New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative

The New York City Workforce Fund—commonly known as the New York City Workforce Funders Collaborative—was established in 2001 to promote robust, coherent, and effective workforce development systems for low-income New Yorkers. The collaborative is 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.