Our Community Leadership Efforts

The collaborative also provides a forum for grantmakers and philanthropists to provide community leadership around workforce issues.  To this end, the collaborative engages in convening key stakeholders, relationship brokering, technical assistance and advising, and developing and disseminating new knowledge.

Convening Activities

  • The collaborative is increasingly looked to as a neutral convener that can bring together coalitions of organizations who share an interest in common workforce issues.  For example, GWWDC began convening a First Tuesdays Lunch Group in Fall 2009, which has led to a group of workforce policy advocates to commit to working together on a shared policy agenda.
  • GWWDC convened a workgroup comprised of state workforce officials from the District, Maryland, and Virginia to develop a strategy to improve the availability of information about job opportunities in our region.  This effort resulted in a $4 million Labor Market Information Improvement Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor.
  • More recently, the GWWDC-incubated Regional Alliance for Careers in Health, helped to convene a coalition of healthcare employers and training providers that successfully secured nearly $5 million in stimulus funds for a health careers training initiative.
  • In July 2010, the collaborative hosted a Roundtable on Workforce Literacy: Aligning Literacy and Skills Training for Better Family Economic Outcomes for more than a dozen policy experts and practicioners from across the region.

Advisory Activities

Collaborative members both provide individual guidance to local workforce providers and also participate in a variety of community leadership bodies, including the DC Community College Feasibility Study Team, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Workforce Taskforce, and DC Department of Employment Services Adult Workforce Kitchen Cabinet.

Growing and Disseminating Knowledge

  • The collaborative has sponsored two Funders Forum on Workforce Development events (Summer 2008, Summer 2010).  Each of these events have provided local grantmakers and philanthropists with an opportunity to hear from issue experts, discuss workforce development priorities, and learn more about the collaborative's work.
  • The collaborative has engaged independent evaluation firm Abt Associates, Inc. to evaluate the impact of its grantmaking from 2007-2010, with initial findings to be published sometime in 2011.