The Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative, an initiative of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, brings together local foundations, individual philanthropists, and businesses around a shared vision for a Metropolitan Washington region where every individual has an opportunity to realize their potential, secure a family-sustaining job, and both benefit from and contribute to the region’s economic prosperity. Founded in 2008, Collaborative members pool resources to make joint grants to projects that show particular promise for advancing the field of workforce development in the DC/MD/VA region. Members also convene regularly throughout the year to share information, discuss labor market conditions, identify key regional workforce development needs and opportunities, and learn from one another.
Sector Focus
Industry Partnerships
Accelerating Advancement Initiative
The Accelerating Advancement Initiative (“AAI”), launched in 2012, was designed to bridge the gap between the skill needs of regional employers and the education and training needs of workers by incubating, strengthening and scaling career pathways efforts in Metropolitan Washington. Organizations that were seeking to link together progressive levels of education and training that enabled lower-income individuals to strengthen their basic skills, earn a marketable credential and advance their careers and earnings applied and selected to receive financial support and technical assistance to grow or scale their career pathways programs.
Greater Washington Works IT and Health Care Partnerships
The Workforce Collaborative is partnering with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to launch Greater Washington Works to support new investments in regional industry sector partnerships in IT/Cybersecurity and Healthcare. The Workforce Collaborative seeks to support regional workforce partnerships to address specific employer talent pipeline needs and plans to invest up to $1 million in these partnerships and related work over the next two years. To ensure these investments are informed by data on true labor market conditions, The Workforce Collaborative has sponsored new regional IT and Health-focused labor market research, Greater Washington Works: IT and Health Careers with Promise, that included in-depth discussions with employers on their hiring challenges as well as training providers and post-secondary institutions on their training offerings and how they align to local needs.
Collaborative Contact
Washington DC Launches IT & Health Care Partnerships
1.3.17 • National Fund for Workforce Solutions • Blog