Workforce Accelerator Fund 9.0

The goal of Accelerator 9.0 is to impact economic and racial equity by creating pathways to good quality jobs for workers from disadvantaged or low-income communities. Traditional workforce and education strategies have had inadequate impact. Even promising strategies lack the speed, agility, or scale needed to accelerate employment for workers desperately in need of good jobs Accelerator seeks solutions to specific challenges that inhibit career opportunity & employment success for the targeted populations and that improve access to the workforce development pipeline – education, training, support services, placement, retention, etc. The intent is not simply to create new programs or to expand existing ones. Successful applicants will demonstrate how their projects will direct existing resources and efforts in new, more efficient and effective ways. These efforts should not create or reinforce service delivery silos or funding silos, but rather should result in strategies that take a new or unique approach to addressing workforce pipeline gaps specific to these populations, that can be applied, replicated or scaled to create broader impact and system improvement. The Big Idea Concept The end game is advancing job quality and equity. Each project must identify a specific workforce system challenge or gap that existing workforce programs do not or cannot currently address due, for example, to rigid funding requirements, inadequate resources, need for relevant expertise or new partnerships, or other obstacles. With relatively flexible Accelerator funding, the Big Idea is a new innovative approach that has the potential to address this challenge or gap, thereby accelerating quality job outcomes for the population(s) targeted by the project. A Big Idea will address one or more program areas below, or elements of one or more of these areas: • Make high growth jobs better jobs by increasing job quality standards for emerging industries and/or jobs that drive the region by working with employers (see Job Quality description under Goals). • Create income security and/or upward mobility for current workers. For example with an employer or within an industry, or from one occupation to another higher wage occupation, etc. May include, but not limited to, employed worker training (i.e. paid OJT or formal apprenticeship); sector-based “hiring hall” or “employer of record” approaches that allow employees mobility across multiple employers; employer collaboratives that lead facilitate to shared investment in talent; sector based technology solutions that enhance mobility and access to quality jobs; worker collaboratives that enhance sector-based networking and income stability; activities that lead to employee ownership. Target populations include: • People that are unemployed or underemployed • People experiencing housing insecurity • Youth that are neither in school nor working • Immigrant job seekers • People from disadvantaged or low-income communities • People from communities experiencing disproportionate unemployment