Funding Sources

The partnerships studied for this report draw on a wide range of private and public funding, as shown in Matrix 2.

• Eight utilize union-management negotiated joint funds. The Southern Nevada Carpenters Journeymen and Apprentice Training Program, for example, is a traditional construction sector, labor-management training program that has addressed a rapidly changing workforce in the country's fastest-growing city. The 1,300 carpenters and apprentices enrolled in training programs in 1998 approximately doubled the level trained three years earlier. The San Francisco Hotels Partnership brought together two of the Bay Area's most dynamic forces: the hospitality industry—San Francisco's largest private-sector employer—and the multi-ethnic HERE Local 2 to form problem-solving teams that improved operations and working conditions.
• Seven partnerships have obtained support from private foundations. The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, for example, benefitted from an Annie E. Casey Foundation initiative to link central city residents to family-supporting jobs. Working Partnerships USA received funding from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Rosenberg Foundation and several others to establish its temporary worker project. And the E-Team Machinist Training Program received funding from the Discount Foundation through its community partner, the Essex County Community Organization.
• Six partnerships, including the Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership and the Consortium for Worker Education, used U.S. Department of Labor and Health and Human Services welfare-to-work funding.
• Nine collect fees for services provided. The Graphic Arts Institute of Northern California, for example, uses tuition and fees from nonunion participants to lower costs for training union members.
• Nine partnerships use state or local funds for incumbent worker training, and six use state funds for "manufacturing extension" (publicly supported modernization services for manufacturers) programs. The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership has two full-time labor-management specialists on staff extending technical assistance to companies.
• Six partnerships receive funding through community colleges and three get funding through state education departments.

The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership has drawn from the widest variety of funding, reflecting its very broad base of activities. Of 49 potential funding sources identified in this report, the Wisconsin partnership has obtained funding from 30, including local school-to-work and manufacturing extension money, federal Workforce Investment Act and transportation funds and contributions from corporations, unions and foundations.

The evolution of sectoral and regional partnerships also show that the ones functioning at a variety of levels, achieving scale, scope and depth have a greater variety of concrete results to show. The Aspen Institute Sectoral Employment Development Learning Project study of GIDC highlights both training and placement outcomes alongside $35 million in new business for the industry through their market expansion efforts. WRTP can identify everything for lower turnover rates for employers, placement rates and above average wages for new entrants to a $21 million increase in private sector investment in worker training. To be able to focus on a sector and to have the ability to engage on multiple level with firms in the sector leads to good results.