REGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSREGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSFor nonprofit leaders serving opportunity youth, veterans, adults with autism, and career changers
A Regional Career Network is the nonprofits, schools, and employers of one region, committed in writing to run one career pathway together. Your nonprofit brings the people. The educator trains them. The companies interview and hire them. The network stays standing between grants, so the region goes after the next one together.
In San Bernardino, the people a nonprofit serves now walk a career pathway the state funds, with the region's educator and companies committed in writing. This page explains the model, what your nonprofit brings to it, what we bring, and how to start.
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU SERVEThirty minutes with Daniel Wierman.Pick a time that works. Come with the population you serve in mind.
Where this came from
My name is Daniel Wierman. Before any of this had a name, I ran a registered apprenticeship on a machine shop floor in Southern California. One day a young man in quality control asked me to print his training certificates. There were about twenty of them. I handed him the stack, he looked at it for about ten seconds, looked up at me, and said, bro, I barely graduated high school. I knew he was going to go tell his girlfriend. He was going to tell his mom. He had earned something.
That moment changed how I see this work. A career pathway makes hope visible.
Then I spent years inside a Southern California workforce system that managed 120 programs, and I watched the same movie on repeat. A nonprofit wins a grant. They build a program that works. People get trained. Companies start hiring. Then the money dries up, and the program could end with it. The partners scatter. The staff move on. And the nonprofit that held the grant is the one left explaining to the funder why the numbers fell short.
Nobody failed. The nonprofit, the school, and the company each did their part. Programs die because they are built on a single grant, and because they run alone.
The model
So we built a way for a region's partners to do the work together. In plain words, a Regional Career Network is the nonprofits, schools, and employers of one region, committed in writing to run one career pathway together, so the work survives any single grant. The formal definition, the one we use in grant narratives:
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.
Each partner does one part. Nonprofits provide participants and wraparound services. Educators provide the training needed to be hired. Companies interview and hire graduates. Support Partners, such as chambers and workforce boards, provide resources and networking. The career seeker moves through one simple path: Get Informed. Get Trained. Get Hired.
Every partner signs a Memorandum of Understanding, an MOU, that says what they will do for the grant. The partners doing funded work are attached to the Lead Applicant as contracted partners, each with a Scope of Work in the budget, so each one answers for its own part. The fiscal lead is chosen per grant from the partners, and it changes from grant to grant. An organization that sits outside all of them, Regional Career Networks, holds the group together between grants, so nobody rebuilds the partnership when the next one opens.
That is why a region with a standing network can win grant after grant. In San Bernardino the first award supported the STEM Lab. The next one formed the apprenticeship with the state. Each grant built one more piece of the pathway the people you serve walk, and the pieces stayed standing when the grant ended.
What we bring
Your team already writes and wins grants. You know the people you serve better than anyone, you provide the wraparound support that keeps them moving, and you hold relationships across your region. What most nonprofits have not had to do is write a grant for a sector they have never worked in, with the whole region's partners inside it.
Advanced manufacturing has its own vocabulary: the occupations, what a STEM Lab built for this sector holds, the apprenticeship rules in your state, the credentials, what the educator needs, what a company will actually commit to. We bring all of it into the grant with your own writer, or write it for you where your team wants that.
The grant that wins tells the story of every regional partner brought together into one career pathway. We write that story with you, with the educator and the companies already committed on paper before the deadline.
For every grant, most nonprofits have to make up the process themselves: how a participant learns about the career, gets to the trainer, gets in front of the companies. We bring it already built. CNC Career Network and the CNC Career Guide are the career seeker facing side of the network, so your counselors point people to the Guide and two clicks books the tour.
You do not have to know what to say to a machine shop or a college dean. We hand you the strategy for each partner type, and I come to the meetings with you.
Once your people leave you for the trainer or the company, you cannot see what happened to them, and the funder wants those numbers from you. The CNC Career Guide records each step a career seeker takes toward the trainer and the company, and the RCN Upskill Tracker records what they can do once hired. The report comes from the tools, not from chasing partners.
When you sit down with a college, a machine shop, or a workforce board, bring me. I explain the sector and the regional strategy to them, and bring them into the Regional Career Network for your region. You do not have to know the sector to have those meetings.
Two ways in
The model is operating in San Bernardino and is building or being explored in more regions. If your nonprofit serves people in one of them, you join a coalition that already has partners in it, and your people enter the pathway the next grant funds.
If your region has no network yet, we start one with you. Any partner can start a Regional Career Network. On the meeting we look at who you already know, what your region already has in place, and which grants fit. Then we go meet the partners around you together.
The proof
A California Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship award, alongside a Strong Workforce Program grant, supported an operating STEM Lab in San Bernardino and an apprenticeship formed with the state. The nonprofit brought the people. The educator trained them. The first company is hosting apprentices at its own facility.
Thirty minutes. We talk about the population you serve, the grants that fit them, and the role that fits your nonprofit. You leave with a read on your region: who you already have, what is missing, and which grant is worth going after first. From there I join you in the meetings with the partners around you.
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU SERVEThirty minutes with Daniel Wierman.If you would rather write first, the application takes about two minutes, and I reach out to set up the same meeting. Apply to work with us on your region.
Questions nonprofits ask
Keep them. What we add is the sector and the story: the advanced manufacturing specifics and the regional partner narrative your writer has not had to write, plus the partners committed on paper before the deadline.
You don't have to. Bring me to the meeting. I explain the sector and the regional strategy to them, and bring them into the region's network.
So have we. That is why the network is held together by an organization outside all of the partners, and why every partner signs an MOU that says what they will do for the grant. The partners paid from the budget answer for their part of the work. The report to the funder is not yours alone to explain.
The CNC Career Guide records each step a career seeker takes toward the trainer and the company, and the RCN Upskill Tracker records what they can do once hired and how they are upskilled. The report to the funder comes from the tools, not from chasing partners.
We are written into the funded budget as a fixed fee for a defined scope, the same way every partner doing funded work is.
Not ready to talk yet?
RCN Grant Watch is a free account that shows the verified workforce grants worth your board's time, read for the role a nonprofit plays on each one. Open it, watch your region, and when a card fits, the meeting is one click away.
Open a free RCN Grant Watch accountSee the grants your region could win.
This is what we're going to do. Do you want to be a part of it?
BOOK A MEETING ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU SERVEThirty minutes with Daniel Wierman.Pick a time that works. Come with the population you serve in mind.
P.S. Most nonprofit programs could end when the grant does, because they are built on one grant and run alone. A Regional Career Network is the nonprofits, schools, and employers of one region committed in writing to one pathway, held together between grants. Your team keeps writing the grants and serving your people. We bring the sector, the story, the system, and me beside you in the partner meetings. Book a meeting about the people you serve, or open a free RCN Grant Watch account and watch your region first.