OUR EQUITY JOURNEY: Procurement and Contracting

January 27, 2022

By Monet Craton, Contracts & Procurement Specialist

One of WorkForce Central’s primary roles is to receive and distribute Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funds and other federal and state resources to catalyze and support dynamic workforce development services in our community. Most importantly, these services need to directly aid people who have been systemically restricted from opportunity.

We’re making changes to our procurement and contracting practices to improve access to and efficacy of services for communities of color and other groups we have not fully served in the past. First, we need to communicate funding opportunities to small, local organizations who already work effectively with these groups. We have increased posting of Requests for Proposals (RFPs) to include the Tacoma Minority Business Development Agency, the WA Office of Minority and Women Business Enterprises, and as many Pierce County-based organizations as possible. Our RFP announcements and RFPs strongly encourage smaller and less experienced organizations to submit proposals.

WorkForce Central has implemented strategies to help organizations serving marginalized populations submit competitive proposals. Evaluation criteria includes applicants’ history and plan for working with diverse and hard-to-reach populations, organizational policies and practices that promote equity and access, staff equity and anti-racist training, and diversity of organizational leadership and staff. We changed our proposal technical review process; instead of eliminating proposals that don’t meet submission requirements, we now alert organizations to errors and give three working days to correct and resubmit proposals. To date, sixteen organizations whose proposals would have been rejected in the past were able to modify and re-submit their proposals. We’re also developing a training about how to submit a competitive proposal to WorkForce Central for providing WIOA and other federally funded workforce services.

We have geared up to provide extra technical assistance and support to new contractors with less experience and infrastructure to manage performance, reporting, and fiscal requirements that accompany federal funding.

Finally, all our contracts now include the expectation that organizations will adhere to WorkForce Central’s social justice values:

Actively working to undo the historic harm done to communities of color throughout Pierce County by targeting our financial and strategic resources to those communities. Purposefully identifying, discussing, and challenging issues of race and the impact(s) they have on our organization, each partner organization, its respective systems, and the people we serve, with an aim toward active contributions to racial and gender equity along the way. Continually challenging ourselves to understand and correct the inequities we discover within the workforce development system, gain a better understanding of ourselves during this intentional process, and work to ensure that power is shared among all stakeholders in our community.

We still have a lot of work ahead to change our procurement and contracting in ways that build equity and access to opportunities. WorkForce Central is committed to this journey and welcomes feedback and suggestions from our community to help us keep improving.

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