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FY ’15 YouthBuild SGA Issued by the DOL As Predicted—But With A Twist

Faithful readers will know that we recently predicted that the Department of Labor (DOL) would soon issue the FY ’15 YouthBuild SGA. The SGA was in fact published February 18. I still don’t know why DOL feels like it has to keep upcoming SGAs secret, unless it’s to make sure that their own staffers don’t have to meet deadlines, but at least they provided about 60 days to respond: the deadline is April 22. $73 million is up for grabs.

While the SGA publication was not much of a surprise, there is an interesting nugget (or “nougat,” as we like to call unusual aspects of RFPs*) in this one with respect to the slice and dice of available funds:

The Department intends to use up to 30 percent of the total available funding for this competition for the award of grants to eligible applicants that have not previously received a DOL YouthBuild grant or have not substantially completed performance on their initial DOL-funded grant award. [. . .] The remainder of [the] funds will be used to award grants to eligible applicants that have been previously funded by the DOL YouthBuild program and have demonstrated success in the program.

There are actually two pots of YouthBuild funds: $51,100,00 or $21,900,000, depending on the type of applicant. This is either good or bad news, based on how you like to handicap your agency’s likelihood of being funded.

Since we’re grant writers, not fortune tellers or racetrack touts, Seliger + Associates does not think much of this sort of handicapping. Our advice when asked this question—which generally happens several times a week—is simple: “If your agency is eligible and you want to run the grant program, apply. You can’t win the Lotto without buying it ticket.”

The above funding split mean that pretty much any otherwise eligible nonprofit or public agency can apply this year,** which is great.


* One other oddity: the SGA says nothing about green jobs, which the DOL has been hammering into applicants’s heads for the last half decade.

** If you read the above SGA quote carefully, you’ll note that the ineligible agencies are the previous YouthBuild grantees that screwed up their grants, somehow, at least in the eyes of the DOL.

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Youth CareerConnect Program: The Department of Labor Provides An Early Holiday Present

The holidays come early year with this tasty new* program from the elves at the Department of Labor (DOL) Employment and Training Administration (ETA): the Youth CareerConnect Program.** There’s $100,000,000 up for grabs, with 25 to 40 grants to be awarded—in other words, serious money. Sequestration hasn’t been a horror story for nonprofit and public agencies—the federal trough is full and there’s always for one more nonprofit snout.

Read the RFP. You’ll realize you’ve seen this movie before—but just because the plot is stale doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see yet another version of boy meets girl. Youth CareerConnect funds small learning communities, career-focused curricula, employee partnerships, high school diplomas or equivalents, industry-recognized credentials, work readiness, low-income participants (including females and minorities), and (wait for it), wraparound supportive services. It’s like YouthBuild but without the construction training, or like prisoner reentry without prisoners, or community colleges without the community college.

The services may elicit a yawn but the money won’t. If your agency runs YouthBuild or almost any other training or supportive services for at-risk youth or young adults, this is a wonderful grant opportunity that could be run by almost any youth services nonprofit. Remember, though, that you should get going before your Thanksgivukkah turkey and latkes put you to sleep, because the deadline is January 27. All I can say to my pals at DOL ETA, is Gobbletov!

EDIT: As I noted in “Are You Experienced? Face Forward—Serving Juvenile Offenders SGA: A New Department of Labor Program That Mirrors YouthBuild,” it’s almost always a good idea to apply for the first funding round of a new program. The reasons are too many and varied to repeat here, but the original post is worth reading carefully for anyone debating about whether their agency should apply.

In addition, it’s worth noting that page 16 of the Youth CareerConnect SGA forbids community colleges from applying. That’s curious, because community colleges are probably the most plausible candidates for running YCC programs. They’re probably excluded because community colleges are the only eligible applicants for the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant Program, which is essentially the same thing as YCC, except that it has even more money available. DOL just wants to spread the wealth to other organizations.


* It’s “new” in the sense that the title is new and the hundred million has been freshly allocated, but anyone who has ever provided job training services should recognize the melody, beat, and lyrics.

** I particularly like the way DOL has run Career and Connect together to form an allusion of speed and urgency with CareerConnect.