FIRST Grants
Overview
During a series of regional listening sessions known as the Minnesota Competes Forums, we asked how we could best target public and private investments to grow the state’s economy.
We learned that most regions of the state do not have an integrated strategy for workforce development, economic development, and education.
Participants identified both a need and a desire for such strategic regional planning. But they emphasized that the strategies needed to be defined locally. The state need only provide a framework that helps the regions identify priorities and take actions to improve competitiveness, regional prosperity and community success in the long term.
In response, we created the Framework for Integrated Regional Strategies (FIRST) grant program so that local areas could define their region using economic and labor market data based on distinguishing industries rather than geopolitical boundaries.
The $50,000 FIRST grants provide an opportunity for new cross-sector leadership to share a vision and develop a collaborative plan for the region. FIRST was intended to:
- Convene a regional network consisting of economic development, workforce development, education, private business, and other regional leaders.
- Facilitate meetings to define a region’s competitive advantage and strategies to ensure future prosperity of the region. Examples of the network’s activities could include assessing and addressing workforce shortages, talent development needs of key industries, impacts of demographic shifts, etc.
- Lead the network to develop an action plan in the form of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) goals that will best achieve regional prosperity objectives, including how the regional leadership team will be sustained beyond the grant period.
The goal of the program is not to create planning documents but an ongoing collaborative framework that is effective, efficient and sustainable. The plans would then guide the efforts of the 16 Local Workforce Investment Boards.
The outcomes of the regional plans are intended to target state and local resources to support the growth of the regional economies.
Select this link to see a summary of FIRST grant awards and plans.
Select this link to see a map of the regions benefitting from FIRST grants.