Workforce Developments

Federal funding and workforce programs: Thinking outside the box to discover new opportunities

By guest blogger Erica Bouris

In many ways, this is an incredible time to be a workforce development professional. The system has more money flowing in than it has in a long time. You can't go to a workforce conference without hearing the chatter of "our ARRA green jobs program" or our "ARRA ex-offender work readiness program and countless other variations. This is great. For the wonderful folks who finally have resources to pilot their innovative programs and scale up proven programs, and for the millions of Americans who are out of work, these programs are an absolute lifeline.

So it may seem a strange time to encourage you to think about leveraging your workforce program expertise to reach other federal funding streams, but that is the goal of today's post. 

Historically, Department of Labor grants, allocations through the Workforce Investment Act , and occasional supplements from the Department of Education (particularly for vocational and technical programs) have formed the core of federal funding for workforce programs. Yet a confluence of factors has contributed to the emergence of workforce activities in a whole host of federal funding streams in recent years. Just in the past few months, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Department of State, and the Department of Health and Human Services have issued RFPs that include substantial workforce program elements. These aren't workforce programs per se, but they have clearly identified, fundable activities that are workforce activities. This means that there is opportunity for you to partner with other agencies and bring together a compelling group of organizations poised to meet the multiple goals of the RFP.

For example, last week, the Department of Energy issued an RFP through its established Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP). This is the program that helps provide weatherization and energy efficiency services to low-income households. This particular RFP however, takes the customary WAP funding request and does it one better; it is now the Weatherization Innovation Pilot Program. DOE wants innovation, and what kind of innovation do they want? Well, among other things, they are hoping that non-traditional applicants (including CBOs and educational institutions) get in the game and they are further hoping that proposed programs are "consistent with the President's goal of creating a green workforce."

Another example comes by way of the National Science Foundation (NSF). As a nation, we have identified the need for a well-trained STEM workforce and the NSF – best known for funding major research initiatives – is also invested in preparing individuals to enter a broad spectrum of STEM jobs. One piece of the career ladder is the so-called Professional Science Masters program and NSF funded several initiatives to further develop and pilot employer-responsive programs designed to meet critical workforce shortages. And the grantees were also supposed to incorporate outreach and job support services for a diverse population... sound familiar?

Finally, have you ever thought about how great it would be to bring your strong workforce programs abroad? How about testing them in a place like Algeria, where youth unemployment stands over 40%? While you may not have the capacity (nor the mission) to reach quite that far, could your curriculum and youth job training materials have been included in a some of the multi-agency partnerships that have won grants for job training, entrepreneurship, and youth work readiness programs funded through the U.S. Department of State Middle East Partnership Initiative programs in recent years?

Current economic and social challenges - from global recession to the rise of the green economy – have encouraged a broad spectrum of federal agencies to be invested in the workforce component of their mission. This is an opportunity for workforce professionals to think innovatively about how to leverage your expertise in designing and building workforce programs to advance diverse social goals such as environmental sustainability, positive global engagement, and more.

Some practical advice if you this idea has got you thinking:

• Try to piecemeal your expertise and assets. Do you have a proven curriculum for training people in specific sectors? Deep reach into a particular community? Unique tools that help people map their career pathway or explore the "fit" of potential jobs? Thinking this way will help you identify the various workforce components you can bring to the table to support a broader initiative.
• On the flip side, think big picture and learn to articulate this to non-workforce professionals. As a workforce professional, what are the big social challenges you address? You help with economic development by enabling citizens to participate fully in the economy. You convene stakeholders to make sure that people, the private sector, and the community develop together in a supportive way. What else?
• Be prepared to spend some time figuring out who the players are for these alternate federal funding streams and work on building relationships. Remember that these federal funding opportunities generally have a 30 day turnaround so if you want to be included as a partner providing the workforce piece of a broader program, the lead agency responding to the RFP has to know who you are and importantly, what you can bring to the table.
• Performance metrics, standards for program evaluation; these are all very different across different federal funding streams. Pay close attention to the preferred performance metrics of the RFP and be prepared to adjust the way you structure and evaluate your program in order to be better aligned with these alternate metrics.

Erica Bouris, Ph.D. is the Principal of B Square Impact, an agency that helps non-profits and educational institutions develop, implement, evaluate, and fund the next generation of innovative programs tackling today's most critical workforce, education, economic, and community needs.

The Department of Labor wants you!

The Employment and Training Administration (DOLETA) is looking for practitioners to review grant proposals. Virginia Hamilton at the California Workforce Association reports that Assistant Secretary Jane Oates is looking to have two-thirds of all review panels be made up of workforce development professionals like you and me.

If you're interested, you'll be asked to make a pretty serious time commitment. Here's how they put it in their outreach memo:

Selected panelists must make a full-time commitment to this effort for the duration of the panel, which could last as long as two weeks. The estimated workload for selected panelists to review and evaluate is between 10 and 15 applications. Written documentation detailing the rationale in support of each score will be required.

In addition, you'll have to sign a conflict of interest statement. Obviously, you can't review proposals for a grant you've applied for, or where family members, close friends or colleagues are in the running.

Your time will be compensated, and DOLETA is looking for qualified reviewers to apply now. They've  issued a series of Solicitations for Grant Applications (SGAs) under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) for careers in the energy efficiency and renewable energy industries, health care and other high growth and emerging industries. They're looking for folks with expertise in all of the following:

• Public Workforce Investment System
• Labor Market Information and Research
• Community College Education
• Apprenticeship Programs
• Career Pathways, Clusters, and Competency Models
• Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Industries and Related Industries
• Health Care Industry
• Sector Strategy Development and Implementation
• Workforce Training and Skills Development
• Faith and Community Based Organizations Serving Targeted Populations

If you're interested, submit your contact information and a resume highlighting your primary and secondary areas of expertise in the above areas to [email protected] by September 1, 2009. 

For questions or more info, check out DOLETA's recruitment memo, or contact Kristopher Turner of ETA's Division of Federal Assistance at 202-693-3605 or [email protected].

And if you're selected, let them know you heard about it on the Workforce Developments blog!

What I learned at the Google grants workshop

On August 4th and 5th I attended a workshop at Google for the Google Grants program. Basically, Google Grants allows nonprofits to advertise on Google with an advertising credit that Google gives them. It is not a traditional "grant" in the sense of being monetary funds, but a limited allowance of free advertising. From beginning, Google's founders wanted to set aside money to help nonprofits worldwide. Therefore, an entire division of Google is designed to help nonprofits be more effective and efficient and help the populations they serve. Google officially started the grants in 2003. Read the official guidelines to learn more.

 

At the workshop I learned about this history and all of the things that Google offers to help nonprofits. Google offers many online applications and services that have been very useful to nonprofits. Not only can you receive $10,000 credit in advertising, but Google offers services that can help you with creating maps for your website, surveys, message boards, training videos, and even site creation and optimization. I learned some of the best practices of other nonprofits and how they used the grant to recruit more volunteers, start more satellite groups, get more funding, and inform their boards. Google's online tools and applications help to communicate with funders, board members, staff members and supporters.

 

I also had the chance to pick the brains of some of the project managers and engineers at Google. I couldn't help but note the decentralized, people-oriented-culture of Google and how happy and productive it seemed to make the employees.

 

One of the workshops I attended broke some of Google's tools into four categories to easily explain to stakeholders. Those categories are: Sharing, Engaging, Listening, and Asking. As these tools were explained in these categories we were asked to list stakeholders that may be interested in using this technology. I'm going to share with you what I learned in that workshop, however, these are by no means the only tools available for free from Google.

 

Sharing: Blogger & Picasa

At the Workforce Investment Board of Solano County our Executive Director prepares a "media report" for the board members at their quarterly meeting. This report is compiled from news articles collected between meetings. Blogger allows a CEO or ED to publish their own commentary to a web page that would then inform board members instantly. No more waiting until the next board meeting to find out what the CEO thinks about the recent layoff at the manufacturing plant. Picasa is an excellent way to share photos of the attendees at your career fair. You can publish slideshows directly to the web allowing people to see just how exciting the career fair was.

 

Engaging: Google Groups & Google Calendar

Google Groups can allow you to post conversations on a bulletin board. One example would be to post your RFP to a group you create and allow competing companies to post questions for all to see. Then you post the answers. This saves time after a bidders conference and allows the Q&A to be easily accessed and easily read. Google Calendar could be used to post your training schedules. For all the workshops you are offering, job trainings etc. Having that schedule on a public web page that is easy to access is very convenient. 

 

Listening: Google Reader & Google Alerts

Reader allows you to read blogs, newspapers, websites, job boards and anything with an RSS feed on one simple webpage. That can be very powerful. How else do you think I keep up to date on technology? With Google Alerts you can type in search terms such as "Workforce Development" and every time that search term comes up in a blog, news article or web page, you will be notified in the manner you choose. Either via an email message or by a post to your Google Reader page.

 

Asking: Google Docs & Google Moderator

Google docs is a surprisingly, simple office-like program. There is a word-like app, an excel-like app, a presentation app, and the ability to read pdf documents and create very simple surveys. The survey feature built into the spreadsheet application is very powerful for sending surveys to your job clients, program participants, and job fair attendees. All the information they fill into your survey is tabulated and stored in a spreadsheet and as simple charts. Google Moderator allows you to post a question and then rate answers to the question thereby finding the best answer. It's a bit similar to Yahoo Answers.

 

One of the most useful technologies I've used is Google Sites which allows you to create a dashboard that displays all of the above mentioned apps. Read this post by Enterprise Dashboard to see how.

 

Also, don't forget to check out Google MyMaps and Google Earth.

 

For updates on the latest info on Google Grants see the Google Grants Blog 

See the Google for Nonprofits YouTubeChannel and watch this video.

 

What uses for Google do you think your stakeholders should know about?

 

Contributor Bryan Lundeen works for the Solano County (California) Workforce Investment Board

$17 million to set youth offenders on the right path

The Department of Labor recently announced $17 million in funds available for projects serving youth offenders. The three grant categories are very narrowly defined, so read carefully:

1) Youth Offender Planning Grants are available to county and city governments to design plans for helping returning youth offenders

2) Juvenile Offender Re-entry Grants will fund strategies to help youth returning home from correctional institutions. These funds are available to state and local juvenile justice agencies.

3) One Juvenile Offender Re-entry Grant "will be awarded to one organization to implement a model program for returning juvenile offenders in four cities."

A press release is here, and the full Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA/DFA PY0809) is here.

Applications are due December 18, 2008.

Community-based job training: federal funds available

If you are a community or technical college, community college district, state community college system, or one-stop career center, this grant opportunity may be for you. 

The US Department of Labor issued a new solicitation for grant applications today from its Community-Based Job Training program. A total of $125 million is available. Awards will range from $500,000 to $2 million. The funds are for projects that "support or engage in a combination of capacity building and training activities for the purpose of building the capacity of community colleges to train individuals for careers in high-growth/high-demand industries in the local and/or regional economies."

You can find more on DOL's definition of high-growth/high demand industries  here, although this information is painfully out of date, considering current volatility in the US economy.

If you're in a rural area with few colleges, check the federal register announcement for alternative applicant options.

There will be an online conference for potential applicants on October 24 at 1 p.m. Eastern time. Details and other info about CBJT grants can be found posted here.

You can find an analysis of previous CBJT grants here and here on Workforce Developments.

Applications are due November 24, 2008 by 4 pm Eastern time.

Grants for technology-based job training

The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has just announced they plan to make $10 million in grants through a Technology-Based Learning (TBL) Initiative. According to the grant announcement, the purpose of the grants is to "expand the vital role of TBL in helping workers quickly acquire the training and skills they need to be successful in today's global economy, and thereby increase the nation's economic competitiveness and growth."

Government agencies, nonprofits, businesses and educational institutions are eligible to apply. DOLETA expects to make about 20 grants of between $100,000 and $500,000. A webinar for potential applicants will be held on July 29 - visit Workforce3One for info on how to participate.

To read the summary click here, and here for the full solicitation.

Due date is August 19, 2008. 

New funding for projects to help laid-off workers

The US Department of Labor has just announced $20 million in funding for projects that build skills and employment options for workers who are currently or are at risk of becoming "dislocated." That's workforce development jargon for "laid off."

Only state workforce agencies are eligible to compete.

There are four categories of funding:

1. Entrepreneurship Opportunities for Dislocated Workers, to help people launch small businesses;
   
2. Getting Ahead of the Curve: Raising Educational/Skill Levels of Workers in Declining Industries, to upgrade skills for workers likely to be laid off;
3. Innovative Adult Learning Models for Dislocated Workers, to identify new and innovative ways to train unemployed workers; and
4. Preventing Dislocations of TANF Recipients Moving Into Entry  Level Jobs Subject to Economic Churn, to help former TANF recipients maintain  employment and enter or advance within high-growth industries

You can read the full Federal Register announcement here. Deadline to submit a proposal is June 13, 2008.

In other DOL funding news, ETA announced Wednesday it plans to give more than twice that much, $49.5 million, in grants for projects to "enhance education and career opportunities in high schools" (Federal Register announcement). Only six school districts nationwide have been invited to compete: Baltimore City, MD; Berkshire Farms, NY; New York City, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Puerto Rico; and Salem-Keizer, OR. However, faith- and community-based organizations working with those school districts are also eligible to submit proposals. 

What do women want?

High paying jobs with good benefits, of course. Which is what the WANTO grant is all about.

Up to $1 million will be granted to three partnerships between community-based organizations and registered apprenticeship programs "to conduct innovative projects to improve the recruitment, selection, training, employment, and retention of women in apprenticeships in the construction industry."

Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations (WANTO) Grants are jointly administered by DOLETA's Office of Apprenticeship and the Women's Bureau. Some important links:

Summary of the solicitation (#SGA/DFA PY 07-08), 
Federal register announcement,
2007 awardees,
WANTO awardees from 1994-1999.

Proposals must be submitted by June 6, 2008.

Video contest for nonprofits

Tell the story of your work through video, and you could win a White House prize.

They're calling it the Portraits of Compassion video contest, and it's sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. But you don't have to be a recipient of FCBO funds to participate. Any grassroots nonprofit that has received any federal funding to provide social services since 2001 are eligible (click here for more FAQs).

Your video must be no more than three minutes long, and you'll want to start by uploading it to a free video filesharing service like YouTube or Google Video. Applications are to be submitted online through this application form. One important note: you must provide signed media release form from everyone who appears in the video (click here for a sample). The winning videos will be shown during the upcoming White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in DC on June 26-27.

Deadline is midnight, May 1, 2008, so get out there and start filming! You can do it with as little as a digital camera with a movie setting and Windows Media Maker (provided for free on many of today's computers).

To get you inspired, here's a British video I found when I searched "workforce development" on YouTube:

If you don't see the embedded video above, click here to watch it on YouTube.

Community based money for community colleges

In case you haven't heard the news yet, DOLETA recently announced the most recent winners of its $125 million prize awarded through the President's Community-Based Job Training Grants. The grants fund strategic partnerships between the workforce investment system, employers, community colleges and other training providers, for training workers in high growth, high demand industries.

As before (click here for an analysis of previous CBJT grantees), community colleges were the big winners, pulling down nearly 89% ($110.6 million) of all funds awarded. Seven awards went to non-community college organizations, including one-stop centers, state workforce agencies and county governments. A few more facts about the winners:

• The largest grant, just shy of $2.5 million, went to the Cleveland/Cuyahoga One-Stop Career Center, for a health care project;
• Smallest grant was $500,000, for a construction project led by New Mexico State University - Carlsbad;
• Ohio was the big winner among the states, pulling down nearly $6.5 million. California was #2 ($5.9 M), Michigan took #3 ($5.8 M), Florida was #4 ($5.8 M), and rounding out the list at #5 was Illinois ($5.6 M).

Big winner industry-wise was Health Care with 35% of all grant funds, followed by Advanced Manufacturing with 22%. The full list of grant awardees can be found here.

Grants for energy sector job training

This morning the Dept of Labor's Employment and Training Administration issued a Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA) for regional workforce projects  in the energy industry or in construction of energy infrastructure. Click the following links for detailed listings in the federal register or ETA's grants and applications list. Both energy and construction are part of DOL's High Growth Training Initiative.

These funds are to be used "to implement and replicate high-impact, industry-driven training solutions that address identified workforce challenges in the energy industry or in the construction and skilled trade occupations that support the energy industry." They must be implemented by a "strategic regional  partnership" that includes all the usual suspects: the workforce system, business/industry and training and education partners.

The announcement doesn't make any mention one way or another of the kinds of green or clean energy jobs I've been hearing a lot about in the workforce development world lately. I'll be interested to see if any of those kinds of projects get funded through this grant.

Average individual awards are expected to run $500,000 to $1 million, and a total of $10 million is available. A webinar for prospective applicants will take place Feb 1. Applications are due March 15.

The growing funding dilemma in community colleges

How should community colleges be funded?  They occupy a unique and important place in the nation's workforce development system, providing the link between education and job training. In many cases they do both, and they often serve as a bridge to help disadvantaged workers and job seekers not just get a job, but get the education and training that will help them get a better job.

Should we continue to fund their important work with a consistent flow of taxpayer dollars?  Or should we force them out into the world of begging for foundation grants and alumni donations? Because that's where it looks like they're headed.

In a thoughtful post, Charity and Sustainability, blogger Confessions of a Community College Dean argues that forcing community colleges into the philanthropy game will lead to tuition increases in the long run. That's because donors don't want to fund the "boring" operations stuff like salaries for administrative staff and the electric bill. They want to create new programs and projects that make a big splash. But those programs put new demands on operating costs that may continue long after their donation runs out. He says

I'm concerned that with public sector support for higher ed falling by the wayside, the cc's will fall into some of the same traps as the four-year colleges. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

I've heard a similar complaint about alumni donations from a colleague who works at an urban four-year teaching school. Donors want to give to scholarship funds with their name on them, and want to meet the talented young person who benefited their largesse. Great, but what her department needs is money for copy machine supplies. Professors would like to return to the day when they handed out a syllabus on the first day of class. They think many students would benefit from that too. 

I can almost imagine the engraved bronze plaque: The X. Y. Smith Memorial Toner Cartridge.

More than this, is it realistic to expect community college alumni to cough up enough money to make up for public funding cutbacks? While many of their graduates are successful people, most aren't the kinds of elites who can write multi-thousand (and upwards) dollar checks to Harvard or Stanford. Are we asking community college development departments to do the impossible?

This doesn't even get to the dirty little secret of university fundraising: donors who renege on their promises.

He says it so well - let me quote Community College Dean again:

But there's no substitute for sustainable, predictable operating funding. That's what makes really successful programs (and reasonably successful cost control) possible over the long term. To the extent that we're being pushed away from predictable -- by which I mean public -- support, and towards philanthropic funding, I'm concerned that we'll start making some of the same mistakes I've seen elsewhere.

Before those of you in the nonprofit and four-year college world start saying, "Hey, I have to fight for philanthropic dollars, so community colleges shouldn't get a free ride courtesy of taxpayers," let me ask this: Is there really enough philanthropic money out there to meet all the needs of all the education and training programs that have seen funding cuts in recent years?

What will happen on the day when the need for money outpaces supply? Who will get to decide who gets those limited resources? Will that decision be made based on the needs of workers and job seekers, on labor demand from employers, or by donors who want their name in lights?

Community-based job training grants - amendments and new deadline

The U.S. Department of Labor has amended its most recent solicitation for Community-Based Job Training Grants, and they've moved the deadline from October 10 to October 31.  If you're thinking about applying for one of these grants, click here for a summary of the changes and here for the revised federal register announcement. The original federal register announcement is here. The proceedings of two webinars on CBJT grants were recorded August 15 and 16 and are available online, but you must be registered with Workforce3One to access those files.

For a little analysis of previous CBJT grants by state and type of organization, see my August post on the topic.

EPA funds for brownfield cleanup job training programs

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just announced (click here to see it at DOL) it is soliciting applications from eligible government and nonprofit agencies to fund job training programs that teach environmental job skills while cleaning up brownfields. "Brownfields" are abandoned or idled industrial sites polluted by hazardous substances or other contaminants. To redevelop and reuse these sites, environmental cleanup is necessary. EPA has funded programs that combine job training with brownfield remediation for several years.

It appears applicants for this round of funding are limited to those who propose to serve a community that has previously received EPA brownfield assessment or cleanup funds. EPA expects to make $2.5 million in funds available for twelve to thirteen cooperative agreements. Maximum awards will be $200,000.

Click here for the full Request for Applications, and  here for more info on EPA brownfield cleanup funds. Deadline is 5 p.m., October 19, 2007.

$50 million for 50,000 jobs in 5 years

On Thursday, September 6, the National Fund for Workforce Solutions will officially announce the launch of a new workforce initiative funded jointly by several national foundations, the U.S. Department of Labor and soon, they hope, private businesses. Their ultimate goal is to raise $50 in funding, then use that to leverage more than $200 million in local funding for programs that will put 50,0000 people in "career-oriented jobs."

So far, the NFWS has secured $15 million in funds from DOL, Annie E. Casey, Ford and Hitachi foundations.

The initiative will focus on supporting local workforce partnerships that bring together government, business, foundations, employers and other players. During a pilot phase the NFWS initiative funded six projects, all of which will be getting renewal grants. They will announce four new grantees on Thursday, and hope to support at least 30 more sites in the next five years.

A full list of grantees, more info about the initiative and other resources can be found here on their website. Click here for the press release announcing Thursday's launch, which will take place at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
 

DOL announces $125 M more for community-based job training

Community-Based Job Training (CBJT) Grant funds are to be used for community colleges to partner with local high growth, high demand industries to develop curricula, hire qualified faculty, and to provide training and on-the-job experiences to new and experienced workers. A total of $125 million is projected to be spent, on projects of between $500,000 and $2 million. Community and technical colleges, community college districts, state community colleges and local One-Stops are all eligible to apply. Some important links:

• Main program page
• Program overview
• SGA/DFA PY 07-01 as it appeared in the Federal Register
• Announcement of two virtual grant applicant conferences
• Prospective applicant Q&A

In 2005 and 2006 a combined total of $250 million in grants were made. A quick glance through DOL's searchable database of past grantees shows that

• Six Five states (Delaware, Hawai'i, Nevada, South Dakota, Vermont) and the District of Columbia have received no CBJT grants
• The top three recipient states of CBJT grants are Texas ($19.2m), Florida ($18.5m) and Alabama ($18.0m)
• Based on state-reported enrollment figures, Texas has received $33.40 per community college student in CBJT funds, while California has received $5.13 per community college student
• Of a total of 141 grants, only three have gone to one-stops; one each in California, Michigan and Ohio
• The top ten recipient states (see table) have been granted 48% of all CBJT grants

Deadline to apply is October 10.

Adult basic ed career pathways grant

If you have an adult basic education project that uses career pathways as a central component - or you're thinking about developing one - the ABE Career Connections grant might be for you. Up to five projects nationwide will be chosen to receive $75,000 over an 18-month period for their program, plus technical assistance and participation in a peer learning group of fellow grantees.

The US Department of Education's Office of Vocational and Adult Ed has contracted with the Workforce Strategy Center and MPR Associates to administer the ABE Career Connections project. Detailed instructions, including how they define "career pathways," project specifications and the time commitment required for conferences and peer learning, can be found on WSC's website. Deadline to apply is September 5.

Update August 14: The ABE Career Connections application form was revised on August 10. If you downloaded the form before that date, you'll want to download the revised version from the Workforce Strategy Center.

Grassroots grants to connect to one-stops

Grassroots community- and faith-based organizations with social services budgets of less than $500,000 are eligible to apply for a new round of DOL funding for Small Grassroots Organizations Connecting with the One-Stop Delivery System (SGA/DFA PY 05-08). The press release is here, and the full federal register announcement is here. DOL expects to make as many as 50 grants. The deadline is May 8.

Additional funding will be made available to some of last year's grant recipients (2006), through a soon-to-be-announced competition. A list of 2005 recipients can be found here.

Grants to train health workers

DOLETA plans to give another $2.5 million in grants to train workers for long-term care positions in the health care industry. It's part of the president's High Growth Job Training Initiative, and you can read more about earlier health care grantees under the initiative here. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the size of America's health worker shortage, but it certainly beats solving our shortage by stealing those workers from other countries (or check out this post for more context).

Here are links to the solicitation and the Federal Register announcement. Deadline is April 5.

DOL grants for community colleges

The U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has announced $125 million in grants to community and technical colleges for projects that combine capacity-building and training activities targeted at local high-growth/high-demand industries (SGA/DFA PY 05-11).  In a notable change from last year's Community-Based Job Training Grants, eligibility has been expanded to include community college districts, state community college systems, One-Stop Career Centers and "other entities" in areas without access to community colleges.  For FAQs and the Federal Register announcement click here. 

A searchable database of 70 current grantees shows that California with a population of 36 million and 109 community colleges received three grants totalling $4.3 million, while Alabama with a population of less than 5 million and 30 colleges received seven grants totalling $13.8 million.  Texas (23 million people and 74 community colleges) received eight grants totalling $13.2 million. 

Deadline to apply for the new round of grants is August 29.