Foundations: Stop Funding Isolated Systems. Fund the Shared Data Layer.
A program officer at a national workforce foundation recently pulled her annual grantee reports. Across 14 funded programs in 6 states, she had data on training completions, certification rates, and participant demographics. What she did not have was a single row of data showing which completions led to hires, which hires matched the credentials her programs funded, or which employers in her grantees' regions were still posting unfilled roles that her participants could fill. Each program reported into its own system. None of those systems talked to each other. The outcomes existed, somewhere. The data did not connect them.
This is the structural problem that foundations, tribal governments, and state agencies have been funding around for two decades. And pēpelwerk is built to solve it: not by replacing the programs foundations fund, but by connecting their data into one shared layer that every stakeholder in the ecosystem can use.
The Cost of Funding Isolated Systems
Workforce development philanthropy in the United States exceeds $3 billion annually. That funding flows into job boards, credential databases, training trackers, employer engagement portals, and career coaching platforms, each built to solve a specific piece of the workforce puzzle, and almost none of them designed to share data with the others. A learner who completes a credential in one system appears in a separate database when she applies for a job, and generates a third record when she is hired. The foundation that funded her training program may never see the hire at all.
The isolation is not a funder's failure. It is a market structure failure. The tools foundations have funded were built before interoperable credentialing infrastructure existed. Learner Employment Records, skills-based job descriptions, and machine-readable credential registries are relatively recent developments. For the first time, the technical foundation for a shared data layer exists, and pēpelwerk is operating it. (Source: Credential Engine, State of the Credential Marketplace, 2024.)
The Lumina Foundation has documented that workforce development investments produce significantly higher returns when outcomes data is shared across the ecosystem rather than siloed within individual programs. Shared data allows funders to identify which credential-to-employment pathways are working, redirect resources toward higher-performing programs, and avoid duplicating infrastructure that already exists in adjacent grantees' work. (Source: Lumina Foundation, A Stronger Nation: Learning Beyond High School, 2024.)
What the Shared Data Layer Does for Foundations
When a foundation funds a program whose learners enter the pēpelwerk platform, every credential those learners earn generates an LER that flows into the shared ecosystem. The foundation does not need to build a new reporting tool. It does not need to ask grantees to change their internal systems. It needs to ensure that the credentials its programs produce are connected to the registry.
From that point forward, the foundation can see, in one place, which credentials are producing matches, which employers are engaging with those credentials, and which regions still have unmet employer demand for the skills its programs are training. A tribal government funding workforce development across multiple communities can see the aggregate outcomes for its entire portfolio. A state workforce agency investing in CTE programs can attribute credential-to-hire outcomes at the program level, not just the annual cohort level.
That level of visibility changes how foundations make grant decisions. It also changes what foundations can report to their own boards, government partners, and co-funders. Instead of training completion rates, they report match rates, hire rates, and wage outcomes, tied directly to the credentials their grants funded. The data is not assembled after the fact. It is generated in real time as the ecosystem operates.
Every Dollar Works Harder in a Connected Ecosystem
The argument for the shared data layer is ultimately a return-on-investment argument. When a foundation funds an isolated job board, it funds one point of connection between workers and employers. When that foundation connects its grantees to a shared ecosystem, every credential those grantees produce is matchable against every employer posting in the network, 500+ employer partners and growing. According to McKinsey Global Institute, organizations that shift from siloed systems to shared data infrastructure improve decision quality while reducing reporting overhead. The same credential that found one match in an isolated system finds the best match across the entire ecosystem. (Source: MGI, The Age of Analytics, 2023.)
For sponsors considering the CTO consortium, the question is not whether the shared data layer produces better outcomes than isolated systems. The research is clear that it does. The question is whether your organization's grantees, programs, and workforce investments are connected to it before the March 31 deadline, and whether the data your portfolio generates will be part of the ecosystem that sponsors, employers, and communities build together.
Stop funding isolated systems. Connect them to the shared data layer that already exists. Visit pepelwerk.com and book a demo to see how pēpelwerk connects your entire workforce portfolio into one machine-readable, outcomes-attributable ecosystem.
