Our community partners are the people who bring workforce training to Minnesotans who want to grow their skills and find good employment. This work is more important than ever as we emerge from the pandemic.

We know Minnesotans from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities have experienced the deepest employment impacts of the pandemic. One example of this devastating impact: More than 50% of Black and Native-American workers in Minnesota lost work at some point during the pandemic.

That devastating impact makes it more critically important to ensure the community partners who receive workforce training and other workforce development grants from DEED are organizations known and trusted by community members. These organizations are best positioned to help those who need help most.

Our grantmaking process and partners are critical to the success of the workforce development system across our state. We rely on community organizations and local workforce boards to provide training and support services to Minnesotans looking for work.

In spring of 2019, DEED started a process to transform our competitive grantmaking with three goals in mind: getting funds out the door faster, making decision-making more transparent by recruiting and incorporating community reviewers into the Request For Proposal review process, and improving our grant management.

We made changes to the RFP process that resulted in getting our grant funds distributed to our partners five months faster than the previous year. Improving the efficiency and speed of our process was a big help in 2020 when the pandemic added challenges, but the improvements we had made in 2019 helped get us through.

In addition to the RFP improvements, we also made changes to our grant management – after the grant is awarded. We knew all along of the need to proactively address the challenges facing our community partners in our grantmaking, so we hosted six in-person outreach sessions across the state. We invited current, past and prospective organizations to share their experiences with us, and we used that information to make improvements. In February 2020, we announced major changes to the ongoing reporting and managing processes for our grantees.

Our goal then is the same as it is now: to provide the right level of accountability that ensures taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, while empowering our partners to spend more time delivering on their work plans and less time filling out unnecessary paperwork. We reviewed all areas where we applied federal guidelines, and removed them when appropriate. We worked to reduce the paperwork burden on our partners, and we think these efforts in early 2020 helped prepare us for the adaptations and flexibility needed during the pandemic.

Now, as we look ahead to the summer and another round of competitive grantmaking, we are committing to doing even more to be inclusive in our grantmaking process.

We are working to share information about our grant process with more organizations throughout Minnesota as proactively as possible – starting with a virtual roundtable next Monday and a series of virtual information sessions in April and May.

We are also working to identify community reviewers who have a deep connection with communities most impacted by the pandemic, a commitment to equity and a strong understanding of workforce service delivery models to review grant proposals. These community reviewers will help us evaluate proposals we receive so that we can make grants to the organizations best positioned to help Minnesotans who have been most negatively impacted by the pandemic and who need employment assistance to find fulfilling employment.

In keeping with our goals for increased transparency: We aim to put out Requests for Proposals (RFPs) within 45 days after the legislature adjourns; we’ll make recommendations for grant funding to leadership within 60 days after the RFP deadlines; and we’ll execute grants within 60 days of grant award announcements, provided all requirements have been met.

This is an aggressive timeline – but we know we need to get funds working on behalf of Minnesotans as quickly as possible. Our transparency around this process – and our active outreach to organizations who serve highly impacted Minnesotans across the state – is all part of our commitment to make our workforce training grantmaking even more inclusive.

Inclusive grantmaking is an essential element in our vision not just to recover to where we were pre-pandemic, but to emerge into a more equitable employment and economic environment where everyone has opportunities to succeed and no one is held back by systemic barriers to success that plagued us long before the pandemic hit.

Working together, we can rebuild an equitable Minnesota economy – one that works for all Minnesotans.

Organizations that serve Minnesotans through skills development and other workforce training programs throughout the state are invited to learn more about our inclusive grantmaking process at a roundtable event on Monday, March 29 from 12-12:45 p.m. The roundtable will be streamed live on DEED’s Facebook and YouTube channels. Additional virtual information sessions are being planned for April and May.