Building the right team is a challenge for most organizations, but finding and supporting the best people for the job is critical to a nonprofit's success.

Our Workforce Planning & Career Development Service Grant helps you:

• Identify the type and level of talent necessary to growth or continued excellence
• Identify and nurture high-potential individuals
• Create a plan to develop existing or future talent for strategic responsibilities
• Make good decisions about hiring, training, and task allocations

Strategic staffing-getting the right number of people with the right skills, experiences, and competencies in the right jobs at the right time-is one of the biggest challenges for any organization. Short-term needs often outweigh strategic thinking: instead of looking ahead to see what talent you need in the coming years, you're struggling to fill holes. Our Workforce Planning & Career Development Service Grant can identify what you need to do to build and nourish a robust, capable staff. Using your strategic priorities and current competencies as a guide, we work with you to plan for both the staff you need now and the leaders you'll need in the future.

The impact of each project varies, but you can expect to:

• Integrate your workforce planning goals with your strategic objectives
• Map current and desired competencies to specific organizational needs
• Create a set of role-based and individual development goals
• Build a succession plan for critical roles

Our Workforce Planning & HR Capacity Assessment is most likely to be successful under certain circumstances. We recommend you apply if your organization has met the following requirements:

• A strategic plan and an annual operating plan that reflects current thinking and practice
• An Executive Director or HR Director who are strongly committed to this project
• An employee manual outlining organizational workplace policies
• Basic HR systems to manage performance evaluation, hiring and recruiting, and benefits and compensation
• Staff that can invest the necessary time to make the project succeed:
  • Executive Director: 2-3 hours each week
  • Human Resources Director: 2-3 hours each week
  • Managers (2-3): 10-15 hours over the course of the project
  • Selection of board members, volunteers, employees: 2-3 hours each over the course of the project

Your Taproot Foundation team will be staffed by human resources experts who have made a personal commitment to strengthening the nonprofit sector. Visit our volunteer roles page for additional information about HR volunteer roles.

If this project appeals to your organization and you have the recommended items in place, please review our grant process and criteria, and then apply. If you have questions about the grant or your eligibility, please contact us.