The Department of Commerce received an appropriation from the 68th North Dakota Legislative Assembly to provide support to organizations addressing workforce challenges and barriers to employment through the ND Regional Workforce Impact Program (RWIP).
Donor Name: North Dakota Department of Commerce
State: North Dakota
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 12/06/2023
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
The RWIP provides grants to regional workforce entities in North Dakota to design and implement innovative plans to address their region’s most demanding workforce challenges. The grant program is designed to encourage regions and communities to develop sustainable, innovative solutions to help businesses find workers, and help workers and jobseekers connect to jobs and communities. The RWIP grant aims to support the cost of local solutions that will have a broad impact through a community or region.
An application’s proposed solution must address the region’s most immediate workforce challenges. This program will assist applicants in funding workforce initiatives that promote economic stability and prosperity by addressing workforce challenges. The Department of Commerce encourages utilizing new and existing collaborations of regional partners to leverage resources that foster the development of partnerships to implement sustainable workforce development solutions.
Collaboration to develop initiatives that address the region’s most pressing workforce challenges and impact various geographies and/or populations throughout the region representing both rural and urban is encouraged; however, it is not required. Each project will be submitted on its own application. A single application on behalf of the region is no longer required. Applicants must be able to articulate the greatest impact possible to the region as a whole. Please note that regions are defined as the eight planning regions, although the impact of a project may extend beyond a region’s borders.
To ensure equitable access to these grant dollars, a portion of funding is reserved for each of the eight planning regions based on population as provided by the 2020 decennial US Census. Applicants are required to demonstrate 25% match for each project. Below is the breakout of maximum funding amount per region and the counties that are included in each region.
- Region 1: $1,313,000
- Region 2: $1,566,000
- Region 3: $1,215,000
- Region 4: $1,535,000
- Region 5: $2,319,000
- Region 6: $1,319,000
- Region 7: $1,957,500
- Region 8: $1,275,500
To qualify, proposals must fall under at least one of the following categories:
- Talent attraction marketing and locally implemented strategies for business, industry, and communities that leverages existing statewide assets like Find the Good Life platform and pipeline to recruit employees nationwide and retain students and recent graduates. – cap of $250,000
- Retention – cap of $250,000.00
- Infrastructure investments that directly relate to the proposed workforce solution – cap of $500,000
- Infrastructure investments that expand a childcare center – cap of $500,000
- The childcare must be a center and cannot be home-based or in a site that can be repurposed for housing.
- Capital investments, capital purchases for new or renovated space to support the applicant’s proposed program must be able to show direct influence on the workforce solution- cap of $500,000.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligible applicants include the following types of North Dakota-based organizations:
- Economic Development Organizations
- Cities (must be incorporated)
- Chambers of Commerce
- Job Development Authorities
- Tribal Entities
- Regional Councils
- Other organizations addressing local or regional economic development needs.
- Childcare Centers
For more information, visit NDDOC.
