The GitLab Foundation is dedicated to improving lifetime earnings by expanding access to opportunities. Our vision is a world where one million more people can afford a better life.

People everywhere aspire to improve their lives, support their families, and contribute to their communities. Yet, for many, economic mobility remains out of reach. The GitLab Foundation is committed to changing that by investing in people—accelerating pathways for individuals to gain the skills and opportunities they need to succeed. When people thrive, so do their communities and economies.

We focus on individuals and families earning below the minimum wage in their local context, helping them increase their earnings through upskilling, reskilling, and expanded access to opportunity. Our funding primarily supports initiatives in Colombia, Kenya, and the U.S.

Our work is guided by core values: collaboration, results, efficiency, diversity, iteration, and transparency. These principles have been foundational in building the GitLab Foundation from the ground up over the past two years and have allowed us to partner with exceptional institutions across each geographic area.

I’m most proud of how we have built an outcomes-oriented foundation and approach. We are always thinking about the highest and best use of our capital as well as the best way we can support our partners in their quest to increase the standard of living of their beneficiaries. This has led to strong grantee and funder partnerships and innovative portfolio approaches.

Our three strategies focus on Emerging Talent Demand, Future of Work, and Population approaches to increase opportunity and income across each of our geographies. We do this by expanding the institutional reach of job training and placement organizations, improving labor market efficiencies through systems-level initiatives, and strengthening collective action through field-building activities that lead to greater collaboration among employers, decision-makers, and philanthropists.

An example of this is our recent Green Jobs for Economic Opportunity Fund. Here, we’re finding ways to accelerate job placement in emergent areas of the economy. We’ve been working across sectors to identify private investment and federal funding opportunities—like IRA, CHIPS, and BIL—exploring how we can ensure that those working in below-living-wage jobs can access high-growth opportunities.

As part of this fund, two initiatives illustrate this approach. Salish Kootenai College and Accelerate Montana’s Green Jobs Initiative offer job training and career pathways for Montana’s tribal nations, focusing on renewable energy, weatherization, and green manufacturing. They successfully leverage private and federal investments to implement local Tech and Workforce Hubs. We anticipate that for every dollar we invest in this project, workers will increase their incomes by 161 dollars.

Another example is in California and Arizona where we’re working to get the community-level building blocks in place for battery manufacturing investments. UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy’s pilot project will create a workforce training program for 1,000 workers at a lithium ferrophosphate battery manufacturer in Sacramento—the first of its kind in the battery industry. The program will build a recruitment pipeline for young people, women, communities of color, and underserved communities through pre-employment training, a skills-based apprenticeship, and wraparound services. Here, we anticipate that workers will increase their incomes by 112 dollars for every dollar we invest.

Each of these cases exemplifies an outcomes-based approach, balanced with a thoughtful level of risk tolerance. We’re excited to jump-start partnerships and pilots while helping leverage additional resources to bring these ideas to life. Not everything will go as planned, and at times, we’ll need to pivot. But as an outcomes-focused funder, we empower our partners to adapt, reallocating time and resources where they’re most needed—maximizing impact and efficiency to reach more people.

This is an exciting moment for our foundation, and we will continue to deepen our economic mobility work. From our Future of Work portfolio, which partnered with Ballmer Group and Open AI to drive 14 high-impact initiatives, to our partnership with Fundación Santo Domingo in Colombia to positively impact youth, migrants, and people in the informal economy across the country – we are focusing on how to be the best collaborative partner we can be to increase individual lifetime income.

Shifting local and national political contexts are at the top of our minds as we think about economic opportunity and mobility. Will investment in clean energy jobs still be a priority? How will our international programs be impacted? Do we need to think about alternative strategies? We are constantly thinking about the challenges that will arise and how we can thoughtfully map out where good and stable jobs will be in the future.

It’s been great. We’re a national foundation and have team members in several states. Through EOF we have access to resources, a peer network interested in building economic opportunity, and all the collective wisdom.

I’ve also appreciated the Funder Learning Series, which helps us evaluate opportunities through a variety of lenses. It’s a really comprehensive resource.

How can we elevate collaboration? What are the ways in which we could explore and drive collaborative, transparent, and efficient co-investment models?