Rebuilding the Middle Class
What we're building
The Charles L. Shor Foundation is committed to building clear, respected, and employer-connected pathways into the American middle class. This work is grounded in both conviction and economic reality. Skilled trades and manufacturing careers can offer strong wages, long-term advancement, and meaningful opportunities, yet societal stigma, school funding incentives, college-going metrics, and cultural expectations have too often treated them as secondary options. It is predicted that U.S. manufacturing may need as many as 3.8 million additional workers by 2033, with nearly 1.9 million roles at risk of going unfilled if workforce challenges are not addressed. Broader labor-force trends, including an aging population and slower labor-force growth, add further pressure to an already strained system.
Fortunately, the necessary components to solve this looming crisis already exist: schools, employers, training providers, community organizations, funders, facilities, curricula, and student supports. Because these components are often fragmented, the Foundation helps bring them together on a united front, aligned around shared outcomes and a clear path from education to employment.
To be successful, employers must be central to this work which is why the Foundation seeks to understand what drives employer investment, what discourages it, and what conditions are needed for employers to participate meaningfully. Employers must help define needed skills, shape education and training around evolving workforce demands, support work-based learning, and make meaningful hiring commitments where possible. For the Foundation, education without a clear path to employment is incomplete.
Guided by the Shor Foundation’s five “E’s” — expose, empower, educate, employ, and elevate — the Foundation seeks to help students and young adults view skilled work as honorable and attainable, gain relevant technical training, enter employer-connected career pathways, and perceive skilled trades and a job in manufacturing as respected and purposeful.
What the Foundation is building is not one program, one curriculum, or one organization’s model. It is a model that connects existing and emerging components around a shared outcome: helping more people enter, sustain, and advance within the middle class through durable skills that are critically needed, respected, and lead to a lifelong career capable of supporting a stable future.
How others can align
The Charles L. Shor Foundation develops partnerships through research, trusted relationships, direct outreach, and connection with organizations whose work aligns closely with their mission and strategic priorities.
The Foundation seeks out partners who want to build on what already works including strong practices, credible curricula, employer relationships, facilities, training capacity, and student supports. Through collaboration, the Foundation and its partners bring these components together, test and refine pathways, and build an approach that can be replicated on a greater scale.
Ideal partners are forward-thinking, collaborative and willing to work across institutional boundaries to contribute their strongest capabilities to a shared model.
For example, schools may bring student access and educational infrastructure. Potential employers may bring labor-market insight, equipment, mentorship, work-based learning, and hiring commitments. Training providers may provide technical instruction and credentialing capacity. Community organizations may help remove barriers to participation and completion. Other funders and civic partners may help support long-term sustainability.
The most successful partnerships move beyond isolated activity and toward coordinated design — building a local pathway that can help individuals enter, sustain, and advance within the middle class, and that can eventually be adapted and replicated in other communities.
Where we're focused
The Foundation is focused on rapid pathways into durable skilled-trades and manufacturing careers that can lead to family-sustaining wages, long-term advancement, and a true middle-class lifestyle.
Their focus is shaped by the regions where its programs are located and the needs of local employers. The Foundation researches which roles are hardest to fill, which skills are most essential, what training is required before entry, and what can be learned later while on the job.
This employer-led approach is central to the Foundation’s work. It is essential for employers to help shape education and training, support work-based learning, define hiring standards, and make meaningful hiring commitments where possible. This approach leads to successful job placement, a sustainable career with the ability to advance and the achievement of a true middle-class lifestyle.
The Foundation’s initial focus is on Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, where Founder Charlie Shor built Duro Bag Manufacturing into the world’s largest paper bag company. After refining a model based on regional employer demand and implementation, the Foundation will adapt the regional approach so it can be scaled and replicated in other communities facing similar workforce challenges.