Case Studies: Approaches and Strategies for Braiding Funds

What processes and tools do the intermediaries use to make this possible? And what major benefits or challenges do they encounter in doing so? Our initial survey collected limited qualitative data to answer these questions.

To better understand intermediaries’ approaches and strategies for braiding funds, we conducted extensive interviews with three of the participating WBL intermediaries over the course of several months in 2023. For these interviews, we selected AJAC (King County, WA), CareerWise Colorado (Denver, CO), and High School District 214 (Schaumburg, IL), the three intermediaries that, based on their surveys, had especially complex braided finance models and multiple years of experience managing them. In addition, their different locations, different origins, and different institutional types offered opportunities for us to explore the impact of different factors on their finance models.

In the case studies that follow, we examine how these three intermediaries make it all work: the funding sources they rely on, the braiding strategies they employ to support their programs, and the challenges they have encountered as they work towards financial sustainability.

Four times a year, John Manning sits down with a spreadsheet that lists incoming participants in AJAC Manufacturing Academy™ pre-apprenticeship programs. Manning is the Pre-Apprenticeship program manager at AJAC, a nonprofit apprenticeship intermediary that serves employers and workers in Washington State’s aerospace and advanced manufacturing industry, and his quarterly date with this spreadsheet means he has a painstaking task ahead of him: he must determine, one name at a time, which pre-apprentices are eligible for which funding streams that will support their participation in the academy.

As part of its mission to expand access to training for some of the state’s most lucrative middle- and high-skill occupations, AJAC is committed to making its pre-apprenticeship training free, or almost free, to anyone who wants it. But available funding doesn’t cover all of the costs all of the time, so leadership must find a way to bridge the gap. “We dial for dollars a lot,” Bri Durham, AJAC’s director of Business Engagement & Programs, explained, since “we don’t want to turn anyone away.” Fortunately, it’s not often AJAC needs to, thanks in part to the large network of community-based partners and employers it has developed since its launch 15 years ago.

Washington State is home to more than 1,500 aerospace companies, which employ more than 250,000 people. To meet the industry’s demand for a highly skilled workforce, the state legislature in 2008 set aside money for “skill[ing]-up the aerospace and advanced manufacturing workforce through Registered Apprenticeship.” This initial investment led to the creation of AJAC which has, since its founding, developed pre-apprenticeship, Registered Apprenticeship, and youth apprenticeship training programs to provide Washington’s aerospace and advanced manufacturing industries with a robust talent pipeline and to establish strong career pathways for workers.

Unlike many apprenticeship intermediaries that are established with small grants and must figure out how to increase their funding as enrollment expands, AJAC began with a single-source public investment and not one single apprentice. “Our charge was to get big [quickly] to justify the fact that we were getting this money with zero track record,” says Chris Pierson, AJAC’s director of Operations and Funding.

At first, AJAC served adults because its state investment targeted Registered Apprenticeship pathways for adult workers. But, facing acute talent shortages, employers soon expressed an interest in reaching new, untapped pools of talent. In response, AJAC launched the state’s first recognized manufacturing pre-apprenticeship program in 2011 to provide training to a wide range of workers, including many underrepresented in the industry, such as women, youth, and incarcerated individuals. In 2017, AJAC’s Registered Apprenticeship program for high school students launched, in partnership with local school districts.

Over time, pre-apprenticeship and youth apprenticeship enrollment have ticked slowly upwards. In 2020–21, pre-apprentices and youth apprentices comprised 32 percent of AJAC’s participants, or 168 individuals in total. But the growth of these programs has been slower than that of AJAC’s Registered Apprenticeships (Figure 7), which are its largest and easiest-to-fund programs, thanks in part to the state’s continued investment and financial contributions of employers, who typically cover the cost of their apprentices’ tuition, fees, and books (in addition to paying their wages and facilitating their on-the-job learning).

Nearly 90 percent of AJAC’s budget comes from public sources. 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. Through interviews with AJAC’s leadership, we identified four strategies that have led to its continued success.

1. Maximize Benefits of Dedicated Operational Resources

Nearly half of AJAC’s annual revenue comes from just one source: a competitive grant from the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC). This grant has provided flexible, multi-year funding for AJAC to operate as a statewide apprenticeship intermediary since its launch in 2008. Unlike many other state and federal grants available to intermediaries, the SBCTC contract is intended specifically to fund operational costs associated with AJAC’s role leading a complex cross-sector partnership. It supports critical functions like business recruitment and engagement, apprentice registration and compliance with the Washington State Apprenticeship Training Council (WSATC), data management, equipment quality control, and the coordination of services and supportive services for apprentices. The contract is intended to support AJAC’s role as an intermediary for its Registered Apprenticeship programs; however, youth and pre-apprenticeship programs can leverage certain operational assets, such as business recruitment, equipment quality control, and data management. Without them, those programs would likely not exist.

A secondary benefit of this multi-year contract is that it has made AJAC more competitive for other public and private funding. “Part of our success in going after [other] grants is being able to point at this large public investment that the grant will be leveraging. Not having that would make us a less competitive applicant,” Pierson explained, noting AJAC’s success in securing both federal apprenticeship funding and philanthropic investment, independently and as part of various consortia.

AJAC’s operational funding from the SBCTC is secured through June 30, 2027. From 2008 until 2022, AJAC was a sole-source recipient of the funding, as the state’s only aerospace apprenticeship intermediary. But in 2022, in response to new competition, Washington shifted to a competitive bid process. AJAC won, but it will encounter the same competitive process again in 2027.

2. Leverage Assets Available to Key Partners

As a companion to the 2008 investment that led to AJAC’s creation, the Washington legislature established a related funding stream, also administered by the SBCTC, to support costs associated with delivering related supplemental instruction to apprentices. This stream, the Aerospace Apprenticeship Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) funding, supports community and technical colleges that partner with Registered Apprenticeship programs supported by the recipient of the SBCTC grant. Colleges can use the FTE funds to cover the administrative and instructional costs (if provided by the college) of delivering related supplemental instruction (RSI) as part of apprenticeship programs.

This funding incentivizes and supports AJAC’s relationships with seven community and technical colleges across the state and makes it possible for them to provide credit-bearing coursework as part of apprentices’ related supplemental instruction. AJAC, a sector intermediary, recruits and hires instructors directly from industry to deliver RSI and it works with colleges to ensure that instructors meet state and campus credentialing requirements. To fund this arrangement, colleges keep 30 percent of each FTE to support administrative costs and AJAC receives the remaining 70 percent, the bulk of which goes to compensating instructors.

The number of funded FTE slots is 130 each year. There have been various values assigned to these FTEs over the years; as of July 2022, the value is $8,000 per FTE. The slots have been permanently allocated to seven different colleges.

In the past, as AJAC staff members planned the upcoming annual budget, they prioritized recruiting employers and apprentices to capitalize on their FTE allotment and to remain competitive for when the SBCTC contract goes out for bid again in 2027. Maximizing the opportunity presented by the FTE allotment is “essentially our North Star,” says Pierson. But while the funding stream has been a reliable source of revenue, it’s not been without challenges. For one thing, it requires a complex invoicing process to achieve the 30 (college)/70 percent (SBCTC grantee) split of resources. Second, funding does not always stretch as far as it needs to. Because apprentices take part-time course loads, AJAC must enroll three apprentices to meet one funded FTE slot.

Additionally, AJAC cannot usually claim the aerospace apprenticeship FTE for their youth apprentices or, more accurately, it chooses not to. In theory, it could, if it required youth apprentices’ RSI courses to be taught after school by AJAC’s own instructors. But currently, youth apprentices’ RSI starts with dual enrollment courses delivered during the school day through career and technical education (CTE) programs offered at apprentices’ high schools or regional skill centers. Students earn both high school and college credit for these courses, and the costs are usually covered through arrangements between local school districts and colleges. This means RSI courses are convenient and inexpensive for the youth apprentices; for school districts, it means they can maintain robust CTE enrollment and the mix of local, state, and federal funding associated with it.

3. Partner with System Sustainability in Mind

AJAC’s staff recognizes that while this may not be the most advantageous arrangement for the organization, it still allows them to leverage public dollars to support RSI. And, more importantly, it works better for their apprentices and for their school district partners. Durham, director of Business Engagement & Programs, explained that “we’re trying to be good partners. We want our district partners to get their needs met. We need to get our needs met. And it needs to work well for the kids, too. It’s just better for most [youth] apprentices to have instruction during in-school hours.”

To date, AJAC has leveraged public resources to support youth apprentices’ RSI and leaned on one- or two-year grants to cover other costs associated with the program. It has received four rounds of Program Builder funding from Career Connect Washington (CCW), a statewide initiative that supports a wide range of career exploration and work-based learning opportunities for students and workers up to 30. These resources—and CCW’s efforts to coordinate state actors for large federal grants like Apprenticeship Building America—have been an important asset for AJAC in keeping its youth apprenticeship program afloat. But, to meaningfully grow the program, Pierson said, AJAC would need longer-term operational funding. For now, the program operates with what Durham described as a “skeleton crew.”

But that’s not to say that funding for capacity to implement youth work-based learning does not exist in Washington State. It’s just that AJAC, as an intermediary outside of the public school system, cannot tap into those resources, at least not directly. For example, through Career Connect Washington, school districts can receive Enrollment Growth Funding (EGF), additional per-pupil funding for students enrolled in state-endorsed WBL programs like Registered Apprenticeship. EGF is meant to recognize that districts need additional staff capacity to coordinate and support students’ participation in the most intensive WBL experiences. But that funding stays in the district, even in cases where a substantial portion of program coordination and management is led by an external partner like AJAC.

AJAC staff members believe these resources are necessary for their district partners, but they would not object to an opportunity to receive similar capacity support themselves. For now, though, they are content to work together with their education partners to “find the most cost-effective way to run youth apprenticeship that is going to be the most sustainable—even if it’s a little bit to the detriment for us—to make sure we aren't just a flash in the pan program that dies off a few years later,” as Pierson said.

4. Mind the Gaps

This diversified mix of funding provides a solid financial foundation for AJAC and allows it to provide low- to no-cost programs for its participants, a key part of its strategy to expand access to training and opportunity in the aerospace and advanced manufacturing industries. But, especially for its pre-apprenticeship program, which enrolls AJAC’s most economically vulnerable students, there are always gaps in funding that require creative solutions, like the quarterly calls AJAC staff make to community partners to secure additional funding. Often, AJAC covers gaps for its apprentice and pre-apprentices by pulling in resources from local partners that can access public workforce dollars (e.g., WIOA funding) or from one of AJAC’s four philanthropic supporters, whose funding is typically the most flexible.

Putting the funding puzzle together each year is no easy feat, even with a strong foundation of public investment, but AJAC understands it to be a core part of its purpose as an intermediary. As Pierson explained, “We take on the administrative complexity to figure out how to tap into funding streams on behalf of our employers, participants, schools, and other partners. Apprenticeship isn’t necessarily a funding priority for the other entities, but apprenticeships are an avenue for nontraditional workers and students. For us, that’s the ‘why’ of it.”

No Guarantees

Fifteen years since its founding, AJAC has cultivated a diverse set of largely stable public funding sources and fine-tuned its budgeting and grant management process to keep its programs running smoothly every year. It has built strong relationships with educational partners, community-based organizations, state and federal agencies, and employers, thanks in part to the organization’s willingness to be a team player, even when it means a sacrifice to its own bottom line. Those partnerships, in turn, have helped AJAC leverage and compete for other funding sources, ensuring the continuation of its youth and pre-apprenticeship programs.

But even with well-developed strategies, diversified funding, and robust partnerships, AJAC is not immune to threats to its long-term sustainability and growth. Its reimbursement-based grants, for example, create cash-flow headaches and their intensive grant reporting requirements gobble up staff resources. With the elimination of sole-source funding and the lack of major state investment in youth and pre-apprenticeship programming, AJAC, like many other WBL intermediaries, knows that true financial sustainability will likely require large and consistent investment at both the state and federal levels for Registered Apprenticeship. While Pierson and Durham could identify changes in funding structures, reporting requirements, and revenue streams that would make programs easier to finance, those alone wouldn’t guarantee financial sustainability. “What we'd really like to see,” Pierson explained, “is more long-term public investments in the capacity it takes to lead and manage these programs—resources that recognize intermediaries play a critical role in making apprenticeship work for businesses and workers.”

One afternoon in October 2023, over 250 people representing youth apprenticeship partnerships around the country packed into a midtown Manhattan event space for a panel billed as the highlight of the three-day conference they were attending. On stage, three teenagers and their parents sat in a row, sharing their experiences of participating in, or having a child participate in, youth apprenticeship with some of New York City’s most prominent employers. It was the final panel of a lively, busy day that had already seen presentations from employers large and small, higher education leaders, policy experts, and a renowned education reform scholar. But the crowd hung on the words of the apprentices and their parents, with many breaking into intermittent laughter and applause and others furiously jotting down notes.

Six years ago, this panel, and the conference it was a part of, would have been hard to imagine for the event’s host, CareerWise, a Colorado-based nonprofit youth apprenticeship intermediary that launched its first apprenticeship cohort in 2017. The organization was founded by entrepreneur Noel Ginsburg in 2016 after a visit to Switzerland, where more than two-thirds of high-school aged students enter apprenticeships after finishing compulsory schooling.³

Ginsburg’s vision was to introduce a new way of learning and working in the U.S. The goal was not just a new program, but a rethink and redesign of American education and employment systems. In the U.S., apprenticeship as a training model had been largely confined to adult workers in the skilled trade professions. Ginsburg hoped to bring the apprenticeship model into school systems, combining existing career and technical courses at high schools and postsecondary institutions with on-the-job training for well-paying careers beyond just the skilled trades. “What we are doing is fundamentally combining [classroom education and workplace training] in different ways and…building new systems,” says Hollis Salway, CareerWise’s vice president of development and research.

In 2017, the bold vision for systems change took its first steps towards reality when CareerWise Colorado (CWC) debuted pilot programs in three communities—Denver metro area, Fort Collins, and Mesa County—with 116 apprentices and 40 employers. CareerWise sought to build a youth apprenticeship system that could work for any school district and any employer. It would target modern industries such as financial services, technology, and business operations, industries relatively new to the apprenticeship model. Today, CareerWise Colorado operates in 10 counties across the state and offers youth apprenticeships in 35 occupations in 10 industries. Local employers hire apprentices from their region and CareerWise provides centralized data systems, program tools, and apprentice and employer case management as a statewide intermediary, operating from its headquarters in Denver.

But CareerWise’s field-building work has not been limited to Colorado. Over the past six years, interest in CareerWise Colorado’s program, and its tools, resources, and expertise, has risen, and the organization has built a national profile. Today, CareerWise programs operate in Colorado, Indiana, New York, and Washington, DC. CareerWise has provided technical assistance to leaders in more than 35 states.

Funding CareerWise’s work has grown increasingly complex as the organization has evolved from a single program to a field-building intermediary supporting youth apprenticeship efforts nationwide (Figure 8). In 2020, CareerWise reorganized to create CareerWise USA to better reflect the national scope of its operations. The organization’s Colorado-based work is now housed under CareerWise Colorado, a business unit within the CareerWise organization. Below, we unpack four key strategies CareerWise uses to braid the dozen-plus income streams that support its work. Note that our analysis focused on the revenue and expenditures for CareerWise Colorado, and we have noted below instances that apply more broadly to CareerWise USA.

1. Secure Large Investments for Stable Start Up

In 2016, newly formed CareerWise Colorado received its first large, multi-year philanthropic grant, after a year where volunteers worked with Denver Public Schools on a vision and after many months courting potential funders This “angel investment” made the 2017 launch a reality, and helped attract two other large, multi-year philanthropic investments. CareerWise’s Hollis Salway and Kathryn Beach, vice president of Accounting and Finance, attribute securing these major grants to the ambitious vision of systems change they pitched to philanthropic funders, as well as the buy-in they received from several CEOs, school superintendents, and even Governor John Hickenlooper.

These initial grants provided some early breathing room, allowing CareerWise to establish itself as a statewide youth apprenticeship intermediary, even as it worked to define exactly what that might entail. CareerWise knew it needed to start smaller, with local pilots to test the model and build momentum toward its statewide vision. Initially, CareerWise provided resources and expertise to public-private partnerships in three communities to help them launch local programs. But even the promise of resources did not speed up pilot timelines, and partnerships took longer than planned to coalesce. This made spending down grants in the established timeframes tricky, and required CareerWise to seek modifications on early grant budgets to accommodate strategic shifts. But even with these challenges, the large, multi-year grants provided security as it figured out how to begin turning its ambitious vision into reality.

Early on, CareerWise also received public funding through Colorado’s Industry Infrastructure Grant Program, which was established in FY 2016. CareerWise was involved in advocacy efforts to shape the legislation which created the program, and it was well positioned to win funding when the grant launched. While the Industry Infrastructure Grant was a relatively small line in CareerWise’s overall budget, it helped the organization begin diversifying funding streams early and, more importantly, established CareerWise as a strong steward of public dollars.

2. Leverage National Footprint to Unlock Public Dollars

In 2018, CareerWise began fielding inquiries from community leaders from places as disparate as New York City and rural Elkhart County, Indiana, who, like its early investors, were drawn to CareerWise’s ambitious vision for systems change. Quickly, CareerWise Colorado leadership saw an opportunity to support the adoption of youth apprenticeship further afield. “We were kind of feeling stable in Colorado, and then—boom! New York [City] came in,” says Salway, referring to CareerWise NY, the first affiliate program to launch outside of Colorado. “We had the national demand sooner than we anticipated.”

CareerWise soon began providing technical assistance to other nonprofit organizations looking to develop and launch youth apprenticeship programs similar to their Colorado model. This growing national profile made it a more competitive applicant for federal apprenticeship funding. In 2018, for example, when JFF received a contract from the U.S. Department of Labor to serve as a national intermediary for youth apprenticeship, it selected CareerWise to serve as a subcontractor to provide technical assistance to communities developing youth apprenticeship programs.

Then, in 2020, CareerWise won a $5 million USDOL Youth Apprenticeship Readiness grant (YARG), the largest awarded in what was the federal government’s first-ever direct investment in youth apprenticeship programs. This funding not only supported CareerWise’s Colorado program, but also its emerging affiliate programs in New York, Indiana, and Washington, DC, illustrating how a national network can create “efficiency in fundraising across multiple sites,” as Salway put it. The YARG funds went towards critical intermediary functions, including student and business engagement, supportive infrastructure development, and marketing for the CareerWise sites.

This move towards federal funding has allowed CareerWise to increase the share of public dollars supporting its work, a goal it had set early on. In fiscal year 2021, for instance, public money—in the form of federal grants and subcontracts—made up nearly a quarter of CareerWise Colorado’s annual funding, about $1.4 million.

3. Develop Earned Revenue Streams

After receiving the YARG funding in 2020, CareerWise Colorado officially reorganized to create CareerWise USA, a national intermediary supporting the expansion of youth apprenticeship.⁴ This has allowed the organization to expand its national footprint and bring in more revenue from consulting, which is the organization’s largest earned income stream. CareerWise USA provides technical assistance and coaching to youth apprenticeship programs across the country. Some are CareerWise affiliate sites, who access CareerWise’s proprietary technology and program resources and pay for technical assistance. Others are not formally affiliated with CareerWise, but want to learn from its approach and get coaching as they build their own youth apprenticeship capacity. CareerWise’s leadership views these services as key to the organization’s future sustainability.

Employers’ buy-in is equally critical. Since its inception, CareerWise Colorado has charged a flat, per-apprentice fee that employers pay annually. Revenue generated from these fees supports intermediary capacity to operate the youth apprenticeship program, including recruitment and ongoing support for apprentices and business. To date, the income generated from this stream is not a sizable portion of CareerWise’s budget. In 2021, for example, it brought in around $156,000, out of $2.7 million in overall Colorado program funding. (CareerWise affiliates outside of Colorado keep income generated from their own employer fees.)

Still, the employer fee model is a conceptually significant feature of the CareerWise vision for youth apprenticeship in the U.S. CareerWise wants employers to see youth apprenticeship as a critical talent strategy worthy of their investment. The fee recognizes this value, as well as the value of the efficiencies and services that CareerWise provides as the intermediary.

When employers contribute financially, they also have a stake in the success of the program, which can be good for quality and long-term growth. According to Salway, when the enthusiasm—and financial support—for youth apprenticeship stems only from public sector and philanthropic partners but not employers, programs will struggle to gain momentum.

4. Establish a Vision for Sustainability

While philanthropic grants still make up the majority of CareerWise Colorado’s funding, the organization has worked to diversify its revenue streams to ensure a more sustainable funding structure. Over time, it has increased the share of revenue coming from public and earned revenue sources like consulting and employer fees.

Salway says that its medium-term sustainability goal would be a roughly three-way split between philanthropic grants, public dollars, and earned income. While it will take time for CareerWise to work up to this “more comfortable place,” as Salway describes it, having a clear objective helps drive strategy and shape priorities as different funding opportunities emerge.

For example, CareerWise has invested more capacity in state and federal policy discussions that could help unlock more reliable, renewable, noncompetitive public funding streams to support youth apprenticeship intermediary work in Colorado and nationally. “That stability and consistency would be huge,” Salway says.

So far, figuring out how to leverage state dollars hasn’t been easy. For one thing, Colorado’s constitution places strict limits on the amount of revenue the state can retain and spend, making new funding streams hard to come by.⁵ That’s not to say that the CareerWise advocacy efforts have not paid off, however. Some of its start-up funding resulted from advocacy from its leadership. And in October, CareerWise secured a new advocacy win: Colorado Governor Jared Polis announced the launch of the Colorado RISE Youth Apprenticeship Fund, a $2.5 million grant program to accelerate the expansion of youth apprenticeship in the state. In addition, the governor’s 2024 budget request aims to further solidify Registered Apprenticeship as a mainstream education pathway by investing $6 million in programs development and intermediary capacity and creating a $30 million tax credit for employers hiring apprentices.⁶

Like many organizations, however, CareerWise must weigh its goals for achieving a sustainable funding mix against the realities of the staffing needs necessary to pursue and manage it. Expanding policy engagement and advocacy work requires capacity and expertise that cannot be easily funded with grants intended to support programmatic work. Likewise, increasing earned revenue by expanding CareerWise’s consulting footprint could potentially be lucrative, but also potentially resource-intensive, given the expertise and time required to support program launch. And the nature of philanthropic support is always evolving. CareerWise Colorado has seen a gradual shift towards large, unrestricted grants from some of its funders, giving it more flexibility to invest in system change strategies while maintaining its programmatic goals.

CareerWise’s finance team is lean. With a dozen different funding sources braided to support CareerWise Colorado alone (in FY 21), it already has its work cut out for it. As it continues to diversify its funding mix in pursuit of that rough three-way split, CareerWise leadership knows they will need to maintains both financial health and appropriate staffing levels, and finds efficiencies along the way.

For all of its careful planning, skilled grant management, and entrepreneurial diversification strategies, true, long-term sustainability remains, in Salway’s view, decades away. To achieve it would require youth apprenticeship to become a mainstream postsecondary option, connected to and embedded within high schools, colleges, and employers’ talent strategies. And that, Salway observes, will require a dramatic reorientation of the country’s education and employment systems, and the funding infrastructure that currently supports them.

It’s a tall order, but that was, after all, the ambitious vision that landed CareerWise its first major philanthropic investment in 2016, and continues to motivate their work in Colorado and beyond. And it’s what drew that rapt audience of 200 to a dark ballroom in New York City on a gray day in October, thinking big about what’s possible for the future.

When Dr. Lazaro Lopez began his tenure as Illinois High School District 214’s (D214) new associate superintendent of Teaching and Learning in the summer of 2013, he had an ambitious plan to transform how the suburban Chicago district prepared students for life after high school. Lopez’s vision was for D214, the state’s largest high school district, to provide every student, regardless of family income, disability, immigration status, etc., with high-quality college and career readiness experiences that would smooth their transition to post-high school opportunities.

Slowly but steadily, the district reoriented itself towards Lopez’s goal. The changes were incremental, but always ongoing. Programs that did not fit with Lopez’s college and career readiness vision were reconfigured until they did or were removed entirely. According to Dr. Marcella Zipp, D214’s director of Grants and Special Programs, “leadership has [had] such a focus on and commitment [to] scaling work-based learning in the district that if there were not funds available to do it, there are other programs that we would sunset because they are not necessarily contributing or aligned to college and career pathways.”

The three guiding principles for the district’s college and career pathways work is a sequence of courses beyond high school, a WBL experience, and a capstone of early college credits and industry credentials. As part of this new orientation, the district developed and launched work-based learning initiatives that, with time, became bedrocks of the D214 student experience.

Chief among these programs is the Center for Career Discovery. As D214’s flagship career-connected learning initiative, the Center for Career Discovery provides career exploration and training opportunities, from worksite visits to Registered Apprenticeships. In the range of experiences the center offers, Lopez’s vision to create WBL options for every student has come to life. On any given day in D214, students can be found solving work-related problems embedded within academic coursework, managing student-run businesses at some of the district’s seven campuses, or filling prescriptions at Walgreens as part of paid on-the-job training for their apprenticeship. Each year, the Center supports over 2,500 work-based learning experiences in partnership with over 1,000 employer partners. These experiences can be embedded in coursework, part of co-curricular activities, or standalone experiences, and together enroll 85% of the senior cohort. In the three major programs they operate – registered apprenticeships, youth apprenticeships, and internships – almost 1,050 students participate annually. 

Enrollment in Center for Career Discovery programming was not always this robust. When it launched, only three students participated in Registered Apprenticeships and 20 in internships, out of 12,000 students district-wide. The small early numbers didn’t faze district leaders like Lopez. They had decided that, rather than pushing for higher enrollment as quickly as possible, they would aim for slower, more gradual growth, setting small, manageable goals for expansion in the early years. As student demand for the center’s programming increased, district leadership redirected financial resources to the center and later supported staff in pursuing competitive state and federal grants.

Zipp says the slow-but-steady approach has been key to the center’s success, both in terms of financial viability and community buy-in. “To have a sustainable program embedded into the entire culture of the district, there has to be a long-term plan to get it going,” she said.

That community support is meaningful, because the Center for Career Discovery relies almost entirely on public money, including tax dollars in the form of school district funds from the local community itself. Much of that tax revenue goes towards the salaries of center staff, including student success coaches and job placement specialists, who help students prepare for and navigate their WBL journeys.

Our analysis focused on the center’s three most intensive WBL programs: Registered Apprenticeship, youth apprenticeship⁷, and internship. Local district funds are the primary source of funding for each program, covering half the total cost of the internship program and nearly 80 percent of the cost for operating the youth apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship programs. The remaining funding for these programs comes from state and federal grants, both formula-based and competitive. Philanthropic grants comprise only a small share of program revenue (Figure 9). Program costs vary slightly among the three programs, depending on student needs and program requirements, but include expenses like transportation, dual enrollment tuition, instructor pay, supplies and equipment, student advising and job coaching support.

To braid these sources and streams of funding, Zipp and her colleagues rely on a set of strategies honed over the center’s first 10 years. These four approaches are characterized by nimble thinking with a core goal in mind: to ensure that the center’s needs dictate how its financial resources are spent—and not the other way around—in order to maximize its flexibility and support its own long-term sustainability.

1. Use Stable Funding for Most Critical Costs

Funding itself almost entirely with public dollars provides the center with a stable funding base. Its state and federal grants, including the competitive grants it receives, are usually part of reliable annual formula grant programs, rather than one-off funding opportunities. The center has the added bonus of access to local school district funds drawn from a robust tax base across eight towns in Cook County, a resource that has proven to be among the center’s most valuable assets. Compared to state and federal grants, local district funds are more flexible and require less intensive reporting. Moreover, D214 leadership’s willingness to spend this cash on hand has helped ensure program continuity in tough situations.

For example, during Illinois’s 793-day budget crisis—when the state could not distribute federal grant awards to school districts, from 2016 to part of 2018—D214 leadership approved the use of district funds in place of the missing federal dollars, even though there was no clear timeline on when they would be reimbursed. This decision embodies leadership’s vision for WBL: at D214, college and career pathways are considered a part of regular instruction, not a supplemental activity on top of academics, so funding this work is not seen as optional.

Given this orientation, it’s not surprising that Zipp draws on the center’s most stable funding streams to support its most critical resource: its staff, which includes six student success coaches and 17 job placement specialists as well as special education and administrative teams across the district’s seven high schools. Zipp prioritizes their salaries—the center’s largest expense—by funding them through school district funds and formula grants so that if the center were to lose its competitive grants, the programs would continue operating. “The staff is critical to our students’ success in the workforce,” said Kathy Wicks, partnership manager and apprenticeship and program supervisor at D214. “We couldn't [provide] that [support] without this budget.”

Ensuring consistent, equitable access to the district’s college and career readiness opportunities has required creativity. For example, D214 has twice petitioned the Illinois State Board of Education for permission to use Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Title I funds more flexibly, which has removed financial barriers for low-income students to participate in college and career readiness activities, including dual credit coursework.⁸

2. Braid Funding Strategically to Promote Access and Pursue Sustainability

Though the public grants that fund the center can vary in terms of structure, award sizes, lengths, and reliability, they do have one thing in common: none of these grants includes legal permission to blend dollars with other funding streams.

Instead, Zipp employs braiding strategies to cover intermediary-wide and programmatic costs. When developing program budgets, staff generally apply the grant dollars first, beginning with the least flexible funding streams (i.e., those with the most specific and rigid eligibility requirements) and moving towards the more flexible options. For example, students with disabilities can receive IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), STEP (Secondary Transitional Experience Program), or youth WIOA (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) grant dollars, which ‘’follow’’ them and can be used to support their participation in different programs, including WBL. This setup allows local district funds, which have fewer restrictions and reporting requirements than these grants, to be applied last, covering whatever the grant dollars don’t or can’t. For example, students enrolled in WIOA who need transportation to and from their assigned worksites would have those costs covered first by WIOA grant funds. If there are remaining transportation expenses when that funding is exhausted, district funds can be used to cover remaining costs. This practice ensures that the WIOA grant is completely spent down on an annual basis, minimizing the use of district funds.

The strategy of spending down grant dollars first is emblematic of D214’s pragmatic, nimble approach. Zipp says other schools avoid spending down grants because they are hesitant about running out of funds. Instead of letting these norms dictate how they use their financial resources, D214 and Center for Career Discovery staff determine program priorities and needs and use this information to drive allocations.

3. Use Short-Term Grant Funding to Innovate

Of D214’s public grants, most are long-term. However, on occasion, short-term public grant dollars become available. The district braids these to support existing programs where possible, but also uses them to fund one-time or short-term expenses to expand or improve the district’s work-based learning offerings.

Recently, for example, the district used Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds—made available to schools during the COVID-19 pandemic—to purchase equipment and supplies for a new classroom with workstations that simulate real-world workplaces. Dubbed the Vocational Lab, the classroom is designed to help students with intellectual and developmental disabilities explore their interests and develop job skills so they can find meaningful employment after they leave D214. A typical day sees Vocational Lab students delivering mail, setting up retail displays, tending to plants, serving lattes, and operating cash registers at a student-run coffee shop.  “The Vocational Lab and associated businesses like Forest Brew coffee shop and the D214 Store give students exposure to and the ability to practice job skills in more authentic settings than a typical classroom, helping them feel more prepared and setting them up for success in paid employment once they leave D214,” said Barb Kain, director of career discovery.

Similarly, the Center for Career Discovery has not relied on philanthropic grants to support long-term costs because those dollars are generally seen as more fickle than district funds or multi-year public grants. If a public grant award is going to be reduced or eliminated, the center usually knows two years in advance, giving ample time to secure new funding streams. Private foundations, on the other hand, can choose not to renew grants with little advance warning. “The uncertainty makes staff nervous,” Zipp said of relying too heavily on philanthropy.

While Zipp sees philanthropic money as less reliable than public funding streams, it does have some enticing advantages for the center—namely, much less intensive grant management. The center has used philanthropic grants to pursue new, untested pilot programs, channeling those private dollars directly into research and development efforts. This strategy not only allows the center to launch and then evaluate pilot programs, but also to determine whether they should become permanent and, if so, how to fund them sustainably using other, more permanent resources. And because it relies on private grants for this process, the center is able to develop and test unproven programming—to innovate—without jeopardizing funding for the rest of its work.

4. Leverage District Assets to Support the Center’s Operations

One of Zipp’s major challenges is the intensive grant management that comes with the center’s state and federal grants. The lack of alignment between the grants, their applications, and their reporting requirements creates a workload made manageable only by the center’s access to financial and data teams that serve the whole district. Similarly, because of its location within the district, the center is also able to leverage its student data systems, transportation infrastructure, and support resources (e.g., health services, counseling services, etc.) to monitor and support student success. While an external intermediary might need to fund these operational and support functions independently, the center is able to coordinate and provide WBL opportunities as part of a broader, district-provided ecosystem of shared resources.

Now at Cruising Altitude

The Center for Career Discovery has been around for a decade, and in that time, it has reached, as Zipp said, “a cruising altitude.” Budgets don’t need to be built from scratch anymore. Program staff know eligibility requirements of different grants inside and out. Data and financial teams have set up dashboards to ease reporting challenges. The center has survived and thrived during a two-year state budget crisis and a global pandemic, among other things.

Over the past 10 years, the center’s programming has become an expected part of high school education at D214. That fact, combined with leadership’s steadfast support and a healthy local tax base to fund WBL programming, allows Zipp to be confident that the Center for Career Discovery is here to stay. She knows staff members have the experience and the commitment to make programming work, even if they were to lose a significant share of their revenue. “If all the [grant] funding dried up, [the programs] probably would look different,” she acknowledged. “Maybe the transportation piece would be a little bit different, or maybe we would have to have employers contribute something for student dual credit tuition. But if the [grant] funding went away, this program would not.”