Pathways with Purpose
The U.S. Chamber Foundation is funding employer-led consortia to close the gap between K-12 education and workforce needs. Grants of $295,000 to $365,000 will support four to five consortia over one year. Full details are in the Pathways with Purpose RFP.
From Here partners with anchor organizations to develop proposals and support implementation. This brief explains where we fit and how the partnership works.
Most pathway initiatives stall in the same place.
Employers participate early, then disengage. Curriculum reflects what the system already offers rather than what employers actually need. Work-based learning exists on paper, but access is uneven, quality varies, and the connection to hiring outcomes is unclear.
The RFP names this directly. It asks for employer-led solutions, not employer-informed ones. Employers must be co-designing and co-delivering, not just advising. That kind of durable engagement requires structure, evidence, and a strategy that starts with employer problems rather than system priorities.
We have sat on both sides of this work: inside companies trying to engage with workforce systems, and inside systems trying to engage with companies.
Experience on both sides of this work.
From Here is a workforce and talent strategy firm founded by Lewis Brown and Josh Klein. Our team has helped write, design, and win multiple federal grants focused on career and education pathways. Our experience spans Fortune 50 talent management, national workforce consulting, economic development, and public sector workforce systems.
The full requirements are in the Pathways with Purpose RFP.
What the grant requires and what we bring to it.
Each row maps a core requirement from the RFP to the specific work we do as a partner.
A clear plan for how the consortium will recruit, engage, and sustain employer participation. Employer champions must be identified. Employers must be co-designing and co-delivering, not just advising.
Together with your team, we design the employer engagement strategy: identifying and preparing employer champions, planning and facilitating convenings and structured listening sessions, and building feedback loops so the work adjusts as employer priorities shift. We are also piloting Signal Strategies, a new framework for organizing employers around shared workforce problems rather than by sector, which could serve as an innovative engagement model for the consortium.
A defined partnership structure with clear roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes. The partnership must remain agile and responsive to new insights from employers and technical assistance providers.
This is something we build collaboratively: clarifying roles and accountability across the anchor organization, education partners, and employer champions, and shaping a decision-making framework that keeps the partnership responsive as the work evolves.
Data-driven alignment of career pathways and credentials to labor market needs, plus expanded access to meaningful work-based learning co-designed and co-delivered with employers.
Labor market analysis grounds pathway design in real regional conditions. From there, we collaborate on digital credentialing systems that link learning to portable, employer-validated outcomes, and help structure work-based learning programs connected to actual hiring needs.
Consortia must track and report on program implementation, learner outcomes, and partnership effectiveness. A final report documenting activities, outcomes, and learnings is due August 2027.
Together, we define performance metrics, set up processes for tracking progress against the three required outputs, and shape the final report to the Chamber Foundation so the impact story is clear.
A viable plan for sustaining efforts beyond initial funding, scaling successful practices to other communities, and documenting promising practices for the field.
Sustainability planning is most effective when it's built into the work from the start, not bolted on at the end. We help the consortium think through which practices are worth scaling and how to package the work for dissemination through the Foundation's network.
From proposal to sustainability.
01 Pre-Grant: Proposal Development
Proposal development is a collaborative process. We sit down with the anchor organization and its partners to shape the strategic narrative and theory of change, conduct labor market analysis to build the regional need case, define measurable goals aligned to the three required outputs, and design the measurement framework the Chamber Foundation will use to evaluate outcomes. We do this at no cost.
We treat the proposal itself as a strategic planning exercise, not just a grant application.
02 During the Grant: Strategic Partner
The anchor organization holds the employer relationships. From Here brings structure for making those relationships productive over the life of the grant. That means collaborating on the employer engagement strategy, identifying and preparing employer champions, planning and facilitating convenings and listening sessions, and building feedback loops so the consortium adjusts as employer priorities shift.
On the governance side, we help partners clarify how decisions get made and how roles and accountability are distributed across the anchor organization, education partners, and employers. The goal is a partnership structure that stays responsive as the work evolves, not one that locks in on day one and never changes.
03 Measurement, Sustainability & Scale
This is where we help define performance metrics, set up processes for tracking grant outcomes, and think through the sustainability strategy for how the work continues after the funding ends. Scale matters here too. The earlier the consortium identifies which practices are replicable, the easier it is to package the work for dissemination through the Foundation's network.
When it's time for the final report, we help shape the impact story so it's clear and accessible.
The shape of the work depends on where you are.
Every consortium is different. The engagement can be as narrow or as broad as the partnership needs. Some of the things we typically help with:
The goal is always to leave you stronger than when we started.
Timeline at a glance.
Proposals are due April 20, 2026. Here is the full timeline.
If this resonates, we would welcome the conversation.
Reach out to Lewis or Josh. Let's talk about what this could look like for your region.