How Colorado Is Breaking Down Apprenticeship Funding Barriers

The state is making apprenticeship funding more flexible and navigable for practitioners
Blog Post
Three students learn from an instructor, with an illustration of the Colorado flag behind them.
Graphic by Mandy Dean
Jan. 30, 2025

In the world of education and work, apprenticeships are a hot topic. Not as hot? The conversation about funding them. That’s because doing so can prove complicated: Supporting and scaling apprenticeship programs usually involves piecing together multiple local, state, and federal funding streams — a practice known as “braiding” funds. Each source has different funding periods, reporting requirements, and rules about how the money can be spent. Practitioners on the ground are left with a tricky puzzle: how best to weave sources together to optimize the available dollars? This challenge can make apprenticeship programs hard to run, which in turn can stymie growth.

Colorado hasn’t been immune to this issue, despite the efforts the state has put into expanding apprenticeship. Apprenticeship Colorado, the state apprenticeship agency (SAA), has led the charge to address it. Since the SAA launched in 2023, their team has evaluated funding streams that support apprenticeship, looking for opportunities to adjust requirements to make these dollars more flexible and easier to navigate for practitioners. While still in progress, their efforts so far offer lessons for other state leaders looking to create alignment across funding streams — and in doing so, hopefully make programs easier to run and scale.

Mapping the funding landscape, strategic goals, and gaps

Before any new flexibilities could be implemented, the Colorado team needed to know what they were working with. When Denise Miller became Director of Apprenticeship Colorado, she and her team conducted an extensive mapping process to understand all the different “customers” in the apprenticeship landscape — apprentices, employers, related instruction providers, intermediaries, and sponsors — and their specific funding needs. They also looked at public apprenticeship funding sources available in Colorado, including those controlled by other agencies, assessing their goals and determining the agency staff with expertise on each source.

While it didn’t magically make new money or new flexibilities appear, this exercise positioned the Apprenticeship Colorado team to be effective heading into this work. It armed them with a clear, common understanding of their funding context, their goals, and the key gaps and it allowed them to identify initial priority areas — important information other states will need as they take on similar projects.

Updating WIOA guidance to work for on-the-ground staff

In conversations about apprenticeship funding, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or WIOA, is usually one of the first sources mentioned. It’s reliable formula funding — not a limited grant like many recent federal apprenticeship funding opportunities. And the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) not only allows, but encourages, workforce boards to support apprenticeship with WIOA dollars.

But local workforce centers in Colorado were struggling to support cohort-based Registered Apprenticeship (RA) programs through WIOA, and therefore not able to fully leverage this crucial funding source. Regular conversations with programmatic staff at workforce centers and with USDOL colleagues highlighted issues with confusing or unclear language in the existing guidance documents.

So, Apprenticeship Colorado assembled a task force of local workforce directors and USDOL staff to update the state’s WIOA guidance related to RA. The revised document more clearly outlines how the WIOA funding can support Registered Apprenticeship programs, especially cohort-based models. It explicitly states various allowable uses for WIOA dollars, providing examples of what that can look like in practice. Apprenticeship Colorado has also trained workforce center staff on the new guidance so they can implement it effectively.

“Nothing in here is a new, groundbreaking idea,” said Apprenticeship Colorado policy advisor Kate Anderson of the new guidance. “It’s about communicating what’s allowable and giving people examples that really connect the dots. You have to connect the ‘ivory tower’ policy with how this actually works on the ground.”

Prioritizing apprenticeship under a familiar, trusted funding stream

Youth have been a major focus of Colorado’s apprenticeship expansion efforts, so Apprenticeship Colorado explored potential funding flexibilities that could bring more apprenticeship opportunities to high school students. They found just such an opportunity in the Career Development Incentive Program (CDIP), which provides Colorado schools with up to $1,000 for each student who completes certain career-connected programs.

CDIP organizes qualifying programs into three tiers, with those in the top tier funded first. Any remaining money can then fund programs in the second and third tiers. In 2023, the state legislature approved adjusting the CDIP tiers to include pre-apprenticeships and Registered Apprenticeships in the top tier. Since CDIP often doesn’t have enough money to support programs beyond the first tier, this change ensures RA and pre-apprenticeship programs receive priority under CDIP’s funding structure.

This change serves two purposes. First, it adds capacity to school districts to play a bigger role in supporting youth apprenticeship, allowing them to be related instruction providers and sponsors. Reliability is the second key piece of the puzzle. Rather than introduce a new funding stream, Colorado opted to achieve their goal through a known program. “The schools already trust CDIP,” Miller said.

What’s next?

Apprenticeship Colorado staff anticipate that efforts to improve flexibilities and alignments in apprenticeship funding will only grow as the state implements several pieces of 2024 legislation.

SB24-104 provides ongoing funding for two staff dedicated to aligning the state's RA and career and technical education systems, with the aim of growing youth apprenticeship in Colorado. Another bill, HB24-1364, authorized a study examining funding and policies associated with work-based learning across Colorado’s K-12 system. Apprenticeship Colorado anticipates that the report will recommend improved alignment in funding and incentives for work-based learning, including apprenticeship. And just this month, Apprenticeship Colorado announced a refundable tax credit for employers who hire and train apprentices in new and emerging industries. With legislative momentum driving continued alignment and innovation, Colorado’s apprenticeship ecosystem is one for other states to watch, and learn from, in 2025 and beyond.

Thank you to Denise Miller and Kate Anderson of Apprenticeship Colorado for sharing their insights and expertise for this article.