Families and Workers Fund Awards $12+ Million for Underinvested Communities to Fill Workforce Gaps as Clean Energy Transition Accelerates

As historic federal investments drive demand for a specialized, well-trained construction and clean energy labor force, the Families and Workers Fund announced today 14 awardees for its Powering Climate and Infrastructure Careers Challenge. Totaling more than $12 million in grant funding and technical assistance, the Challenge awards will help community organizations and state and local governments tackle the serious workforce challenges facing the United States on its path toward a sustainable economy and 21st-century infrastructure. 

As communities across the country struggle with economic uncertainty and ongoing climate impacts, the Fund is meeting the urgency of the moment by uplifting new models of cross-sector collaboration that center workers. Through input from impacted workers, grantees are designing projects and paired with technical assistance providers to share learnings in a community of partners that will help move the needle on job quality. The initiative will help connect marginalized people — especially women, people in rural communities, and Black and brown people facing racial inequities — to careers in clean energy, construction, community resilience, and other specialized industries. Among the winning projects are regional hubs for battery innovation, immigrant-centered education and apprenticeship programs, and state governments leveraging data to better coordinate workforce planning across agencies and industries.  

 The Powering Climate and Infrastructure Careers Challenge began less than a year ago and is now rapidly deploying millions of dollars – leveraging $14 billion of public investments to date – to fuel the nation’s decarbonization and infrastructure needs. The Families and Workers Fund issued an open call for innovative workforce development proposals in November 2023 and received applications from more than 450 organizations across the U.S., representing all 50 states. The 14 awardees were selected based on their potential to impact workers at scale and their support for underinvested communities that have historically been locked out of opportunities in our clean energy transition. The awardees are taking innovative approaches to tackle workforce gaps from building cross-sector coalitions between government, nonprofits, and education providers to offering robust wraparound supports so participants can succeed in training programs. 

The full list of 14 awardees are: 

• AFL-CIO Working for America Institute, Manufacturing Core Curriculum (MC2)
• Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity, Green Economy Workforce Enhancement Initiative
• Baltimore Workforce Funders Collaborative, Maryland Philanthropy Network, Baltimore Climate and Infrastructure Hub
• CASA, CASA’s Technical Institute
• Cook County Bureau of Economic Development, Good Jobs Standards 
• The Industrial Commons, Inclusive Training for Appalachian Green Jobs
• Jobs With Justice, Creating New Standards and Increasing Access to Family-Sustaining Careers in Construction  
• Maine Labor Climate Council, Advancing Equity and Early Career Pathways in Maine Climate Projects
• Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, Supporting Michiganders Navigating Transitions in the Energy & Auto Sectors 
• Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board, Occupational Analysis and Statewide Workforce Plan 
• New Energy New York at Binghamton University, Energy in Education
• New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, Energy Transition Workforce Equity
• San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), Workforce Opportunities for Rising Careers (WORC) Program Initiative
• UAW Center for Manufacturing a Green Economy, High-Road Battery Workforce Development Model

 “When we invest in workers, we invest in the clean energy and infrastructure future that our country needs and deserves,” said Rachel Korberg, Executive Director of the Families and Workers Fund. “This wave of Powering Climate and Infrastructure Careers funding will support organizations that are leading the way in building uplifting career pathways, training, and quality job opportunities for all.”

 These innovative projects are coming at a time of unprecedented public investments. With this month marking the second anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act’s historic clean energy investments and with additional billions of dollars of federal infrastructure funding, millions of new job opportunities are emerging with an urgent need for workforce training, wraparound services and other support. These projects rise to the historic moment. 

“Ascendium is committed to ensuring that learners from low-income backgrounds have access to a wide range of postsecondary education and workforce training opportunities, so that economic circumstances don’t hinder their upward mobility. To build a robust and inclusive clean-energy workforce, we must adopt new models of training and apprenticeship that are grounded in the real-life experiences of young people and families,” said Keith Witham, Ascendium Education Group’s Vice President of Education Philanthropy. “By supporting projects that center worker voices and integrate wraparound supports like tutoring and childcare, we can make these pathways both sustainable and accessible to everyone.”

“The Siemens Foundation is committed to investing in clean energy jobs of the future in the United States. With unprecedented federal infrastructure investments come challenges for the private sector to meet the demand and have the workforce available to support it,” said David Etzwiler, CEO of Siemens Foundation. “We have an opportunity and responsibility to work across sectors to build a robust, equitable, and sustainable pipeline for good jobs particularly in the rapidly growing climate and infrastructure sectors.”

The Powering Climate and Infrastructure Careers Challenge is part of the Families and Workers Fund’s Powering Climate and Infrastructure Careers for All initiative, a groundbreaking, $50 million plan to help advance at least one million uplifting careers in the booming clean energy and infrastructure industries.

The initiative will advance a two-part strategy: 1) investing directly in catalytic models for training that can scale to help address labor supply gaps; and 2) supporting state and local government agencies and their community partners to plan for and implement good job creation and inclusive workforce development.

The Families and Workers Fund is committed to a working model that brings together diverse, unlikely coalitions to take on systemic challenges. As we foster these collaborations between government, community organizations, and technical assistance providers, we are committed to sharing what we learn with our community of funders and strategic partners – and our work on this initiative is just getting started.

To get involved go to familiesandworkers.org/contact-us.