SkillsUSA, Inc.
Champions at Work
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
SkillsUSA seeks to serve middle school, high school and sub-baccalaureate postsecondary students who have interests in or are pursuing careers in trade, technical and skilled service professions. SkillsUSA provides students who are often kinesthetic (tactile) learners with opportunities to discover and unlock their passion for learning, giving them a path to productive citizenship and financial self-sufficiency. SkillsUSA is also helping its businesses and industry partners effectively address the skills gap they confront by providing greater numbers of member students who possess the workplace, personal and technical skills that make them productive, promotable and Job Ready, Day One.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
SkillsUSA Championships
More than 100 national leadership and hands-on occupational skills contests conducted during SkillsUSA's National Leadership and Skills Conference. The SkillsUSA Championships feature the equivalent of 20 football fields of contest space and 6,500 students who have won their state-level competitions. These are authentic assessments of entry-level workplace skills designed, managed, provisioned and judged by 2,000 volunteer representatives from SkillsUSA's business and industry partners. The SkillsUSA Championships is the preeminent showcase of public Career and Technical Education in the U.S.
Washington Leadership Training Institute (WLTI)
Four days of capstone leadership training for 500 selected SkillsUSA student leaders and advisors on leadership and on advocacy for SkillsUSA and for Career and Technical Education. Includes visits to elected representatives on Capitol Hill and visits to Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon 9/11 Memorial.
National Leadership and Skills Conference (NLSC)
Annual national conference for SkillsUSA students and instructors held during the last full week in June in Louisville, KY. Attended by 17,000 students, educators, family members, volunteers from business and education, and invited guests from business, education and government. The NLSC includes student and educator leadership training events, the SkillsUSA Championships, technical education exhibitors, SkillsUSA University seminars, student Delegate voting, Opening and Awards ceremonies, a local community service project, and receptions for volunteers and for SkillsUSA's incumbent and prospective business and industry partners.
Teacher and student education
Imparts leadership and employability skills education directly to students and through teach-the-teacher seminars. Prepares SkillsUSA advisors in chapter management skills and on the integration of leadership and employability skills instruction as intra-curricular within daily classroom/lab activities.
Curriculum development
Content development and engineering of online platform delivery for SkillsUSA's Career Essentials Suite that teaches the essential elements of the SkillsUSA Framework's workplace and personal skills. This is age-banded curricula for middle school students, high school juniors and seniors, postsecondary students and adult learners.
WorldSkills USA
SkillsUSA sends a team of selected students to compete with teams from 60 other countries in tradecraft skills contests in the biennial WorldSkills Competition. The next WSC will be in Kazan, Russia in late August 2019, and then in Shanghai, China in 2021. SkillsUSA students representing the United States typically compete in 20-25 of more than 50 WSC trade craft contests. SkillsUSA selects the competitors, enlists volunteer Experts who supervise the students' preparation, and funds the uniforms, travel, technical training and orientation, shipping, and public relations for the U.S. delegation. Unlike other nations, SkillsUSA funds its WorldSkills USA team from private donations.
Where we work
External reviews

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Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
1. Establish SkillsUSA as an educational solution to stater Education agencies and local school districts.
2. Create an abundant supply of well trained, highly motivated teachers and grow local career and grow local career and technical education (CTE) programs within SkillsUSA.
3. Ensure career readiness for every SkillsUSA member through SkillsUSA Framework delivery (workplace skills, personal skills, technical skills).
4. Strengthen capacity to support the SkillsUSA mission
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
A. Create a regional infrastructure to develop stakeholder relationships and assist SkillsUSA state directors in managing membership growth.
B. Facilitate public-private partnerships in states to expand CTE programs and SkillsUSA chapters in meeting high demand for local skilled workforce.
C. Develop curriculum to infuse into traditional university teacher preparation programs.
D. Research the feasibility of SkillsUSA becoming a certifying agency for teachers coming directly from industry to the classroom.
Increase market penetration of the Framework-based Career Essentials suite of learning products and other educational resources.
E. Develop a cloud-based virtual portal for SkillsUSA students to ensure access to programming and opportunities to build Framework skills and have access to information from other SkillsUSA stakeholders.
F. Increase participation in the Chapter Excellence Program and create a recognition program for individual student achievement.
G. Enhance business and industry partnerships and increase philanthropic revenues.
H. Diversity philanthropic funding sources by increasing outreach to private foundations and individual donors.
I. Maintain brand integrity
J. Strengthen the SkillsUSA Championships.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
A strong history of fiscal solvency.
More than 600 business and industry partners at the national level who provide philanthropic donations and/or in-kind donations in service to SkillsUSA mission delivery.
A corps of more than 2,000 business and industry volunteers who "pass the torch" to students through their hands-on engagement with local chapters and through their involvement in SkillsUSA Championships competitions.
Effective employability and leadership skills development curricula in demand by state departments of Education.
A set of online skills assessments to provide students and teachers with measures of progress in learning technical skills and employability skills.
A staff dedicated to service to member students and educators.
A competition process and event, the SkillsUSA Championships, that has achieved status as the nation's preeminent showcase of public career and technical education.
A sterling record of keeping administrative costs, including fund-raising costs, low as a percentage of total operating expenses.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
The 2019-2020 academic year provided SkillsUSA with its largest annual membership ever and its largest annual membership increase in more than 25 years.
The national SkillsUSA Championships now features more than 100 leadership and hands-on occupational skills contests to give member students the opportunity to demonstrate their employability and technical skills against standards set by business and industry. The growth of the Championships also offers even more opportunity for business to affect the relevance and rigor of what SkillsUSA teachers deliver in the classroom and lab.
SkillsUSA has launched a complete re-make of its employability skills curriculum. The new curriculum, the Career Essentials Suite, is cloud-based and is age-banded for middle school, high school, postsecondary and adult learners.
Ninety-nine percent (99%) of objectives in the FY19 operating plan were achieved.
Local chapter participation in the Chapter Excellence Program increased by 21 percent in FY19.
SkillsUSA conducted the most comprehensive SkillsUSA Week celebration in February 2019 ever with interaction from students, schools and government leaders from across the nation.
Looking forward, a major multi-year initiative will deliver "SkillsUSA Connect," a virtual portal for member services and information to be delivered and through which SkillsUSA constituencies will communicate with each other.
We also want to complete the content development and software engineering and begin the marketing of the middle school and adult learner suites of Career Essentials.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on demographics (e.g., race, age, gender, etc.), We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
We don't have any major challenges to collecting feedback
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
SkillsUSA, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/22/2022
Mr. Samuel Bottum
Snap-on Incorporated
Term: 2020 - 2022
Ms. Maureen Tholen
3M
Term: 2020 - 2022
Danny Camden
Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE)
Charles Wallace
Region 1 Representative - Maryland DOE
Becky Warren
Region 4 Representative - Kansas DOE
Clay Mitchell
Region 5 Representative - California DOE
Robert Kornack
Region 3 Representative - Ohio DOE
Sarah Heath
Advance CTE Representative - Colorado
John Kett
Industry Auto Auctions (IAA)
Cheryl Schaefer
State Farm Insurance Cos.
Holly Dieterle
Toyota
Kira Zdunek
Caterpillar
Leigh Creech
Lowe's Companies
Jason Scales
Lincoln Electric
Bryan Upton
Region 2 Representative - Alabama DOE
Jennifer Worth
AACC
Ricardo Romanillos
National Alliance for Partners in Equity
David Jordan
Aerotek
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 01/28/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We have a promotion process that anticipates and mitigates implicit and explicit biases about people of color serving in leadership positions.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.