Milwaukee Area Workforce Funding Alliance

The Milwaukee Area Workforce Funding Alliance is a consortium of private and public funders of workforce development, including education, job training and placement, and support services, dedicated to increasing the Milwaukee region’s employment – to the benefit of businesses that need skilled workers and of individuals seeking good jobs with family-supporting wages.

The goals of the Funding Alliance are to: strengthen and expand their workforce system by leveraging local investments; build the capacity of the workforce system, both public and private; improve career advancement opportunities for low-income individuals; help employers get the skilled workers they need; and advocate for policies that sustain effective workforce partnerships.

The initial focus of the Funding Alliance is on improving the employment and training prospects of the health care and construction sectors, with a particular focus on urban Milwaukee.

Funding Collaborative

The Funding Alliance comprises many elements: an affinity group of the Donors Forum of Wisconsin (a statewide regional association of grantmakers); a collaboration of five family and community foundations; the United Way of Greater Milwaukee; eight corporate foundations and employer giving programs; and six public funding partners. Additionally, the Milwaukee 7 Regional Economic Development WIRED initiative is aligning its strategy with the alliance.

The funder collaborative is governed and managed by its executive committee (made up of alliance members), through member commitments, and using a structure of committees and work groups to inform decision making. Funder collaborative members leverage and align a portion of their grantmaking toward the priorities of the alliance, and they actively participate in planning and information sharing. The Donors Forum of Wisconsin and Urban Strategies, Inc. staff the alliance.

The Donors Forum of Wisconsin-managed funds consist of approximately $500,000 per year that are used for such purposes as technical assistance, administration, evaluation, and sub-grants. The National Fund for Workforce Solutions has granted the alliance $150,000 a year for three years, which will be also managed by the Donors Forum of Wisconsin. The other $350,000 in donations annually are leveraged and aligned from the alliance members.

Key Strategies and Interventions

The Milwaukee Area Workforce Funding Alliance provides direct financial support to workforce partnerships supplying career advancement services to individuals and assisting employers with their workforce development issues. These workforce partnerships must meet a variety of requirements, such as having:

• A sectoral focus (health care and construction sectors);
• Employer participation and the ability to provide services to employers;
• Diversified funding streams;
• Data management experience; and
• Appropriate career advancement services, especially for lower-skilled adults.

The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, a local workforce intermediary, participates as one of the collaborative’s workforce partners and supports efforts at capacity-building and with “worker pipeline” issues.

Over the long term, outcomes will include tracking: the success of both individuals (workers) and employers to see how many people are hired and what reductions in the “time to hire” are achieved; whether hires stay in jobs and how employers helped them do that: what their wages were and if they achieved wage increases because of training; and collecting data on participation by both groups. The collaborative will also measure funding changes by private- and public-sector members, gains in using different funding streams (such as FSET) for training, whether case management of TANF and ex-offender populations has been streamlined, and increases in state funds for workforce development in their region as a result of their advocacy efforts.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the Milwaukee 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.

Milwaukee_Data.zip

Milwaukee_Counties.ppt