GRANT ALERT - Hitachi Business and Communities Grants Program *

Hitachi Business and Communities Grants Program

The Hitachi Business and Communities Grants Program focuses on both the role of businesses and communities in addressing economic isolation and strengthening the field of corporate citizenship. The Foundation will identify suitable candidates for grants and invite proposals. Due to limited resources, they do not issue Requests for Proposals. Proposals may only be submitted at the Foundation's invitation. However they have a web-based system for inquiries from nonprofit organizations.
 
The Business and Work Program reflects our new strategic plan adopted by the Board in November 2008. This program focuses on building an authentic integration of business actions and societal wellbeing in North America. The Foundation will identify suitable candidates for grants and invite proposals.
 
Their strategy focuses on discovering and expanding business practices that create tangible and enduring economic opportunities for low-wealth Americans, their families, and their communities.

Their approach to advancing the fields of corporate social responsibility, or CSR, and corporate citizenship is to discover business policies and practices that both strengthen the business bottom-line and support low-income workers. This learning takes a three-pronged approach: identifying and working closely with business trailblazers; establishing sustained relationships with a few carefully selected communities ready and able to drive change; and developing standards or benchmarks that help define and reward their efforts.

They focus on the logic and incentives that influence the many tough choices business leaders make. Isolated interventions fail to address the complexity of the issues they are concerned about. So their approach operates at several levels: practices within the business entity, and community and macro-level efforts that reinforce business policies and practices. Within the business firm these include the policies and practices that help low-income individuals achieve career and economic success, such as training that takes place at the workplace and flexible workplaces. Outside the firm, these can include investor/financial market expectations and supply chain management.
 
Overarching eligibility requirements include:
Support is limited to nonprofit organizations in the United States
Organizations must have Section 501 (C) (3) designation by the IRS.
The Foundation does not make grants to individuals. Nor does the Foundation make grants to for-profit businesses or to individuals for business start-ups or expansions
The Foundation does not support capital drives or fund raising efforts. Funding for conferences and seminars is considered only when there is an exceptionally strong match with the Foundation's mission and strategic objectives.

Program-specific eligibility requirements include
The project's primary focus must be on creating tangible and enduring economic opportunities for low-wealth Americans, their families, and their communities.
The project's benefits in terms of strengthening the business bottom-line and supporting low-income workers must be compelling and clearly articulated.

Local projects should serve high poverty areas or communities as evidenced by poverty rates or other indicators of need

The project must demonstrate effective and innovative corporate citizenship practices and/or promote learning and adoption of good practice

The project should represent path-breaking work in their areas of focus and interest.

The project must define expected outcomes for the target populations and measure and report impacts over time

They will give priority consideration to projects that: leverage our support with other funding sources; are replicable or have a model that can be brought to scale; and/or focus on small to medium sized businesses in the targeted sectors.

The Foundation will identify promising candidates for grants and invite them to submit proposals. Due to limited resources, the Foundation will not issue broad-based Requests for Proposals.
 
Proposals may only be submitted at the Foundation's invitation. However, nonprofit organizations that may meet their eligibility requirements may want to share initial information through their online inquiry system
 
No deadlines found.
http://www.hitachifoundation.org/grants/guidelines/index.html

Youth Entrepreneurship as a Tool in the Workforce Development

On January 12, the Employment and Training Administration hosted a Webinar entitled:

Youth Entrepreneurship as a Tool in the Workforce Development System.  This webinar described and demonstrated best practices in entrepreneurship education for young people (ages 11-22) from low-income communities. Speakers sparked discussion with webinar participants about how these practices have been implemented in specific workforce development settings, how they are assessed and evaluated, how they are revised as a result of "real world" experience and evaluation, and how they might best be deployed in new settings. Speakers and audience member suggested ways in which entrepreneurship as taught and learned in school settings can be better connected with workforce development initiatives occurring in other settings—to create a unified and mutually reinforcing delivery system to upskill our young people and connect them fully to good job opportunities.  You must be a registered user of Workforce3One to listen to and view Webinars.  To register to view the archived Webinar, visit: http://www.workforce3one.org/. 

On January 22, the Employment and Training Administration hosted a Webinar entitled:

Youth Entrepreneurship as a Tool in the Workforce Development Kit.  This Webinar helped familiarize participants with the proven effectiveness of entrepreneurship education as a means to engage young people from low-income communities, and with entrepreneurship education's demonstrable academic and workplace-readiness outcomes. 

On January 12 and 13, the Employment and Training Administration's (ETA) Office of Apprenticeship held two "Creating Good Jobs through Registered Apprenticeship" listening sessions. These events brought together leadership from a wide range of employers, industry associations and national labor organizations to get their views on pre-apprenticeship, Registered Apprenticeship, and partnerships among apprenticeship programs, educators, and the workforce system. The 21st Century Apprenticeship Community of Practice (CoP) Web site features more information about what Registered Apprenticeship's valued stakeholders and ETA leadership had to say. A summary report of the events is available on the CoP at:http://21stcenturyapprenticeship.workforce3one.org/.