The Catalyze Birmingham seeks transformative career-connected learning solutions to build a more equitable economy and create opportunities for upward mobility in Central Alabama.
Donor Name: Catalyze
State: Alabama
County: Selected Counties
Type of Grant: Challenge
Deadline: 11/03/2023
Size of the Grant: $50,000 and $250,000
Grant Duration: 24 months
Details:
This regional challenge, Catalyze Birmingham, is leveraging the national Catalyze Challenge design to source and seed innovative career-connected learning models to stimulate its regional economy and prepare local young people for long-term career success and economic opportunity in Central Alabama.
Catalyze Birmingham will award grants for novel approaches and early implementations aligned with one of two themes to advance career-connected learning by preparing young residents to obtain high-quality jobs and embark on fulfilling careers in the Birmingham Region.
Since 2021, the national Catalyze Challenge (“Catalyze”) winners have impacted more than 23,000 students, drawing on $10 million in grants across 40 organizations. Catalyze grantees work across the U.S. to plan, pilot, and implement innovations that provide students with career-connected learning opportunities and pathways into fulfilling careers. More specifically, they award competitive grant funding to forward-looking organizations with groundbreaking solutions for specific career-connected learning challenges, particularly those faced by (a) learners navigating career pathways and (b) both individuals and organizations working within education and industry.
Eligible applications will serve learners who live, learn, or work in the Birmingham region, defined as Bibb, Blount, Chilton, Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, and Walker counties.
Themes
- Theme 1: Career Exploration for Young Adolescents
- How might we provide tools and experiences that build young people’s agency to explore their unique potential, strengths, and aligned career opportunities?
- Theme 2
- How might they increase learners’ agency and career readiness by activating employer partnerships that address those employers’ workforce needs?
Funding Information
The Catalyze Birmingham Challenge will award pilot grants between $50,000 and $250,000 each to power 12-24 months of exploratory implementation.
Eligibility Requirements
- Applicants should ensure that their organization and proposed innovation meet the following eligibility requirements. Applications that do not meet these requirements will be removed from consideration at an early stage of the selection process.
- Please note: there are both overall and theme-specific eligibility requirements.
All Catalyze Birmingham Challenge applicants must:
- Propose an innovative career-connected learning method or approach
- Catalyze Birmingham seeks proposals for exploratory work to develop and pilot career-connected learning innovations for learners ages 11-22 in the Birmingham Region.
- Innovation means a solution to a problem faced by learners, employers, or others involved with career-connected learning, that yields better outcomes for end users than the current solutions available. An innovation may be a novel approach, a new application of an existing approach, or a new business or delivery model in Birmingham.
- Plan to serve one or more historically underserved groups of learners ages 11-22
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- Catalyze seeks innovations that are intentionally designed for and made available to learners from historically underserved groups, including:
- first-generation college students
- immigrant, migrant, asylee, and refugee learners
- learners of color
- learners from low-income backgrounds
- learners from underserved rural communities
- LGBTQ+ students
- multilingual learners
- opportunity youth
- students with disabilities
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- Plan for the proposed innovation to ultimately benefit learners aged 11-22
- Learners are at the center of Catalzye’s mission, goals, and outcomes of interest.
- Proposed innovations must plan to ultimately benefit learners aged 11-22.
- Have the ability to accept grant funding
- Catalyze Birmingham grants are available to tax-exempt organizations in the Birmingham Region. All applicants must demonstrate that their proposal has a charitable purpose and benefits U.S. learners.
Catalyze Birmingham Challenge, THEME 1: Career Exploration for Young adolescents Applicants must:
- Benefit learners directly
- Innovations that support the formation of a learner’s career identity must aim to benefit those learners directly. For example, a proposal to train teachers on career-building models would not be eligible.
Catalyze Birmingham Challenge, THEME 2: Activating Employer Partnerships Applicants must:
- Propose an engagement with at least one specific employer during the grant period
- To ensure that grantees can swiftly develop and pilot their innovations within the 12-24 month grant term, applicants must propose an engagement with at least one employer, to be specified and implemented during the grant period if not already established
For more information, visit Catalyze Challenge.
