The Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative has received a $450,000 grant from the National Fund for Workforce Solutions to expand work force training and job placement programs in the D.C. metro area.
The collaborative will target the health care and construction sectors, two high-demand fields in the region, according to representatives with The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, a leading force behind the Collaborative.
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a new initiative funded primarily by the Annie E. Casey, Ford and Hitachi foundations and the U.S. Department of Labor, seeks to encourage partnerships among the private and public sectors, nonprofits, and philanthropic organizations.
The fund has $15 million in hand and hopes to raise $50 million over the next five years.
The Washington-based Community Foundation, a nonprofit that invests in nonprofits, focuses on two areas, closing the education gap for low-income students and work force development.
The Foundation, which was formed in 1973, formed the collaborative in the fall of 2006 and then was invited by the National Fund for Workforce Solutions to apply for grant money earlier this year.
There are upward of 20 members in the collaborative, including businesses, local government offices, the DC Chamber of Commerce, health care entities and philanthropic organizations.
Forming the collaborative allows local funders to “pool funding to invest in work force development,” which made sense since there were a lot of local groups individually doing the same thing, said Angela Jones Hackley, vice president for community investment at the foundation.
Although the collaborative has not finalized the criteria it will use for giving out funds, foundation communications manager Ben Glenn said some of the components may include the number of people trained and placed in jobs by the non-profits, and the range of fields they are trained in.
Hackley said the collaborative will also most likely invest in advocacy groups that advance policy changes and those that foster work force partnerships with employers.
The $450,000 is a 3-to-1 matching grant, and the Community Foundation has raised $275,000 so far, according to Glenn. The $1.8 million matching goal has to be met by the end of 2010.
