At a time when concern about job growth dominates the economic news, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has awarded a new $1.1 million grant to the National Fund for Workforce Solutions to test local approaches to preparing jobseekers and workers for careers.
“The National Fund is proving that locally developed solutions can have an impact: the recently released 2nd Annual National Evaluation Report revealed, for example, that the number of jobseekers who secured jobs as a result of their participation increased from 893 in 2008 to 4,058 in 2009,” said Fred Dedrick, Executive Director of the National Fund. “This grant will help our local sites build upon this momentum, and to strengthen their capacity to help workers build sustaining careers.”
The Knight Foundation grant directly supports the participation of the National Fund in the Social Innovation Fund. The Corporation for National and Community Service announced recently that the National Fund was awarded a two-year grant from the White House Social Innovation Fund to help successful sites expand their work in key industry sectors, and to start new sites in high-need geographic areas in the South and Southwest.
Twenty-three National Fund sites nationwide share a commitment to working closely with employers while helping jobseekers and employees build careers. Each site, however, takes a unique and local approach to implementing five strategic principles: 1) Create a regional funding collaborative; 2) Organize workforce partnerships; 3) Develop sector-specific approaches; 4) Build career pathways; and 5) Align regional workforce investments. Three of these sites are also cities where the Knight Foundation currently invests in community transformation: Detroit, Philadelphia, and Wichita.
“Few things are more important to a person than having a job. This investment is critical to strengthening our job training programs in America and an important legacy program for Knight,” said Damian Thorman, Knight Foundation national program director and incoming chair of the National Fund. “We need to take chances and learn how change can be made, and then help communities adopt tested approaches that local institutions can keep going.”
Knight Foundation is one of nine national investors that lead the National Fund and are contributing $23.7 million to the effort, which is leveraging more than $104 million from local public and private funders. The other national investors are the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the California Endowment; Ford Foundation; Microsoft; The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation; The Hitachi Foundation; The Prudential Foundation; and the Walmart Foundation.
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions is the recipient of the 2010 Distinguished Grantmaking Award for Collaboration, bestowed by the Council on Foundations. To learn more about the National Fund, visit www.nfwsolutions.org.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. The Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote informed and engaged communities and lead to transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions is an award-winning national initiative focused on helping low-wage workers obtain good careers while at the same time ensuring that employers have the high-quality skills that will enable them to succeed in this highly competitive economy.
Since 2008, the National Fund has raised nearly $24 million to support 23 communities that have contributed an additional $104 million in locally raised resources from 216 different funding sources, including community foundations, United Ways, corporate foundations, workforce investment boards, chambers of commerce and state agencies. Each of these communities has created local funding collaboratives that are collectively investing in more than 80 sectoral workforce partnerships. http://www.nfwsolutions.org
