State and Regional Roles in Sustaining Sector Strategies and Initiatives

State Role in Sustaining Sector Strategies

The state can play several broad roles to sustain strategies, either by providing funding (state and/or federal) directly to regions, and/or by helping regions to develop the capacity at the regional level to fund their initiatives. Specifically the state can:

Provide funds to regions

Many states provide grant funds to regions through a competitive or non-competitive process. Numerous states use governor’s discretionary funds from the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to fund regional sector initiatives. Grants are often single dispersements, requiring regions to develop sustainability plans that will support their efforts beyond the grant period. An even more desirable grant funding model is to leverage several sources of funding (i.e. WIA, Wagner-Peyser, economic development, community college) into one grant solicitation. This brings state systems together and encourages local partnerships across the same systems.

Establishing criteria for public sector partners’ resource investments

States can push regions to leverage partner investment by establishing criteria in their grant solicitation for public (and even private) partner matches (both in-kind and cash). As the initiative begins demonstrating value, partners will be inclined to invest more. “WIA cannot and should not design, fund and implement sector strategies by itself.” Sector strategies must be viewed by multiple systems as a “broad competitiveness strategy”, requiring financial support from a variety of sources.

Establishing requirements/incentives for employer funding

States can also leverage employer funding by establishing requirements or incentives in their grant solicitation for business investment in the sector partnership. This is often required in the second or third year of funding, once employers are fully engaged.

Re-allocating and realigning existing resources at the state level

State partner agencies often have existing resources that can be reallocated and/or realigned to support sector initiatives. For instance, many state economic development agencies and community college systems have funding to train new or incumbent workers. Some or all of these funding streams could be redirected to support sector initiatives, rather than individual companies and their workers. This cost-effective reallocation would align funding streams around a common vision.

Making the case for state general funds to support sector strategies

Several states, including Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, receive funds from their state legislatures to support sector strategies. Pennsylvania has received a significant allocation in the state budget since the inception of its sector strategy. While deficit budgets are becoming the norm, states can begin to work toward embedding sector strategies into state statute in order to set the stage for potential funding.

Engaging industry leaders

Industry leaders can be willing financial supporters of local sector initiatives, but typically require that state and regional public systems have done their homework first. That means providing data analysis about the industry’s needs and an efficient, effective process that engages employers in an ongoing discussion about root challenges and possible solutions. When this is done effectively, employers see value and offer support.

Collecting impact information and “telling the story”

One of the most important sustainability roles for the state is collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing impact data and information to “tell the story” about sector initiatives. In order to exert influence on public and private funding sources for sector partnerships, the data and information must be organized and summarized in ways that make sense to the funders (e.g., by legislative district or by industry sector).

Regional Role in Sustaining Sector Initiatives

Significant responsibility for funding and sustaining sector initiatives lies at the regional level. These regional roles include:

• Bringing together partners who can invest: One of the primary responsibilities of the partnership intermediary or convener is to bring together partners who are willing and able to invest in the sector initiative. This investment may be either in-kind or cash, but some hard dollars will be necessary to sustain the initiative. The case must be made that the sector initiative’s impact helps achieve the individual and collective missions of the partners.
• Developing strategies get investments from businesses in the partnership: Numerous regional partnerships have received investments from the private sector partners because the businesses could see the direct impact on their productivity and bottom line. This could include private match amounts for public dollar investments, or could be based on services provided to employers via the partnership (such as training or recruitment).
• Seeking early wins: Regions can seek, document and publicize early wins that can be used as a proof of concept, and thereby build support.