It is the question every RSP coordinator eventually faces, and until now there was no practical answer to point them to. Within the TCLF SkillBridge project, COTANCE, together with its sister associations EURATEX and CEC, has developed the TCLF SkillBridge Sustainability and Funding Planning Guide - a working toolkit for Regional Skills Partnerships that want to outlast the projects that created them.

The guide is built on direct field research: six structured interviews with RSP coordinators in Attica, Campania, Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Emilia-Romagna and Flanders, alongside an analysis of the partnership agreements and work programmes of the 28 RSPs now operating across 15 countries.

That field research is set against the established evidence base on skills governance. The guide draws on the OECD Skills Strategy and the OECD's work on Governing Skills Strategies at Regional Level (2019), CEDEFOP's research on skills governance and VET systems, the EU TCLF Skills Strategy (2025), the Pact for Skills guidance for partnerships and its 2025 survey data, the 2024 Blueprint Alliances Report covering 28 alliances across 40 projects since 2018, and the Union of Skills (2025) framework. It also maps the instruments coming next such as the EU VET Strategy (2026), the review of EU Skills Academies, the Skills Portability Initiative, and the Erasmus+ policy support calls targeted at RSPs.

The guide addresses the real gaps identified through that work across four areas:

Governance: the structures that make a partnership function, and the four questions every RSP should answer about its own long-term value before designing anything else.

Financial sustainability: moving from grant dependency to a blended funding model, with a practical benchmark of more than 50% non-project funding over time, and a realistic assessment of which routes are accessible now.

SME engagement: a five-step progression from awareness to co-ownership, built on the finding that value must be framed in terms of company profitability. The question SMEs ask is not how does this help the sector, but how does this help my business.

Funding maps: country-by-country mapping of the most relevant instruments in Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal, Poland, Greece and Belgium, from ESF+ regional programmes to national training funds such as Fondimpresa, FUNDAE, OPCO 2i and KFS.

The guide closes with five working templates for coordinators: a funding opportunity tracker, a budget and funding mix template, a funding instruments action table, a stakeholder engagement tracker, and an annual sustainability progress checklist.

The underlying argument is stated plainly in the conclusion: the transition out of project funding is not a problem to be solved by better project design, but is a test of whether the partnership was built to last in the first place.

The guide is public and free to use. RSP coordinators, regional authorities, VET providers and industry associations are all welcome to adapt it to their own context.

Download the Sustainability and Funding Planning Guide.