Q & A
- What is the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce? What do you do?
- Are you a consulting firm? A nonprofit?
- Who do you help?
- What are your core competencies? What specific expertise do you have?
- What services do you provide?
- What is your process for helping leaders create good jobs and a skilled workforce?
- Where have you successfully helped leaders meet the challenges of creating good jobs or a skilled workforce?
- Who are your clients/partners?
- How are you funded?
- Can you help me find a job or get training?
- How can I find out more (about your work or about strategies for creating a skilled workforce)?
1. What is the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce? What do you do?
Corporation for a Skilled Workforce is a national nonprofit organization that helps government, business and community leaders create good jobs so that families and firms can thrive in the changing and turbulent marketplace.
We help communities innovate so they can attract and retain good jobs. We help businesses cultivate talent so they can grow. We help education institutions train people so they can find good jobs — or create their own. For example, when thousands of people in Michigan lost their jobs, we helped Governor Granholm design a program to give workers free tuition so that they could learn skills for new, well-paying jobs.
2. Are you a consulting firm? A nonprofit?
We are a nonprofit public interest agency that brings together expertise from government, business and higher education to both develop and execute strategies that help today’s leaders meet the workforce challenges of the new economy.
3. How can you help the following groups specifically:
- Community leaders value us because we help them develop and implement strategies to attract and retain good jobs.
- Governors and state economic development agencies value us because we design winning solutions to create jobs and make their states more competitive.
- Businesses and industry associations value us because we help them attract the talent they need to grow.
- Post-secondary education institutions value us because we help them align their training with real-world job opportunities.
4. What are your core competencies? What specific expertise do you have?
Our breadth and depth of experience and expertise in workforce development is unparalleled. We monitor the latest research on strategies for job creation and training so that we know which ones are working in the real world and which aren’t. We also do our own research, whether that means mapping a region’s workforce needs and assets or analyzing specific economic and labor trends. We draw on those findings to develop customized solutions for a wide range of leaders.
Our partners benefit most from our extensive experience working directly in the trenches with business, government and education leaders to address the most pressing workforce challenges, like retooling struggling regional economies to deliver 21st century jobs and increasing access to education for low-skill workers. We understand the challenges that today’s leaders face as they adapt their institutions to new economic realities, and that insight allows us to provide relevant and practical support to them.
We also specialize in helping different stakeholders work together efficiently and effectively, toward a common goal of building a workforce with the skills to compete in the new economy. That’s why we have such a strong a track record of aligning education providers with growing job markets, uniting businesses across sectors to solve skilled labor shortages and helping government agencies make smart investments in business development and job training.
5. What services do you provide?
While our list of products and services evolve to meet new challenges, leaders come to us most often as trusted partners for innovative, customized solutions for the following:
- Strategic planning to determine the best opportunities for workforce development and job creation
- Research and analysis to map out assets, obstacles and relevant trends for workforce development and to evaluate whether existing strategies are working
- Influencing and developing policy to increase the capacity to attract and create jobs or train workers
- Building and facilitating networks and coalitions so that government, business, education and other stakeholders can work seamlessly together around shared workforce goals
- Technical assistance outreach and resource development to ensure that workforce development and job creation strategies are implemented effectively
- Developing leadership capacity through leadership academies, executive coaching, and learning networks
6. What is your process for helping leaders create good jobs and a skilled workforce?
CSW provides the full spectrum of hands-on policy, research, and practice to help leaders create the conditions for good jobs and a competitive workforce. The following is our formula for success:
- Innovating and researching: We create and discover the most promising practices from around the world.
- Designing winning strategies: We design and test strategies and tools that will work under your unique conditions.
- Supporting implementation: We provide advice and capacity building assistance as you put those tools to work.
- Measuring impact: We evaluate the effectiveness of any strategy to track results and promote continuous improvement.
Some of our partners want us to play all of those roles. For others, our scope of work is more targeted. But our commitment to facilitating leadership and learning is a constant in everything we do. We help leaders navigate change together so that their capacity for tackling complex challenges grows over time.
7. Where have you successfully helped leaders meet the challenges of creating good jobs or a skilled workforce?
- When Colorado needed to close the skills gap between low-income residents and highly educated people coming from out of state, we teamed up with the state’s government, business and education leaders to target opportunities in the health sector. We helped to launch and maintain the Workforce and Education Lifelong Learning (WELLS) Center, which uses innovative technologies to teach 21st century nursing skills to students, faculty, and practicing nurses and physicians from throughout Colorado either on-site or on-line.
- With one in three Michigan working-age adults — 1.7 million people — lacking the basic skills or credentials to attain a family-sustaining job, CSW helped the state develop an ambitious and unprecedented strategy for dramatically expanding adult learning with the goal of cutting the number of Michigan’s under-skilled workers in half.
8. Who are your clients/partners?
We work with governors, industry associations, post-secondary education institutions, economic development agencies, workforce development boards, charitable foundations and others who have a direct stake and role in creating good jobs and training the next generation of skilled workers. The following is a small sample of recent partners:
- National Governors Association
- Midwest Governors Association
- Michigan Department of Labor, Energy, & Economic Growth
- Kentucky State Workforce Investment Board
- Complete College America
- United Way of America
- National Association of Manufacturers
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation
- Jobs for the Future
- Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
- Lumina Foundation
- Philadephia Workforce Development Corporation
- District of Columbia's Department of Human Services
9. How are you funded?
We are funded in two key ways. The first is through foundation grants from notable philanthropies such as the Charles Stuart Mott Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lumina Foundation, and National Science Foundation.
In addition, we also contract directly with a wide range of partners including:
- State and local governments
- Regional groups, such as workforce investment boards, community based organizations, and industry/employer associations
- National organizations and federal institutions, like the National Governors Association, National Associations for Workforce Boards, and US Census Bureau
- Post-secondary education institutions, including Michigan State University, Macomb Community College, Penn State, and Missouri Community College Association
10. Can you help me find a job or get training?
We do not provide job placement or training to individuals ourselves. Instead, we work to strengthen the institutions that provide job placement and training — like businesses, government agencies and community colleges.
11. How can I find out more (about your work or about strategies for creating a skilled workforce)?
Call us at