In 2003, SPI's founder, Angel Bermudez, spearheaded a Boston-based workforce development initiative, called SkillWorks. In just a few years, the initiative raised over $7 million to invest in partnerships between local employers, training programs, and job seekers. The success of SkillWorks was so great that it inspired the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Hitachi Foundation, the U.S. Department of Labor, and others to set up a $50 million national fund to undertake SkillWorks-like activities in cities across the country. Thus, in 2007, The National Fund for Workforce Solutions was created. SkillWorks established itself as the benchmark for how other workforce development initiatives are measured in terms of dollars raised, funds leveraged, employers engaged and served, and impact made in the lives on individuals. The model has been implemented in over 30 cities across the country.

Strategic Philanthropic Innovation’s focus on finding an innovative, long-term, scalable approach to problems is what has set the company’s track record apart from others’.

Our mission is to provide philanthropic organizations nationwide with insightful project advising in order to promote the creation of attainable goals, the sourcing of appropriate funding, and the installation and improvement of a working, replicable model. Through the use of published research and access to an extended network of experts throughout the United States, our clients are offered an in-depth analysis of what’s working and what’s not, and a strategy for moving forward.

Strategic Philanthropic Innovations, Inc. and Angel Bermudez function as an independent consultancy, working directly with clients to assess program needs in order to provide in-depth analyses and offer recommendations that move programs forward. Past and present clients include: