Greater Washington D.C. Workforce Development Collaborative

Washington

, District of Columbia

Greater DC Works, organized in 2006, grew as a strategic initiative of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region. The foundation’s strategic agenda focuses on enabling children, youth, and families from low-income households to participate in and benefit from the region's prosperity. The approach has two primary planks: education and workforce development. The foundation’s board is committed to increasing its investment and impact in these areas during the next 10 years.

Funding Collaborative

The founding members of Greater DC Works began meeting in fall 2006 as the Workforce Development Learning Group, a diverse group that includes the representatives of 11 foundations, including: The Community Foundation of the National Capital, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Consumer Health Foundation, the Northern Virginia Health Foundation, the Herb Block Foundation, the Moriah Fund, the Washington DC District Government, and the Jovid Foundation. They came together to learn more about trends, best practices, and effective approaches to investing in workforce development.

The collaborative is broad-based and incorporates the leadership of area philanthropies, business leaders in key sectors, local governments, nonprofit providers, educational institutions, advocates, and issue experts. Some funding for the Greater DC Works is pooled; other funding is aligned to support the collaborative’s efforts. Pooled resources include funds from local foundations and the District of Columbia government. The steering committee is in charge of the grantmaking decisions.

The collaborative’s overall vision is to strengthen the regional education and skills-training systems and nonprofit workforce providers through systems change so that:

Employers’ needs in high-demand sectors are met; and

Low-skilled residents have increased opportunities to advance their skills, employment, and earnings in two to three industry sectors.

Key Strategies and Interventions

Greater DC Works plans to adopt three key strategies to strengthen the workforce development system in Washington DC: funding workforce partnerships in health care and construction; building the capacity of the workforce system’s providers; and advocating for public policies to support career advancement and sectoral workforce partnerships. Greater DC Works builds on existing efforts and planning to address workforce development. These efforts include the Greater Washington Board of Trade convening and recommendations of its Health Care Task Force. In construction, GWWDC builds linkages with the District Council that created the Anacostia Waterfront Corporation, charged with redevelopment of the geographic area around the Anacostia River. The Anacostia Waterfront Initiative creates an important opportunity to link the redevelopment sponsored by the city with a sectoral workforce strategy targeted to low-skill residents.

By engaging employers in specific, high-demand sectors, the collaborative builds relationships that strengthen the design of the workforce partnerships and uses employer input for development of the partnerships.

The GWWDC began its RFP process with a focus on health care. In the near future, the GWWDC will fund two key industry sectors and one occupational cluster. Strategies to build the capacity of local workforce development service providers to participate in sectoral workforce partnerships will begin in FY2009.

Labor Market Analysis

The following powerpoint provides an analysis of the Greater Washington regional labor market. The analysis is intended to provide a picture into overall employment conditions and structural changes in this local economy, focusing on the period from 2001-2007. Though this data does not capture changes associated with the recent 2008 recession, it should still provide useful insights into medium-term demographic and employment changes.

The data analyzed here comes from two major sources: The American Community Survey 2007 (and 1990 & 2000 Decennial Census for some charts) from the U.S. Census Bureau; and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For a full guide to the data content, structure, and how it might be used, please listen to the June 16, 2009, recorded webinar available here.