What is braided funding?

Braided funding involves combining two or more sources (or “streams”) of funding to support a single program or activity.

With braided funding, programs combine funds from multiple sources to support a single purpose, but the individual funding streams that are braided together maintain their separate identities and reporting requirements. Managing braided funding therefore requires administrative oversight and accountability.

Why is braided funding important?

Successful alignment of Texas’ education and job training programs with regional workforce demands will be imperative to maintaining the Texas Miracle in the coming decades. Doing so will require legislative support for the alignment of programs and priorities among various state agencies, backed by funding transparency and innovative approaches to program service delivery for which braided funding allows.

While the Budget Rider 51 report, released this fall, outlined how the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative can better coordinate efforts and introduce funding efficiencies into their administration and grant-making policies and practices, the state still faces barriers that prevent full adoption of this funding method as one approach to efficiently allocating resources.

Moving forward, further establishment of a project management infrastructure within the Tri-Agency initiative that is geared toward increasing financial transparency and program efficiencies would help create an appropriate environment for the introduction of braided funding. Such an infrastructure would enable the Tri-Agency initiative to synchronize budget decisions, leverage numerous funding sources and, ultimately, maximize the state’s investments of taxpayer dollars in effective career education and job training programs and support services.

This is the second installment in this blog series; you can read the first installment here.

This blog series is based on the report, “Improving Funding Efficiencies for Classroom to Career Programs in Texas,” which was prepared by Texas 2036 with the generous support of JPMorganChase, who played no role in the report’s writing.