America Achieves

Last Updated: Spring 2023

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America Achieves is a national non-profit organization. Established in 2010, the organization’s strategic focus and mission is to create clear pathways for economic advancement and success for all in a rapidly changing economy. America Achieves catalyzes large-scale impact by generating and incubating ideas, delivering thought partnership and philanthropic funding to promising and sustainable models, and convening and advising foundations and other key leaders to advance evidence-based solutions. Essential to these efforts is creating a shared understanding of the challenge and the range of potential solutions to ensure Americans can obtain the education and skills they need to be successful in the 21st century workplace. Main initiatives of America Achieves include:
  • Collaborating with the What Works Plus Collaborative and The Families and Workers Fund on the November 2022-announced effort to aligned philanthropic commitments to advance the goals of the White House Talent Pipeline Challenge (launched by the Biden-Harris Administration in June 2022, a nationwide call to action for making tangible commitments supporting equitable workforce development focused on quality infrastructure jobs). Commitments have been made by more than 350 organizations in 50 states and territories as part of the Infrastructure Talent Pipeline Challenge. This includes more than $70 million in aligned philanthropic commitments from foundations working with America Achieves, the Families and Workers Fund, and the What Works Plus Collaborative. The investments include more than $50 million in new philanthropic funding and a commitment to secure an additional $20 million in philanthropic funding for workforce development and equitable access to quality infrastructure jobs. To help secure the additional funding, America Achieves and the What Works Plus Collaborative launched the Catalyze Registry (matchmaking services to connect foundations with promising initiatives), and the Families and Workers Fund launched a pooled fund portfolio.
  • The What Works Plus (WW+) Collaborative coordinates across philanthropy, non-profits, and government to advance equity and climate resilience by addressing gaps in the implementation of federal infrastructure funding. The collaborative focuses on developing and supporting partnerships that result in better outcomes for communities, workers, and entrepreneurs across four main areas: (1) government capacity building, (2) diverse pipelines to good infrastructure jobs, (3) inclusive and equitable procurement, and (4) community engagement. What Works Plus (WW+) is housed at Freedman Consulting and is creating a learning community for philanthropic funders interested in cross-sector collaboration. The Families and Workers Fund is a coalition of diverse philanthropies working to help repair and reimagine the systems that fuel economic security, opportunity, and mobility. By deploying funding and building partnerships, the Fund seeks to advance jobs that sustain and uplift people and invest in developing a more inclusive, effective public benefits system.
  • In November 2022, America Achieves and the What Works Plus Collaborative launched the Catalyze Registry. The Registry is an innovative hub and matchmaking service to connect promising local talent pipeline initiatives – which seek to build skilled, diverse talent pools for upwardly mobile infrastructure jobs – with foundations and other nonprofit organizations that might fund those efforts. The goals of the Registry are to: (1) increase philanthropic funding to scale effective infrastructure talent and workforce development initiatives – and to launch promising new efforts; (2) ensure foundations have easy access to promising initiatives that match closely to their interests and have been carefully analyzed; and (3) enable initiatives to efficiently share their proposals with a wide variety of foundations –and to give coalitions and organizations that completed applications for targeted federal funding programs additional opportunities for funding. America Achieves is supporting coalitions – partnerships of local and regional employers, community colleges, and labor and workforce groups, among others – as they build profiles in the Registry. Profiles will include summary information, photos, proposals, and other materials that explain to funders the transformative potential of their proposals to improve lives through pathways to good jobs in in-demand sectors, such as clean energy, transportation, and broadband. America Achieves is also working one-on-one with interested funders to support them in finding aligned and promising initiatives. Funders are able to search the Registry for any key words, as well as filter and sort by fields – such as geography served and sector – that can help them identify potential projects to support. The initial focus of the Registry is initiatives centered on workforce efforts aligned with federal infrastructure funding.

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Organizations (274)

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