JFF’s Integration of the Rework America Alliance

On Oct. 4, 2023, Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the Markle Foundation announced the transition of the Rework America Alliance from Markle to JFF. The Alliance helps workers in low-wage jobs who have built skills through experience rather than completion of a bachelor’s degree to move into quality jobs. Transitioning the Alliance to JFF will help accelerate JFF’s achievement of its North Star goal to see 75 million people facing systemic barriers to advancement working in quality jobs in the next 10 years.

What is the Rework America Alliance?
What are the assets JFF is transitioning from the Markle Foundation?
Why has Markle transitioned the Rework America Alliance to JFF?
What are the benefits to current and future Alliance stakeholders and participants?
How will the Alliance be integrated into JFF’s work?
What are the terms of the transfer of the Alliance to JFF?
What experience does JFF have in transitioning assets into its organization?
Additional information

What is the Rework America Alliance?
The Markle Foundation began engaging in the workforce space in 2013, focusing on a skills-first model to create greater economic mobility and opportunity. It launched the Rework America Alliance in 2020 and has continued to build this national collaboration of 40 nonprofits, private sector employees, labor unions, civil rights groups, community-based organizations, and others that helps millions of people in low-wage jobs, particularly Black and Latine workers, to advance into quality jobs. The Alliance does this by:

• Sharing tools and training resources to help career coaches connect jobseekers to quality jobs, and
• Driving the adoption of inclusive talent management practices by employers.

What are the assets JFF is transitioning from the Markle Foundation?
Through this transition, JFF will gain:

• Delivery partnerships with organizations including the National Urban League, Rural LISC, Goodwill Industries International, and UnidosUS, which have built strong relationships in regions and with populations underrepresented in quality jobs to help employers adopt more inclusive skills-based talent practices that enable workers to secure quality jobs. The Alliance’s delivery partnerships give JFF access to trusted partners and channels to build on its growing regional work so JFF can deliver not only the Alliance’s skills-first content but also other programming from JFF’s Workforce & Regional Economies, Education, and Employer Mobilization practices and its Centers for Racial Economic Equity, Justice & Economic Advancement, Apprenticeship & Work-based Learning, and Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Work.
• Employer resources including a portfolio of digital courses, skills-based hiring playbooks, content, supports, and online products to help employers (as well as community colleges, workforce boards, and community-based organizations) adopt a skills-first approach to talent management so they can hire and retain workers with the skills they need.
• Career coaching resources to equip coaches to help more workers move into and flourish in quality jobs through new tools, scalable digital courses, and techniques. These resources will help JFF work more closely with the learners and workers it supports as well as key players in the education and workforce systems it seeks to change.
• The Rework America State Network, a nonpartisan collaboration of 30 governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia, who share innovative workforce practices that lead to improving the labor market at a scale and pace not possible through individual state actions. The network brings critical systems change infrastructure that will enable JFF to build upon existing relationships and policy initiatives.

Why has Markle transitioned the Rework America Alliance to JFF?
Markle’s strategy is to bring issues to light, convene key stakeholders, explore solutions, and establish a strategy to achieve impact at scale. Having engaged in the workforce space and focused on a skills-first model to create economic mobility and opportunity since 2013, Markle formed the Alliance in 2020. It has continued to build strong relationships and strategies to drive the collaborative momentum necessary to create sustainable change in the labor market—with the vision that, once established, others would continue to take this work forward so it can be scaled faster and have even greater impact. After careful consideration, JFF was selected as the organization that has the capacity, capabilities, and desire to take on this work.

What are the benefits to current and future Alliance stakeholders and participants?
The transition to JFF will:

• Elevate the Alliance’s impact by giving the initiative a broader platform, additional resources, and new levers for change, such as policy support and access to JFF’s connections with large employers.
• Fuel JFF’s scale and effectiveness with the Alliance’s best-in-class skills-first content, deep roster of delivery partners, and superb career coaching resources, as well as the robust Rework America State Network.
• Lead the field to greater impact in supporting learners and workers and modeling consolidation of efforts in an environment that is too often fractured or unproductively competitive.

How will the Alliance be integrated into JFF’s work?
JFF is already a field leader in many of these areas. The work of the Alliance is complementary and enables JFF to provide more breadth and depth in its content. The Alliance’s work will continue and grow at JFF and will be integrated with ongoing work across the organization, particularly that of its Policy & Advocacy team and its Employer Mobilization and Workforce & Regional Economies practices. Markle and JFF expect that a number of Markle staff will transition to JFF in the coming weeks to support the Alliance.

What are the terms of the transfer of the Alliance to JFF?
The Markle Foundation will provide funding to sustain the Alliance at JFF, and JFF will be seeking additional funding to expand the Alliance’s work in four key areas:

• Reach and visibility: Promoting the Alliance to new audiences through regional and national convenings, robust communications, thought leadership, storytelling, and engagement with policymakers to accelerate the adoption of skills-first practices nationally; and infusing JFF’s work with the Alliance’s resources and concepts.
• Alliance membership: Growing participation in the Alliance, deepening engagement with existing members and welcoming leaders from additional organizations.
• Delivery partners: Building upon strong existing partnerships and forging relationships in new regions and with additional national organizations that can connect JFF to the populations it aims to serve.
• Products: Iterating on the Alliance’s user experience and training delivery to keep pace with the continued excellence of the Alliance’s content; leveraging trusted relationships with employer partners to integrate training in more companies; and incorporating JFF’s quality job principles into the Alliance’s model.

What experience does JFF have in transitioning assets into its organization?
JFF is celebrating its 40th year and has designed, scaled, and integrated many initiatives. In the past 16 months, JFF has been fortunate to acquire and integrate nonprofit organizations or their assets into its organization, including Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS), which establishes universal, independent measures of education and training program quality to help people navigate the increasingly crowded and confusing education and training marketplace, and Dave’s Killer Bread Foundation’s second-chance hiring program to support skilled workers with criminal records.

Additional Information
Rework America Alliance
JFF’s North Star
JFF’s Employer Mobilization practice
JFF’s Policy & Advocacy work
JFF’s Workforce & Regional Economies practice