The Future Workforce Fund

https://socialfinance.org/career-impact-bonds/

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Which of the following categories best describes your solution?

Describe what makes your solution innovative.

Our solution leverages a first-of-its-kind, evergreen fund structure to scale CIBs and their impact. It represents a new public policy and philanthropic tool to rewire incentives so that all stakeholders are aligned around outcomes. Our approach is innovative in our efforts to:

• Harness data to identify programs, calculate repayments, and manage performance
• Deploy technology to track and assess outcomes
• Leverage diverse intellectual capital through our cross-sector partners to drive impact

The underlying Fund investments, CIBs, are also distinct among ISAs. The ISA market is growing significantly, primarily among higher education institutions and coding bootcamps. An estimated 175 schools will offer ISAs in 2020, with a collective $500M+ in agreements. However, most ISAs do not reflect impact-first CIB values. While some impact ISAs are emerging from workforce investment boards (WIBs), like the San Diego Workforce Partnership, and local nonprofit organizations, they often play narrower roles within a given project.

Social Finance serves a broad intermediary function that coordinates various project partners across the life of the project. Our approach is differentiated in our:

• Distinct target population focus on individuals who face barriers (financial, educational, racial, cultural) to accessing high-quality training
• Commitment to student-centric terms guided by a “Student Bill of Rights”
• Funding of wraparound services to help students persist and graduate
• Engagement of diverse training programs (from apprenticeships to coding bootcamps to public workforce programs to community colleges)
• Use of public, philanthropic, and impact investment capital
• Aligned incentives among investors, providers, and students with providers’ payments partially dependent on student outcomes

Describe the core technology, if applicable, that powers your solution.

We leverage data and technology throughout the life cycle of the Fund. In this volatile labor market, it is more critical than ever to leverage a data-driven approach to understand local trends and identify in-demand, resilient job sectors, geographies, and career pathways. To assess local labor market conditions, we formally partner with Burning Glass Technologies and leverage data from Emsi, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Census Bureau. We also engage with employers and employer-facing organizations (e.g. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, local industry associations, WIBs) to integrate real-time employer needs.

Then we conduct thorough due diligence on prospective education and training providers and assess CIB compatibility by examining:

• Data on participants’ employment outcomes (placement and wage growth)
• Alignment with employer demand and focus on skills with long-term economic value
• Cost-effectiveness and the ability to be financed through student-friendly terms
• Capacity to scale, including strong financial and operational management and leadership
• Ability to deliver programming to underserved populations (including experience with and ability to deliver wraparound supports)

Finally, we engaged two technology vendors - BrightHive and Bowtie – to build an Impact Management System (IMS) and robust data governance structures to securely import, clean, visualize, and assess data across our CIB portfolio. The IMS will enable data fidelity and power real-time program performance dashboards to analyze our impact at the deal- and portfolio- level, embed an equity lens and assess data across student characteristics, manage towards equitable outcomes, and inform our longitudinal learning agenda.

Provide evidence that this technology works.

Our solution utilizes widely used and accepted technologies, including big data and software applications. We use Burning Glass Technology’s big data and software platform to access real-time data on job growth, skills in demand, and labor market trends. Burning Glass is a leader in the space and works with a wide range of clients.

In our due diligence process, we request data from prospective training providers and model the CIB and its underlying assumptions in Excel.

Finally, the IMS utilizes Bowtie and Sisense technologies to connect, clean, and visualize data on launched CIBs. We work with training provider and CIB servicer partners to establish data collection protocols – depending on the sophistication of our partner and their data infrastructure, this can range from sharing monthly Excels to establishing application programming interfaces (APIs). Bowtie is a cloud-based case management software used by hundreds of nonprofit and mission-driven organizations. We leverage the Bowtie system and its machine learning function to track outcomes with greater efficiency and data integrity. Sisense is a business intelligence (BI) software and analytics platform and is a leader in the field with 2,000+ global customers (e.g. Expedia, GE, Nasdaq, Philips, The Salvation Army) and nearly 800 employees around the world.

Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:

• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
• Big Data
• Software and Mobile Applications

What is your theory of change?

We developed our theory of change based on our experience launching our early CIB portfolio and forming the UP Fund, a return-seeking, impact investing fund. We also engaged diverse stakeholders – from students to training providers to employers – via focus groups and individual conversations to better understand their perspectives and the impact of our model. We structured our theory of change around the Fund itself and three primary stakeholders: students, providers, and employers.

Inputs:

• Fund: Aggregate capital; identify training and supportive service providers; define CIB terms; provide active performance management support
• Students: Enroll and participate in training and wraparound services; take on CIB
• Providers: Receive capital to scale and expand addressable market; recruit students from target populations; provide training and supportive services
• Employers: Establish partnerships with providers; commit to review and/or hire applicants from providers

Outputs:

• Fund: Receive data on completion, supportive service engagement and effectiveness, program quality
• Students: Complete training; obtain skills needed to succeed in employment; apply/interview for jobs
• Providers: Broaden pool of trainees; deliver high-quality training and supportive services; achieve higher graduation rates
• Employers: Network with students; process applications and interview students

Short-term outcomes

• Fund: Receive CIB payments; achieve target financial and impact returns; report on placement, earnings, CIB compliance
• Students: Obtain job with higher salary and growth potential in desired industry; repay CIB obligations; equitable outcomes across groups
• Providers: Expand capacity to serve students with a high-quality training program; achieve desired tuition cost recovery; improve ability to track data on program operations and performance
• Employers: Hire, onboard, train, and retain program graduates from target populations

 Long-term impacts

• Fund: Demonstrate financial sustainability and scalability of evergreen model and CIBs; improve student outcomes at scale; orient the workforce system around outcomes
• Students: Enter into career pathways with higher salaries and expected salary growth; recycle CIB payments to support future cohorts; improve long-term economic stability and mobility
• Providers: Expand capacity; achieve transparency on outcomes; unlock sustainable revenue stream
• Employers: Maintain competitive edge by shifting paradigm of talent development and acquisition; enable long-term retention, professional advancement, and access to diverse, qualified talent pools

Select the key characteristics of your target population.

• Women & Girls
• LGBTQ+
• Rural
• Peri-Urban
• Urban
• Low-Income
• Refugees & Internally Displaced Persons
• Minorities & Previously Excluded Populations
• US Veterans

How many people does your solution currently serve? How many people did your solution serve in 2019? 2018? 2017?

591; 24; 0; 0

What percent of the people you served in 2019 were between the age of 15 and 30?

• 61-80%

What barriers currently exist for you to accomplish your goals in the next year and in the next five years?

Funding is our biggest barrier to accomplishing our goals over the next year and beyond. We are seeking capital to address two needs: 1)  grant support for our internal operations and ongoing efforts to launch and manage the Fund and 2) seed funding from philanthropic and public-sector partners to anchor the Fund and invest in the initial CIB projects.

We have worked diligently over the past two years to address any technical and legal barriers in developing our initial cohort of CIBs and the impact investment fund. We will leverage this experience to mitigate any technical or legal barriers we face with the evergreen Fund.

There is regulatory and reputational risk associated with ISAs, given that the market is largely unregulated and the potential for bad actors. While a few states have passed laws aimed at regulation, the federal government has yet to pass legislation.

Finally, while we have been working to educate the market , a lack of understanding of our unique CIB approach requires that we allocate more staff time to educating potential philanthropic and public-sector partners as they consider investing in the Fund. While this may delay onboarding new partners, we do not consider it a true barrier since market education and field building are core to our approach. 

What are your goals within the next year and within the next five years?

We aim to achieve:

1. People impact: Unlock pathways to employment and economic opportunity

In the 2021, we will increase earnings and the attainment of in-demand skills for hundreds of workers. Over five years, the revolving Fund could train tens of thousands of people, with no new funds needed after the initial capital raise. 

2. Partner impact: Scale effective training programs

We will provide flexible growth capital for training providers that have demonstrated track records of successfully helping individuals get and keep good jobs. We will partner with 5-7 training providers in the first year and 20-25 by year five. Successful projects will receive follow-on CIB financing so that effective programs will continue to grow and deliver services.

3. Systems-level impact: Orient the workforce system around outcomes

We will use data gathered via the Fund to contribute evidence to the workforce development arena. Currently, a lack of knowledge about what programs work means that public, private, and philanthropic funding is not always directed towards effective interventions.

Ultimately, we aim to create a demonstration effect, inspiring others to enter the CIB market and shifting the ISA market and its nascent regulation to be more student-centered. Our projects can serve as models for others to replicate across the education finance field. We will demonstrate the viability of the CIB and evergreen structure to ensure equal access to opportunities and outcomes. We will also analyze data from our projects and disseminate learnings via publications and speaking engagements to amplify and scale our impact. 

How do you plan to overcome these barriers?

To overcome our largest barrier – securing grant support to develop the Fund and seed capital to invest in CIBs – we will leverage our existing partner network. Over our decade history, we have worked with 100+ philanthropic and government partners to mobilize tens of millions in grant and public funding for innovative finance.

Through a strategic assessment of our current and former partners, we have identified a target list to focus our outreach efforts. We have developed robust marketing materials and a communications plan to disseminate information about CIBs and the Fund through accessible forums (e.g. conferences, webinars, blog posts).

Our initial outreach efforts have helped us to secure initial funding and led to active business development conversations in over a dozen states across the country. These states include, but are not limited to, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. We are also actively looking for new partners and creative funding opportunities – like this Challenge and crowdsourcing campaigns – to support our fundraising goals.

To mitigate regulatory and reputational risk, we aim to influence the policy agenda by actively engaging in the ISA regulatory discussion with the goal of strengthening student protections and advancing guidelines. We are collaborating with Whiteboard Advisors to advocate at the state and federal levels for ISA legislation that centers on social impact. Additionally, CIBs launched through the evergreen Fund and the UP Fund will establish an important precedent for student-friendly practices and differentiate us in the market.

What outcomes data would you like to be collecting that you are not yet able to collect?

Currently, our data comes from training providers, CIB servicers, and students. We would like to expand our data sources to include employers, public-sector partners, and, to a greater extent, students to better understand our impact.

We would like to work with employers to assess whether hiring CIB students leads to improved retention or productivity to help us strengthen the value proposition of CIBs to employers, potentially encouraging them to hire more CIB students, invest in CIB funds, and/or offset student payments.

We could also engage government and related partners, like WIBs, to access education and training provider data to help us diligence potential CIB providers.

Finally, we can be more proximate to impact by better engaging students. We can broaden and deepen our outreach channels to get more longitudinal data on student outcomes in order to provide more comprehensive support (e.g. for future upskilling, banking, financial planning, home purchase decisions).

What type of organization is your solution team?

How many people are on your leadership team? (Of these, please provide the number of individuals from your leadership team that are full time, part time, and volunteer)

10 full-time leadership team members, including CEO

In what year was your organization founded? How many years have you worked on your solution?

Social Finance was founded in 2011, and we have been working on the CIB strategy since 2018. We launched our first CIB investment fund (the UP Fund) in 2019, and are poised to launch our first-ever CIB evergreen fund in 2021.

Why are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

We are well-positioned to deliver on this solution because of our team and our track record launching innovative financing models for workforce development.

Our staff of 65 brings experience from government and leading nonprofit, financial, consulting, and legal firms and is deeply committed to excellence, collaboration, and impact. Through building the Social Impact Bond and now Career Impact Bond fields, our team has been nimble in the face of challenges and has exhibited creativity, grit, and resilience to advance our mission. Some members of our team have lived experiences similar to those who we aim to serve – improving our ability to understand on-the-ground realities and design our solution.

Furthermore, over the last decade, our team has:

• Established and staffed an impact investment fund, the UP Fund, with an expected $50 million fund size to deploy 8-10 CIBs
• Engaged with 200+ high-quality training providers and identified a pipeline of programs are well-suited for CIBs
• Piloted and invested in four CIBs serving an expected 2,140 students
• Launched and conducted active performance management on four Social Impact Bonds, mobilizing over $34 million for workforce success (serving refugees and immigrants, formerly incarcerated individuals, and veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder), with another in development focused on the intersection of environmental and workforce outcomes (i.e., green jobs).
• Mobilized over $150 million in impact capital across our broader social investment portfolio
• Advised on the development of workforce-related outcomes rate cards, which allow governments to set the prices they are willing to pay for specific outcomes

What organizations do you currently partner with, if any? How are you working with them?

Our work is multi-sectoral. First, we partner with governments, recognizing that they are both the largest source of education and training funding as well as purveyors of the broadest range of social support services. We are employing our decade of experience working with public entities to access capital, leverage existing training and support infrastructure, and catalyze systemic change in how our nation delivers upskilling opportunities. We are actively exploring state-level CIB evergreen funds in over a dozen states across the country.

Second, we appreciate that deep partnerships and close coordination with vetted, high-quality training providers is critical to the success of the Fund. We engage diverse education and training providers – including WIBs, nonprofits, for-profits, and community colleges – who offer in-demand credentials, licenses, certifications, and degrees. We particularly target providers that:

• Operate in recession-resilient sectors that are poised for growth or sustained demand, such as IT, nursing, allied health, skilled trades, and green jobs
• Share our mission to break down access barriers for low-income and underserved individuals
• Demonstrate proven track records of serving and supporting our target population

Finally, we establish partnerships with thought leaders and operational partners to design and implement the Fund. We are currently engaging with:

• Funder partners to invest in the Fund alongside government
• Data partners to identify real-time skills gaps and mitigate the risk of the current volatile labor market
• Employers and employer-facing organizations to integrate employer needs and connect program graduates with jobs
• CIB servicers to manage student repayments and contribute outcomes data

What is your business model?

In a time of widespread financial and job insecurity, CIBs are unique, multi-sector partnerships with all interests aligned around the success of students. CIBs prioritize student safeguards, offer wraparound supports to help students persist and graduate, and relieve students from bearing financial risks associated with training and employment.

In this model, we serve and ultimately benefit multiple stakeholders:

• Governments get sustainable results for their workforce dollars, building the workforce for the future to drive economic growth. Governments can invest in the Fund, unlock philanthropic dollars, and enhance their tax credit programs to leverage private capital.
• Effective education and training providers can access flexible growth capital to scale their services, expand their addressable market, and achieve outcomes for more people.
• Philanthropies can partner with government, stretching their dollars further as their grants are recycled to support more trainees and driving sustainable, scaled impact.
• Employers can hire tens of thousands of students upskilled via the Fund, accessing a more diverse and qualified talent pool to fill critical job openings. Employers can also make repayments on behalf of students, to increase worker retention and minimize turnover costs.
• Importantly, students are able to realize their potential, find meaningful work, and actively participate in the economy of the future. With tens of millions of people unemployed due to the recent economic crisis, displaced workers can access high-quality training opportunities and wraparound supports via the Fund to unlock new pathways to economic security and mobility.

Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, or to other organizations?

What is your path to financial sustainability?

We must consider the path to financial sustainability for both Social Finance and for the Fund:

• Social Finance: We will incur costs to develop the Fund – including forming and structuring the Fund, refining the Fund’s strategy, and raising capital. In an ongoing way, we will also incur costs to deploy and manage the Fund – including sourcing and conducting diligence on high-quality training providers, structuring and launching individual CIBs, tracking CIB and Fund performance, and managing the Fund. Given our experience with the UP Fund, we expect some economies of scale and reductions in administrative costs through the sharing of back-office operations. We will support these costs in two ways: (1) Grant capital will support the Fund’s start-up and development costs and (2) a nominal fund management fee will sustainably support ongoing operations. 
• Future Workforce Fund: We will raise funding from public and philanthropic partners for the $100 million Fund. Then, we will sustain our initiative through the Fund's evergreen nature. The Fund is designed to be self-sustaining: Student repayments from early projects will be leveraged to support future students in perpetuity. We expect a $100 million fund could train ~18,000 people over five years and ~34,000 people over ten years across 20-25 CIBs, with no new funds needed after initial capital raise.

If you have raised funds for your solution or are generating revenue, please provide details.

To support our costs associated with Fund development, we have received an initial planning grant from the Walmart Foundation and Macquarie Group Foundation. We have also secured seed funding from the Macquarie Group Foundation and received a soft commitment from another philanthropy. We are in discussions with over a dozen state governments to explore additional funding sources.

The Fund is an evergreen, financially sustainable version of our existing UP Fund that is capitalized with impact investments. In the UP Fund, program graduates' repayments are used to repay investors; in the evergreen fund, graduates' repayments will be used to finance the training of future program participants in a sustainable way.

We have received broader support for the CIB strategy and the UP Fund, demonstrating vast interest and support for this type of strategy.

• The UP Fund is a $50 million pool of return-seeking, catalytic capital for CIBs. We executed a first close of $22.4 million in December 2019, with anchor investments from Blue Meridian Partners, Schmidt Futures, Blue Haven Initiative, The Shapiro Foundation, and individual donors through Donor Advised Funds. We are working towards a second close this winter and final close in summer 2021. 
• After providing initial grant support to develop the General Assembly CIB, Prudential Financial is now a co-investor in the project alongside the UP Fund.
• We also secured funding from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, Google.org, Prudential Financial, and Schmidt Futures to innovate and execute the first CIBs and the UP Fund.

If you seek to raise funds for your solution, please provide details.

We are actively seeking additional grant funding to develop and launch the Future Workforce Fund in 2021, to expand and adapt the CIB strategy to contribute to an equitable COVID-19 recovery. The Fund builds on our previous CIB experience and deepens the CIB's impact thesis. We seek two forms of funding:    

• $600,000 in total grant funding to support Fund start-up costs, sourcing, data analytics, and market education efforts. We have already raised or have visibility to some of this budget, so are specifically seeking ~$200,000 from this Challenge to support Fund start-up and development costs
• $5 million in public and philanthropic capital to seed the Fund in its first year and another $90 million to close the $100 million Fund over the following five years

Ongoing costs will be largely covered by our nominal Fund management fee.

What are your estimated expenses for 2021?

The Future Workforce Fund 2021 Budget:

• Fund set-up costs (capital raise, legal, finance, compliance, upfront servicer fees): $200,000
• CIB provider sourcing: $100,000
• Jobs data analytics platform (for the diligence, development, and integration of a job market data analytics platform): $200,000
• Market education (to create and disseminate project-related marketing collateral and publications): $100,000
• Administrative costs: $100,000 (ongoing administrative costs will total $1,000,000 over 10 years)
• Funds to capitalize CIBs: $100,000,000 (we aim to secure $10,000,000 in the first year and have about half of this already confirmed or in soft commitments)

Note: Measurement and evaluation costs are not included in this budget as they are integrated into the budgets of each CIB project we launch.

Why are you applying to the Reimagining Pathways to Employment in the US Challenge?

We are excited to apply to this Challenge and potentially access new partners and funding to support the launch and operating costs of our first evergreen CIB fund and, ultimately, to help us develop CIBs that respond to the acute needs emerging from COVID-19. Specifically, the Challenge would support:

1. Increasing proximity to impact

The Challenge partner network is compelling and will greatly support our team in designing student-friendly CIBs. We look forward to leveraging the partners’ expertise and processes to help us better amplify student perspectives and be more proximate to the communities we aim to serve.

2. Improving data and technology

Having development funding secured will enable us to focus our time on sourcing, diligencing, and structuring CIBs to drive impact. Partners’ data and technology infrastructure will help us identify and diligence training providers across industries and geographies. Funding from the Challenge will help us integrate a jobs data analytics platform to inform our sourcing and due diligence efforts to better evaluate providers' resilience and ability to address skills gaps.

3. Raising the evergreen fund

Funding support from Morgridge Family Foundation, New Profit, and other partners would greatly validate our approach, amplify our efforts, and catalyze other funders to engage. Grant support from the Challenge will support related legal, finance, compliance, and upfront servicer fees to accelerate our efforts to establish the fund vehicle. Finally, the validation pilots will enable us to generate early impact and create a demonstration effect to excite other funders and partners to engage.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?

• Product/service distribution
• Funding and revenue model
• Monitoring and evaluation
• Marketing, media, and exposure

What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?

We seek to partner with a diverse set of organizations and individuals to advance our solution, including:

• Students and workers to better understand their on-the-ground realities, wraparound support needs, data privacy concerns, and feedback on their CIB experience. Fundamental to our approach is the notion that critical to the future of work is the future of workers.
• Public-sector partners, such as state or local WIBs; state labor or higher education boards; and state, city, or county economic development agencies. These partners would be instrumental in developing the Fund and can play a few roles – from investing capital to providing longitudinal data to supporting sourcing efforts.
• Philanthropic funding partners – like the Challenge partners – to validate and accelerate our approach. Funders can play various roles from supporting development costs to investing funds to helping source training providers to amplifying our work via market education and thought leadership activities.
• Education and training providers – ranging from WIBs to nonprofit workforce providers to for-profit coding bootcamps to technical and community colleges – to better understand their fit for a CIB and potential to scale.
• Employers and employer-facing organizations (e.g. Federal Reserve Banks, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation) to assess their current skills needs and job openings. Employers can also engage financially by investing in the Fund, hiring CIB students, and/or offsetting student repayments based on retention outcomes.
• Labor market experts to leverage their data and technology systems to inform our assessment of local job market dynamics and skills gaps.

Please explain in more detail here.

Product/service distribution: We are particularly excited to connect with potential WIB partners. WIBs can advise us on how we can structure the Fund and underlying CIBs to be more student-centric, training provider-friendly, and sustainable. They can serve several roles within the Fund ecosystem, from investing through innovative funding streams like the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, to connecting us with high-quality training programs, to supporting CIB students access in-demand jobs in the marketplace.

Funding and revenue model: We hope the partnership will catalyze additional public and philanthropic funders to support Fund operations and seed the Fund.

Monitoring and evaluation: We aim to deepen and broaden our data sources to better assess the impact of the Fund on multiple stakeholders.

Marketing, media, and exposure: We are excited to amplify the CIB strategy and impact to-date, as well as the innovative evergreen Fund structure to inspire replication and systems change.