of workforce development providers to meet the human resource needs of employers and low-income individuals
	Promote public policies that help low and moderate income individuals advance into family-sustaining jobs

The goal is to create a system that helps low-skill, low-income residents move to family-sustaining jobs and helps employers find and retain skilled employees.

SkillWorks will accomplish large-scale, sustainable improvements to the workforce development system by focusing on three systems change strategies:

	Capacity Building for service providers;
	Workforce Partnership Programs; and
	Public Policy Advocacy.

Capacity Building
SkillWorks’ Capacity Building component has had two phases. The first phase provided five community-based organizations with financial, managerial, and technical service resources to: strengthen their organizational structures and systems; reach higher levels of workforce development services; and improve outcomes for their constituents. As a result of these first-phase investments, four organizations successfully competed to join Workforce Partnerships.

The second phase of Capacity Building focuses on helping the Workforce Partnerships achieve their two goals: providing career advancement resources to job seekers and to low- to moderate-income workers; and building career ladders for low-skilled workers with employers in specified industries. Activities include cross-site networking, technical assistance consulting and training workshops on topics that help the Partnerships and their service providers reach scale and sustain themselves for the long term.

 
Workforce Partnerships
Workforce Partnerships organize employers, trainers, One-Stops, and community organizations in sectoral or occupational partnerships that provide multiple points of entry to services for job seekers and low- to moderate-income workers. Workforce Partnerships offer training and advancement services consisting of basic education, vocational skills, career coaching, and asset development. SkillWorks has invested in Workforce Partnerships in two ways: planning grants to seed the development of new consortia; and implementation grants that expand and enhance high-performing consortia with a wide range of partners.

 
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 to help 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.

To secure additional resources for the initiative’s goals, the Public Policy Advocacy grantee works to develop a common agenda and communicate the importance of workforce development as a contributor to the economic well-being of workers, employers, and the Commonwealth.

 
Systems Change
The workforce development system is highly complex, underfunded, and challenged to meet the needs of low-income neighborhood residents and of employers. Through the interaction of its three components, SkillWorks seeks to support service provider networks in sectoral or cross-sector occupational partnerships that develop strategies to reach into neighborhoods to recruit the “hardest to serve,” and companies to recruit workers stagnating in low-wage jobs. SkillWorks also seeks to help organizations buildtheir capacity to clarify employer skill requirements for career pathways and develop strategies to access a variety of funding sources to provide a broad array of pre- and post-placement interventions leading to family-supporting jobs.

 
Evaluation
SkillWorks has set ambitious goals both for services to its dual customers and for improving how the workforce development system delivers services.

A comprehensive evaluation of outcomes will help verify the initiative’s assumptions about its three-pronged strategy. A “theory of change” evaluation will document successful practices to replicate barriers that impede systems reforms, and the overall impact of this significant investment in building economic opportunity for metropolitan Boston.

 
National Impact
SkillWorks has generated considerable interest from other communities around the country interested in replicating the model. Delegations from Baltimore and Los Angeles have visited Boston to see how SkillWorks operates and learn how it developed. Funding collaboratives have begun to launch similar initiatives in San Francisco, New York City, Providence, Austin, Milwaukee and the state of Pennsylvania.

 
Contact
To connect with SkillWorks: Partners for a Productive Workforce, please visit www.skill-works.org.

SkillWorks c/o The Boston Foundation 75 Arlington Street, 10th Floor, Boston, MA 02116 617.338.1700