Leading Examples

The American Diesel Training Center’s Career Impact Bond is “the first Career Impact Bond where certain employers, like Interstate NationaLease, Palmer Kenworth and National Fleet Management, will take over monthly tuition payments for the graduates that they hire.” While many other Career Impact Bonds require that students or participants repay tuition and other costs of their training, this is an example of shifting those costs to the employer.

Guild Career Opportunity Platform works with employers including Walmart, Taco Bell, and Discover to provide employer-funded learning programs, dedicated career coaches, and tools to explore career pathways. Employees can choose to pursue degrees or shorter skills programs. All costs are paid for by their employer and the Guild supports logistics and learners’ experience to increase success and return on investment.

The Advanced Manufacturing Apprenticeships is a non profit which offers adult and youth apprenticeship programs across Washington, Oregon and Idaho. “In 2020–21, AJAC drew on 24 unique funding streams to support its operations and programs. Of these, 19 were from federal, state, or local sources and ranged in size from $10,000 grants from municipal partners to million-dollar grants from state and federal agencies. The remaining five sources (12 percent of all funding) came from private sources, including philanthropic grants, fees paid by employers, or student-funded tuition costs.AJAC has become adept at braiding these resources to make its funding work.”

The United Way of Greater Atlanta established Atlanta CareerRise as a separate 501c3 that is leading the way on workforce development. Through CareerRise, Atlanta is leaning in on apprenticeship programs in non traditional spaces, such as healthcare, for opportunity youth. CareerRise takes an industry partnership-focused model which braids and blends funding from workforce, education and philanthropy to provide the necessary education, job assistance and supportive services to the community.

In Cuyahoga County, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is piloting a program to braid WIOA and SNAP E+T services through the local Ohio Means Jobs network in order to provide targeted advancement pathways to SNAP enrolled participants.

Deleware leverages a combination of federal, state, institutional and private funding streams for career development through the Delaware Pathways program. The program is charged with supporting youth and adult learners to achieve Delaware’s postsecondary attainment goals.

The California Workforce Development Board (CWDB), California Department of Corrections, and the California Prison Industry Authority (CalPIA) developed a joint strategic plan which “links education, job training, and work experience in prison to post-release jobs by fostering a system of coordinated service delivery to a population that faces a variety of barriers. It serves as a blueprint for building local and regional partnerships to improve labor market outcomes and reduce recidivism.” The agencies then combined funding, through the Prison to Employment Initiative, to allow local workforce areas to implement programming for justice involved individuals. Local boards follow a single reporting process when providing results to the state.

The Governor's Office of Education and Workforce Development (GOEWT) in Alabama was established to implement a coordinated workforce and education strategic plan. One of the office's three main objectives is to “braid Alabama’s federal education and workforce development funding streams to support an education-to-workforce pipeline.”

In support of their integrated planning processes, Wisconsin’s Departments of Health Services, Workforce Development and Public Instruction put together a Transition Action Guide (TAG) which helps their state and local governments identify overlaps or gaps in service provision in the areas of communication, coordination and service delivery for youth. The guide “includes funding sources and their eligibility requirements so agencies can pursue braided funding opportunities. The resource also discusses cost-sharing agreements among agencies and when these agreements are appropriate.”

Use this template to help embed equity into your agency's evidence framework.

Use this template and sample language to help develop your agency's evidence framework.

Use these templates to embed evaluation requirements in your agency's grants or contracts.

Use these templates and sample language to add active contract management strategies to your agency's grant or contract.

Use these templates and sample language to help develop your agency's performance-based grants and contracts.

These RFA templates and examples can help your agency prioritize evidence in grants and contracts.

The Texas Workforce Commission's 2022 Adult Education and Literacy Employer Engagement program prioritized evidence by providing up to 10 points out of 110 to applicants based on the causal evidence supporting their application. 

In 2022, the Workforce Development Board of Central Ohio (WDBCO) released performance-based RFPs for in-school and out-of-school youth with performance payments for priority outcomes. The contract specifies performance metrics beyond WIOA Common Measures. These additional metrics account for 35% of the total reimbursable costs of the contract in the first and second years. Each performance metric has been assigned a "performance success target,” which is the minimum level of performance the provider must meet in order to be reimbursed up to 100%
of their contract.

The Colorado Workforce Development Council (CWDC) applied their evidence continuum to this RFP for the Reskilling, Upskilling, and Next-skilling (RUN) Workers Grant to facilitate training and industry-recognized credential attainment for up to 1,200 unemployed and underemployed workers in the state. Part of the evaluation and scoring included the level of evidence that exists supporting the program model of the applicant, as based on CWDC's evidence continuum.

The Results First Initiative within the state of Minnesota’s Management and Budget Office created an evidence framework to rate the state’s programs and services. In this framework, programs and services are considered evidence-based if they fall in the “Proven Effective” or “Promising” categories. Ratings from each program are publicized in the Minnesota Inventory, a state evidence clearinghouse.

The state of Tennessee’s Office of Evidence and Impact evidence framework considers programs evidence-based if they are supported by at least one rigorous evaluation. This framework is used as part of a program inventory to identify how funding is allocated across different programs, the services provided, and any evidence tied to the program’s outcomes. For Tennessee, rigorous evaluations include randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs that use comparison groups.