New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative

New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative meets quarterly, along with colleagues from City and State agencies, to share information about workforce development. A subset of the Workforce Funders makes grants to the collaborative fund to develop joint projects that test innovations in the field or provide management assistance to many of the more than 140 nonprofit organizations that prepare New Yorkers for employment. 
 
History
In 2001, a group of more than 40 foundations with an interest in workforce issues joined forces to establish the New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative. Operating autonomously from Philanthropy New York, the New York City Workforce Development Fund in The New York Community Trust was created to distribute funds to demonstration projects and capacity-building efforts. The Fund’s goal is to enhance the effectiveness of the City’s public and nonprofit workforce development programs.
 

The New York City Workforce Fund—commonly known as the New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative—was established to promote robust, coherent, and effective workforce development systems for low-income New Yorkers. The collaborative is currently guided by a committee of 12 contributing foundations and corporate philanthropies that pool resources, set priorities, and make joint decisions to support projects. The collaborative has awarded over $20 million in grants for public-private initiatives, demonstration projects, capacity building for the nonprofit sector, policy research, and advocacy.  It also plays a field-building role by convening philanthropic leaders and stakeholders from across the workforce sector for quarterly meetings on critical issues and policies. Aligning philanthropic and government funding streams is a long-standing priority of the collaborative.

2026-2028 Strategic Focus:

In response to rising poverty and a shifting labor market, New York City’s workforce systems must do more to connect low-income New Yorkers to middle-wage occupations and upskilling opportunities tied to real economic mobility.

To advance this new strategy, the collaborative will develop a clear, data-informed understanding of which middle-wage occupations are accessible across industries and what it will take to prepare and support low-income New Yorkers to reach them.

Grantmaking priorities include:

  • Targeted research
  • High-potential pilots and public-private partnerships
  • Policy advocacy

For more information, please contact the collaborative’s Director, Judith M. Smith, at jsmith@thenytrust.org.

Co-Chairs