In 2025, The Heinz Endowments launched a programmatic focus on young adult workforce development. As part of our mission to build a region where everyone prospers, we are particularly dedicated to strengthening opportunities for emerging workers, the labor pool upon whom the future success of southwestern Pennsylvania’s economy depends.
Existing data suggest that the period of transition from high school to the workforce is particularly hard to navigate: As many as 1 in 5 young adults in our region do not pursue a stable path – employment, military service or post-secondary education – within 16 months of high school graduation. One of our goals is to prevent this disconnection while students are still in the school system, exposing them to the wide range of career opportunities available, the training paths needed to reach them and the key steps to take in order to access such training.
Underemployed young adults ages 18 to 24 face similar barriers. Those who find themselves in low-wage, low-skill, stagnant jobs after graduation face an uncoordinated workforce system that does not provide the resources needed for them to achieve their full potential.
The Endowments’ workforce strategy addresses these realities and aims to provide young adults, ages 16 to 24, with clear pathways to full employment, focusing on "springboard careers" that offer advancement opportunities and family-sustaining wages.
To achieve this, we seek to fund 501(c)(3) organizations that are:
- Experts in the workforce development sphere, with proven results in guiding young adults, ages 16 to 24, toward relevant vocational training and, ultimately, into high-mobility careers that pay livable wages ($23/hour minimum*).
- Directly partnered with local employers who provide input into training curriculum with the expectation of hiring program graduates.
- Providers of workforce-adjacent human services that combat barriers to employment (specifically, driver’s licenses/transportation, financial education, training stipends) or who are otherwise partnered with an external human service provider who can extend similar services upon referral.
- Willing to collect and share outcomes data with the Endowments for the benefit of learning which career pathways and systems yield the most effective results and honing regional best practices through additional grantmaking.
The Endowments is a place-based philanthropic organization, but we welcome organizations headquartered outside of the southwestern Pennsylvania area to submit a letter of inquiry (LOI), as long as the services ultimately support job seekers in our 10-county region (Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland counties).
*MIT Livable Wage calculator for Allegheny County