Project Catapult was launched in 2018 as a response to what was then an unprecedented tight labor market, anticipated attrition due to baby boomer retirements, and growth of high demand and skilled jobs, and a never-before-seen tension between the demand to fill jobs and the lack of supply ready to fill those jobs.

The needed response? A more robust workforce development solution that can launch our untapped talent into new opportunities at a much faster, more direct and sustained rate while also supporting and leveraging the long term success of workers and their employers via advancement, retention, and strong employment practices.

In early 2019, the Boston Foundation, in partnership with SkillWorks and JVS Boston, published The Catapult Papers, a series of four papers on the practices that "next-gen workforce development organizations" are using to connect employers and jobseekers. Catapult followed up the initial publication with Catapult Forward, which captured how a dozen of greater Boston's most-innovative workforce organizations are using 14 best practices to work with employers and workers to find, train and help ensure that workers are being retained in rewarding careers.

The COVID pandemic changed the dynamics of the labor market, at least in the short term, but it also demonstrated that in a post-COVID world the problems Catapult was designed to address had only become more urgent. The goal of Catapult is to invest in the exponential growth of Greater Boston’s most effective, market-driven training and education organizations in partnership with the region’s most savvy businesses in order to leverage the region’s potential for sustaining talent via the workforce system.

Learn more, read our publications and watch the forums by clicking on the links below. 

Pillars

Our new model will focus on the success of the jobseeker and employer equally, built upon six pillars:

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  Invest in What Works: Greater co-investment for greater returns.
• Emphasize the Role of Business: Create space and value for business engagement and ownership of outcomes for their workers.
• Incentivize and Value Strategic Coalition-Building: Build systems that financially incentivize collaboration and ownership equally among workforce providers and employers and support the true cost of getting jobseekers through training and into good jobs.
• Reward Risk: Place a premium on innovation and taking chances.
• Continuous Improvement: Iterate relentlessly for ongoing enhancement and increasing capacity to deliver core services to jobseekers and employers as the primary customers.
• Appropriately Finance Capacity: Invest in staffing and other organizational capacity building across business services, HR, technology and other needs to achieve more scale and greater impact. 

Catapult will create a new way of doing business that is at the convergence of social/economic mobility, business needs and job seeker opportunities.

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Catapult Forward

Catapult Forward: Accelerating a Next-Generation Workforce Ecosystem in Greater Boston, highlights fourteen leading practices that “next-gen” workforce development organizations identified in the report and employers are using to connect to today’s pool of workers, and provides both examples of these practices in action and places where the system must improve to be able to close skills gaps. The Boston Foundation’s Project Catapult and SkillWorks collaborated with Monitor Institute by Deloitte, Deloitte LLP, to create the report.

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The Catapult Papers

The Catapult Papers are a series of essays on the future of workforce development and the kinds of workforce organizations that need to be created to expand opportunity for lower-income individuals and create competitive advantages for businesses in need of workers.  These "Next Gen Workforce Organizations" will not only require different structures, they will require accompanying investment by philanthropy and government that can make Next Gen workforce development a reality.  

Based on the innovative and field-proven practices of JVS Boston's own transition experience and produced as a partnership between JVS Boston, SkillWorks and the Boston Foundation, these four papers tackle the key features organizations will need to embrace to succeed in the changing economy.