REGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSREGIONAL CAREER NETWORKSA free tool for Educators from Regional Career Networks
Educator funding is only one of the pools that can pay for your program. RCN Grant Watch reads every verified workforce grant for your role: which partner can apply, what it would fund for you as the Educator (equipment, instructor capacity, student enrollment, new lab space), and where your training is written into another partner's application. The watch needs no new software and adds no recruiting work for your staff.
You have the machines and the instructors. What no budget line ever covers is someone whose whole job is finding the money and filling your programs, between funding cycles and year after year. That is the job I built this tool around, and the watch below is where it starts.
CREATE MY FREE RCN GRANT WATCH ACCOUNTSee the grants that could fund your program.If you want to talk it through first, schedule a meeting about your program.
I'm Daniel Wierman, founder of Regional Career Networks. Before I built anything, I ran training and recruiting on a shop floor and managed a registered apprenticeship there.
One day a young man in quality control, about 23, asked me to print out his training certificates. He had about twenty. I handed him the stack right there on the floor. He looked at it for about ten seconds, looked up at me, and said, bro, I barely graduated high school.
He had never once seen his own progress laid out where he could hold it. That moment built everything since: a career pathway makes hope visible.
Later I managed sector strategies at Goodwill Southern California, inside a workforce system with 120 programs, and I watched the same movie on repeat. A grant gets won. A program gets built. People get trained, companies start hiring. Then the grant ends, and the program ends with it. The partners scatter, and the next grant starts over from scratch.
The Nonprofit, the Educator, and the Company all did their part. Programs end because each one is built on the grants a single organization is allowed to apply for, and because it runs alone.
Educators feel that one hardest. You keep the machines and the instructors and lose the pipeline, because nobody in your building was ever funded to do marketing, and recruiting was never supposed to be your job.
Every workforce grant has two gates.
The first gate is who you are. Most funding pools only accept certain kinds of organizations as the applicant and fiscal lead. Educator money needs an Educator. Apprenticeship incentives need a registered apprenticeship sponsor. Some training funds run only through Companies. Community development money runs through a city. One organization can only reach the pools its own type opens, and when those pools are dry between cycles, the program ends.
The second gate is what you do. Inside every pool, each grant has its own list: serve these people, in this sector, in this region, with these results.
A Regional Career Network clears both. Each partner type opens pools the others cannot. On each grant the partner who fits steps up as fiscal lead with the rest of the region behind it, and the lead changes from grant to grant. Together the partners can deliver the whole list: Nonprofits bring the people, Educators bring the training, Companies bring the jobs, and Support Partners bring the regional reach. That is why the work keeps going between grants: many pools, many calendars, many leads, and every grant leaves something behind.
For your program, that means you lead the funding only an Educator can apply for, and your training is written into the Nonprofit, Company, and city grants as the training those grants pay for.
So here is what I do now. Every week I read grant opportunities across the country, check each one, and load the real ones into a tool called RCN Grant Watch.
Every card is a real opportunity a person read and checked: the ask, the deadline, who can apply, and the links that matter. Expired listings come off the watch, so what you see is current.
Switch the watch to the Educator lens and every card fits your program: what the funder is asking for, what the grant funds for a training program, and the part each local partner would play, you included.
Your account carries your program's ZIP code, so I know which region you are watching from. Region matching sharpens every week as new grants clear review.
You open the watch already knowing whether a grant is worth bringing to your next budget meeting.
Enter your first name, work email, and your program's ZIP code. It takes about a minute.
Each card shows the ask, the deadline, what the money funds for an Educator, and the role each partner plays, with the partner best positioned to lead the application marked on the card. Some grants you could lead. On others you back the lead, and the training you provide still has its own line in the funded budget.
When a card is worth a conversation, that button books a meeting. We map your program against your region's partners and the live grants, and you leave knowing whether your strongest role on that grant is leading or backing.
The watch is how I start the relationships that become funded regional projects. When you create an account, your region shows up on my map, and when a live grant fits it, we already know each other. The team you would work with is CNC Career Network, our sector team for advanced manufacturing. When a region goes after a grant with us and wins, the grant funds the work each partner committed to, including the training you provide.
Here is what has been built so far. A California Opportunity Youth Apprenticeship award, backed by additional state workforce dollars, supported an operating STEM Lab in San Bernardino, with the region's partners committed in writing and the apprenticeship registered with the state. Today the lab's coordinator books students into tours at Technical Employment Training, the region's Educator. California was the first region. The watch reads grants nationwide.
Enter your first name, your work email, and your program's ZIP code. Your watch opens instantly, and your ZIP code tells me which region you are watching from.
I add new grants to the watch every week.
A Regional Career Network is a locally coordinated system of nonprofits, educators, and companies that moves people into careers, with sector-specific pathways like CNC, Welding, or Maritime deployed based on regional demand. Nonprofits provide participants and wraparound services, educators provide the training, companies hire and host apprentices, and support partners provide resources and networking. The career seeker moves through three steps, Get Informed, Get Trained, Get Hired, and the network stays standing between funding cycles, so each award adds the next permanent piece to what the last one built.
Your role as the Educator is the one you already do: provide the training needed to be hired. The tours and enrollment support you already run go in writing as a Memorandum of Understanding, an MOU: a written commitment to perform a scope of work related to the grant narrative. Your region's companies commit in writing too, to interviews, tours, and classroom speakers. You know your region's companies better than anyone; the network turns relationships you already have into signed MOUs, and interviews in writing are what earn the hires.
Here is what the network carries for your staff. The nonprofits in your region commit in their MOUs to recruiting participants from the people they serve. The CNC Career Guide, the network's career seeker tool, routes students straight to your program's page, with tour videos and a button that picks a tour date; the only new thing your counselors learn is a three step guide. Grant narratives are written for you, or with you, alongside your own grant writer. And any partner can lead a given grant. The lead is the Lead Applicant: the organization that submits and signs, and that the grant money flows through. Everyone else backs the lead under signed MOUs, each with a scope in the budget. Which role is your strongest is decided together, grant by grant.
In the meeting we go through your program and the live grants that fit your region, and you leave knowing which role fits you on each grant.
Schedule a meeting about my programThe meeting takes 30 minutes.
That is what we are building, region by region. Do you want to be a part of it?
CREATE MY FREE RCN GRANT WATCH ACCOUNTSee the grants that could fund your program.P.S. RCN Grant Watch tracks live workforce grants and reads each one for your region through the Educator lens. Each card shows what a grant funds for an Educator and whether your strongest role is leading the application or backing it. Every card carries a button that starts a conversation with me about going after it together. The account takes about a minute: first name, work email, ZIP code. Create your account, or schedule a meeting about your program.