REGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSREGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSA free tool for workforce boards, chambers, credentialing bodies, and other partners that bring resources and networking to a region
(Every grant in RCN Grant Watch shows the role your service could be written in to perform, defined in plain terms further down this page.)
You run a network, a service, or a member base that regions need. Grant budgets still get written without you in them. This page shows you the tool I use to fix that, and exactly how to use it.
OPEN MY FREE RCN GRANT WATCH ACCOUNTSee the grants your service could be written into.It takes about two minutes.
My name is Daniel Wierman. Every week I read the workforce grant opportunities that touch the regions on my map and load the real ones into a tool called RCN Grant Watch. I verify each grant and read it for your role, so you open it already knowing whether it is worth your board's time.
Every grant in the watch was loaded and read by a person, and I re-verify deadlines every week. Each card shows the funder, the funding amount, the deadline, where it applies, one plain line on the opportunity, and the role every partner type plays, with the Lead Applicant role flagged. And your account carries your ZIP code, so I know which region you are watching from. Region matching gets sharper every week.
Enter your first name, work email, and your organization's ZIP code. Your ZIP tells me which region you are watching from.
Grant Watch shows grants as a deck of cards, and the lens is the filter for your role. Flip it to Support Partner. That is you: the workforce boards, chambers, credentialing bodies, readiness and data providers, and apprenticeship technology firms that bring resources and networking to a region. The deck narrows to grants where a Support Partner has a role. Each card tags the partner types the grant needs and flags the Lead Applicant role. The Lead Applicant is the organization that submits and signs, and the grant money flows through it. Which partner holds that role varies by grant. Your service can be funded as a defined scope of work in the grant budget no matter which partner signs. Watch the deck for a few minutes and you will see Support Partner listed as a needed role on live grants with funding attached.
It books a meeting with me, and the grant's name rides along in the booking notes. The meeting starts on that grant and the role your organization could play in it.
I spent years inside a large workforce system in Southern California, working sector strategies across its programs, and I watched the same movie on repeat. A nonprofit wins a grant and builds a program that works. People get trained, companies start hiring. Then the grant ends, the program ends with it, and the workforce board that made the introductions gets nothing but a thank-you. Nobody failed. Programs die because they are built on a single grant, and because they run alone. The organizations that lose quietly are the ones like yours: you hold the introductions, the funding intelligence, the employer relationships, and the regional standing, but when every program is an island built on a single grant, there is no structure standing long enough to convert any of that into funded scope. You get thanked in the narrative and left out of the budget.
So I built the structure that stays standing:
A Regional Career Network is a locally coordinated system of nonprofits, educators, and employers that moves people into careers, with sector-specific pathways like CNC, Welding, or Maritime deployed based on regional demand.
That is Regional Career Networks, the RCN in RCN Grant Watch. The network stays standing between funding cycles, so the partners can go after the next grant together without starting over, and Support Partners like you are how a region gets connected and convened. Grant by grant, the model has secured more than $1.95 million in workforce funding across Southern California, and the infrastructure each award builds stays standing for the next one. There is an operating STEM lab in San Bernardino today because of it.
Grant Watch is how I meet the Support Partners I go after grants with. When a region wins a grant, each partner carries its part of the work, and so does my team. Your account puts your region and your email on my map, and the deck shows you where to raise your hand. When you click through on a grant that fits your service, the conversation starts on a live opportunity and I learn exactly what your organization brings.
Enter your first name, work email, and your organization's ZIP code. Your Partner Type is already set to Support Partner, and your account opens instantly.
Your ZIP tells me which region you are watching from. Region matching gets sharper every week.
I review every grant in the watch each week.
My team is CNC Career Network, the first sector team of Regional Career Networks. We started in advanced manufacturing, and more sector networks deploy as regional demand calls for them. Per region, we build the funding map, develop the career pathway, train the regional partners, promote the careers, and deliver reporting funders can read. The grant narratives are written with the region's partners, or carried fully by my team when a partner wants that.
When a region decides to move on a grant, one organization signs as Lead Applicant, and which partner that is varies by grant. The rest of the coalition commits as Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) partners, each committed in writing to perform a scope of work related to the grant narrative. Your organization joins as one of those partners, with your service written into the funded budget as a defined scope of work. The coalition is structured so every committed partner has funded scope in the application, whether or not you are the one signing it.
My team goes into each grant the same way your organization does, and every partner's scope is funded when the region wins.
Every Support Partner named in a scope is there because its service genuinely moves a career seeker through Get Informed, Get Trained, Get Hired. That is how the Support Partners in my network were written in: readiness providers into grant applications, credentialing bodies into grant narratives, and an apprenticeship technology firm into a standing consortium scope. None of them had to build a region first to be written into its grants.
Skip the deck and start with a meeting about your service. We will cover what your organization delivers, which regions on the map it fits, and which live grants could carry it as a scope written into the grant budget. You leave knowing which live grants your service fits and the role it could play in each.
Schedule a meeting about your serviceIt is a 30 minute online meeting with me.
Your service can be funded on a grant another partner signs. Open your account, or book a meeting about your service and start there.
OPEN MY FREE RCN GRANT WATCH ACCOUNTSee the grants your service could be written into.P.S. RCN Grant Watch watches verified workforce grants and shows you where a Support Partner has a role, so your service can be written into the grant budget as a defined scope of work. Open your account, or book a meeting about your service and start there.