Advance Vermont asks Legislature for $350,000 base appropriation to sustain MyFutureVT career platform

Tom Chaney, executive director of Advance Vermont, told the Vermont Senate Education Committee on March 28 that his nonprofit’s MyFutureVT online career-navigation platform is being used across the state and is seeking a $350,000 base appropriation through the Vermont Department of Labor to sustain and expand the service.

Advance Vermont is seeking to keep the annual $350,000 it previously received and to convert that support into a base appropriation so the organization can plan staffing and outreach. “We’ve come to the legislature the last number of years and received $350,000 to sustain this work,” Chaney said. He described the money as necessary to keep the platform free, up to date and to increase awareness and training for users and intermediaries such as school counselors and adult-education providers.

MyFutureVT provides three linked features Chaney described as central to the group’s work: a career-exploration portal, a public inventory of credential-bearing postsecondary programs, and a “Graduate with a Plan” school-community initiative that offers professional development for educators and community members. Chaney said the site houses three searchable databases: roughly 550 statewide occupations, about 650 credential-bearing programs across public institutions and career-education providers, and related local labor-market information that connects jobs to training options.

The presentation included statewide attainment and transition data Advance Vermont uses to justify the investment. Using Lumina Foundation-style benchmarking, Chaney said Vermont’s working-age postsecondary attainment rate is about 59 percent versus a 70 percent goal the legislature established in 2019. He also flagged K–12 and postsecondary transition measures: a high-school graduation rate near 82 percent (down from about 89 percent in 2017), a figure of roughly 73 percent of high-school seniors reporting they plan to continue education in the fall, but only about 40 percent actually enrolling that fall, and an estimated 28 percent of a given cohort completing a college credential within six years.

Committee members pressed on how MyFutureVT is funded and how it is used. Chaney said Advance Vermont’s current operating budget is about $450,000, that funding sources include philanthropy, state appropriations and a federal earmark, and that a federal contract or earmark provides about $150,000 a year. He said the appropriation sought would cover staffing and outreach; without it the nonprofit could face staffing limitations that would limit proactive participation in career fairs and school visits.

Chaney also described program evaluation and usage metrics. He said earlier user surveys showed nine in 10 users found the site helpful and that nine in 10 of those users reported taking at least one action after using the site (for example, applying to a program or a job). He estimated site traffic at about 30,000 visits per year and said the platform is used by both schools and adults across Vermont.

On program details, Chaney said the credential inventory is a continuing data-collection effort that requires coordination with postsecondary providers to validate program descriptions, costs and time-to-completion. The “Graduate with a Plan” effort is intended as professional development and a curricular framework to expand postsecondary planning conversations beyond school counselors to teachers, office staff and community volunteers.

Committee members asked whether Advance Vermont tracks placements into jobs directly from the platform; Chaney said the site intentionally avoids a mandated login and that the organization relies on self-reported outcomes and targeted tools (for example, partner tools that use logins) to estimate impact. He said Advance Vermont collects letters and testimonials and is still developing methods to measure direct placement more precisely.

Chaney closed by offering to provide legislators with a short, digestible paragraph for constituent outreach and noting that the slides he shared include source citations that committee members can find online.

Advance Vermont’s budget request now moves into broader budget negotiations; Chaney told the committee he expects to route the appropriation through the Vermont Department of Labor if funded.