Are you (or your non-profit organization) interested to try a new approach in designing, or implementing, your workforce initiative? Are you hoping to get more input from workers –in particular, workers of color? In fact, would you be interested to have the workers you support actually lead the design, or the implementation, of your initiative? If so, read on.
The Fund for Workforce Equity is a fund, capitalized by foundations from across the country, seeks to help organizations pilot and learn from new strategies which center workers of color in workforce policy and program design and implementation.
What does “centering workers of color” actually mean? It means to include, respect, value and honor their perspectives. Practically, it means that their voices – their needs, their desires, their input, their solutions — drive the design and implementation of the initiative (whether a policy or a programmatic initiative.)
If everything goes as imagined, The Fund for Workforce Equity will be interested to support an initiative in greater Cleveland which will center workers of color in the design or implementation. This will be considered a pilot, but the initiative itself doesn’t need to be new – it just needs to be doing this work of “centering workers of color” differently and more extensively than it has in the past.
What does “support an initiative” actually mean? It means:
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- Up to $50,000 to support the work
- You can (or, someone from the non-profit) participate in a once-a-month professionally-managed learning circle in which you can meet others executing “pilots” and learn from each other
- You will have custom technical assistance offered to you as you proceed through the pilot
- You will have visibility for your work to all the funders in the Workforce Matters’ network, and particularly, those who are investing in the Fund for Workforce Equity.
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Watch the Deaconess Foundation Twitter account (@DeaconessFDN) or sign up for our email newsletter to keep abreast as the opportunity to secure this support opens!