40th
Anniversary
Timeline

JFF’s National Youth Apprenticeship initiative develops groundbreaking models for linking employers with schools to create career pathways. JFF’s work is featured at Bill Clinton’s economic summit and on The Today Show.

JFF launches From the Margins to the Mainstream, which elevates breakthrough models for school revitalization, including college in high school, anytime/anywhere learning, and new strategies for re-engaging students who did not complete their high school degree.

JFF challenges education leaders to increase postsecondary outcomes for young people from low-income backgrounds, organizing a national conference, Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth, and releasing a publication from thought leaders that highlights emerging policy and practice strategies at the state, district, and school levels.

In 2005, JFF brings together top corporate, education, and workforce policymakers for The Fate of the American Dream: A National Forum on Strengthening Our Education and Skills Pipeline to address the need to prepare the nation for the demands of the knowledge-based global economy of the 21st century.

JFF is the lead intermediary for a collaborative of funders in order to incubate the National Fund for Workforce, with a goal to seed and strengthen local and regional workforce partnerships.

JFF holds its second Double the Numbers: Increasing Postsecondary Credentials for Underrepresented Youth conference in 2007.

JFF leads policy efforts of the Developmental Education Initiative, launched by six states participating in Achieving the Dream—with MDC and funding from Gates and Lumina Foundations—to support dramatic improvements for postsecondary students identified as needing remediation.

JFF partners with the Harvard Graduate School of Education and six states to create the Pathways to Prosperity Network, building state systems of career pathways for grades 9–14. The network has added eight states or regions since.

Expanding on the work of Breaking Through, JFF leads Accelerating Opportunity, an initiative to support state community college systems seeking to improve Adult Basic Education and increase the number of adults who earn credentials that lead to family-supporting careers. In the initiative’s first three years in four states, students earned 7,000 credentials.

The Student Success Center Network (SSCN) scales proven practices to help more than 4.5 million students earn credentials that lead to well-paying jobs. Nearly half of U.S. community colleges are connected to the SSCN.

Managed by JFF since 2012, the SSCN partners with nearly half of all community colleges in the United States to develop, implement, and scale student success strategies. Each of the 17 statewide Student Success Centers works with community colleges in their state to increase student completion rates, close equity gaps, and strengthen communities

With the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions, JFF is awarded a Social Innovation Fund grant for Opportunity Works. The evidence-building initiative demonstrates what works to improve credential attainment and employment prospects of 16- to 24-year-olds who are not participating in education or the workforce.

JFF leverages a range of community college networks and stakeholders to launch Bridging the Gap, a 2015 conference featuring a cross-section of leading practices and strategies from many of JFF’s initiatives that support community college students striving to earn credentials of value in the labor market.

JFF opens our third office in Oakland, California, in 2015 and launches a body of work, with funding from the Irvine Foundation and The California Endowment, to support regional- and state-level networks of leaders from education, workforce development, and industry in California. The work advances high-quality career pathways and other strategies promoting economic security for youth and adults.

A new initiative for postsecondary education, called LEAP (Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential), was announced on September 10, 2015. An MDRC (2019) study found that 68% of young adults participating in Back on Track through LEAP enrolled in postsecondary education. A national expansion initiative, Opportunity Works, resulted in a seven-fold increase in postsecondary completion by participants compared to a matched comparison group, according to Urban Institute (2020) research.

JFF unveils the Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning (CAWBL). The goal for JFF's CAWBL is to provide national resources, best practices, and technical assistance to underpin the development of successful apprenticeships and other work-based learning strategies that strengthen the skills of workers and learners.

The Workforce & Regional Economies practice joins with Google to train adults for high-growth, high-demand careers that pay family-sustaining wages in today's digital economy.

JFF announces the launch of JFFLabs at the NewCo Shift Forum in San Francisco. JFFLabs provides strategy and acceleration services to scale workforce and education solutions. Working closely with some of the nation’s foremost corporations, entrepreneurs, and institutions, JFFLabs drives innovation in education and workforce systems through market insights, incubating solutions, and investing in promising companies.

JFFLabs scans markets to identify promising technology solutions that are poised to generate significant social impact and are aligned to important innovations, such as immersive learning, career navigation, and new investments in racial economic equity. These market scans examine the market, include a map of companies that represent a range of solutions, and include impact opportunities, technology trends, market dynamics, and impact investment insights.  

This period marks an exciting time of growth and expansion for JFF. In 2019, we acquired the Employment Technology Fund (now JFFVentures) to support innovators looking to bring new solutions to the education and workforce eco-system. Recently, we welcomed the Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS) to the JFF portfolio.

During this time, JFF has also launched two new Centers, our Center for Justice and Economic Advancement and our Center for Racial Economic Equity.

JFF establishes the Research & Analytics Unit to institutionalize the application of our research and evaluation capacity to drive evidence-based practice and policy and deepen our impact in the field.

The Employer Mobilization practice launches the Changemakers series, which tells the stories of people at the center of a growing movement that’s reshaping the way companies invest in the well-being and advancement of their workers. Changemakers are corporate visionaries who are passionate about their companies and want to make the world a better place to live and work.

The Employer Mobilization practice hosts the first Impact Employer Summit, a full-day gathering in New York City to support and mobilize a community of corporate changemakers who understand that investing in the well-being of their workers is the new business imperative. Attendees include corporate social responsibility, human resources, and operations executives from Fortune 500 companies representing various industries.

The Research & Analytics Unit team conducts a national landscape analysis of secondary-level trades education, commissioned by Harbor Freight Tools for Schools. The study gathered perspectives of career and technical educational leaders across the United States and examined data from 37 states to understand what programs are offered, who participates in them, and what outcomes students experience.

The Policy & Advocacy Unit provides a transition paper to the incoming Biden Administration for achieving an equitable economic recovery.

JFF receives 10 federal awards in Fiscal Year 21, including a $13 million Department of Labor (DOL) grant for a new National Innovation Hub in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Registered Apprenticeship, a $10 million DOL grant for IT training, a $4 million Department of Education grant for dual enrollment work-based IT courses, and a $2.1 million Education Department contract to improve digital literacy instruction in adult education.

JFF’s white paper, The Big Blur, argued for erasing the boundaries between high school, college, and careers and creating one new system that works for everyone. It urged the field to give up tinkering and instead take on a radical rethinking and restructuring of grades 11 through 14—the last two years of high school and the first two years of college—in order to increase success for all.  JFF is activating the vision through partnerships with state leaders making visible strides toward blurring their systems, with a knowledge network of local and state-level innovators who have been developing precedent-setting prototypes of the Big Blur and forming and advancing policy recommendations and frameworks for the field to adopt and adapt.

JFF launches the National Innovation Hub on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in Registered Apprenticeship, a Department of Labor Center of Excellence that expands access and equitable outcomes within Registered Apprenticeship opportunities.

JFF announces its partnership with the Ascendium Education Group to support “Ready for Pell,” a two-year, $4.7 million initiative to strengthen postsecondary education programs for students who are incarcerated and prepare institutions of higher education for the return of Pell Grant eligibility for learners who are incarcerated.

JFF acquires Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS) to evaluate the quality of education and training programs and improve outcomes for learners and workers.

JFF received the largest private award in its history from the Ares Foundation, $19.1 million, to support the Climate-Resilient Employees for a Sustainable Tomorrow (CREST) initiative.

In collaboration with JFF’s Financing the Future, the Research & Analytics Unit team releases the findings of an analysis of equity in income share agreements (ISA) called Research Sheds Light on Equity Impact of ISAs. The study explored differences in contract terms and repayment patterns across demographic groups.

In collaboration with JFF’s Center for Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning, the Research and Analytics team publishes Diversity and Equity in Apprenticeships for Young People, the findings of an analysis of 10 years of national data on Registered Apprenticeships to examine the participation and outcomes of young adults. The findings identified persistent inequities in access and outcomes and occupational segregation among female workers.

The Center for Justice & Economic Advancement publishes its groundbreaking policy framework that calls on policymakers to break down barriers to economic opportunity—and establish policies that create equitable economic advancement—for the 70 million people in the United States with criminal records. The actionable recommendations are designed to expand the talent pool available to fill critical workforce gaps and build a more equitable and just society.

Through JFF’s Financing the Future initiative, JFF helps design multiple regulatory rules and pieces of legislation to create regulatory frameworks for income share agreements and other forms of income contingent financing. These include bipartisan legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate and regulatory rules in Colorado and California.

JFF announces the launch of our Center for Artificial Intelligence & the Future of Work, shaping AI's impact on skills development, job quality, and equitable outcomes.

The Employer Mobilization practice launches the Action Collaboratives, a meeting series designed to bring corporate leaders together to ideate and problem-solve cross-cutting issues related to talent and enabling equitable career advancement for employees.