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About Us
How communities were selected
The Tomorrow's Workforce Tour will visit 52 communities–one in each state, plus an additional community in New York and Texas. Another may be added in California.
Communities were selected using two principal criteria:
- The unemployment rate. A low level of unemployment indicates a tighter labor market and an even greater need to strengthen the capacity of the available workforce
- The population. Emphasis was placed on cities that were large enough to have a number of people interested in improving workforce preparedness–who were dedicated enough to come together to make a difference. At the same time, we sought cities that were small enough to gain traction to produce results.
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Benefits for communities
Each community will enjoy a number of benefits:
- Providing community focus on the vital issue of workforce preparedness by bringing together leaders from business, education, government, and non-profit organizations to work together
- Receiving an enlightening, high-content program presented by nationally-recognized workforce futurists and best-selling business authors Roger Herman and Joyce Gioia
- Presenting valuable understandings of challenges in workforce preparedness… and solutions by sharing substantial information resources with community leaders
- Significantly improve the preparation of the community's workforce–now and for the years ahead.
- Stimulate positively-focused discussion among a wide range of community leaders addressing education and training of the workforce
- Be recognized as a more attractive location for employers who want and need a well-prepared workforce (economic development)
- Build a healthier economic base because more people are better prepared to perform high quality work and enjoy commensurate compensation
- National recognition through the tour's comprehensive public relations campaign
- Facilitate a more coordinated community response to challenges and opportunities in preparing tomorrow's workforce
- Enjoy the opportunity to collaborate with other communities throughout the country, through local champions.
- Your community will be represented at the post-tour national conference in Washington, D.C., providing an opportunity to learn and engage on a countrywide scale
Communities won't have to produce their own conferences
Communities around the country are holding summit conferences with economic development and/or workforce preparedness themes. Organizations producing these local conferences are investing a lot of money to bring in provocative and/or informative speakers, facilitate discussion, and build awareness of issues. They incur costs for speakers, promotion, registration, signage, conference materials, space and food, and program production. Significant staff time is invested in designing and implementing. Using only local funds, they are often limited in how strong a program they can offer.
Whether the host organization is the Chamber of Commerce, the local government, the Workforce Investment Board, some other group, or some combination of these, there are many tasks required to produce the day's event.
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Host community responsibilities
Each participating community is asked to contribute a modest amount to cover professional fees and support costs. The $15,000 fee can be supplied by one organization, perhaps the chamber of commerce, economic development group, or a financial institution. Or, the funds may come from a number of local businesses. Appropriate acknowledgement in the participant workbook may be arranged for these community resources, as well as the logo displayed prominently on the city's individual page on the Tomorrow's Workforce Tour web site. Standard fees charged for Roger and Joyce for a full-day presentation together are over $30,000, plus travel expenses.
In addition to the fee, which is in keeping with the cost of bringing in one professional speaker for a local workforce or economic summit conference, we ask that the community arrange and pay for a suitable meeting place, audio-visual support, lunch, and breaks at the community's expense. Local transportation for Roger and Joyce will support their work in your city.
We even send out the invitations for you. Each community will be asked to provide a list of people to be invited to the day-long conference. These representatives, community leaders, from business, government, education, and non-profit organizations will receive invitations directly from the Tomorrow's Workforce Tour. To assure that there are no barriers to participation, we strongly recommend that fees not be charged for the conference. While we want to encourage people to come by avoiding admission charges, we respect that this policy is a local decision.
The community host organization(s) have the opportunity to sponsor a high-content, vital theme conference delivering strong value, an action plan, and ongoing benefit without having to develop the program, find and engage professional speakers, create signage, register participants, or create and assemble conference materials. All these details will be handled by Tomorrow's Workforce Tour and managed on-site by a professional meeting planner.
Early commitment from communities is essential for the long-term planning involved with the Tomorrow's Workforce Tour, so timely decisions are necessary. Each community can determine how funds will be generated. A deposit on the community investment will be required.
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TWT support for communities
Our objective is to ease the burden on local leaders, so most of the details of the one-day conference in your community will be taken care of by the Tomorrow's Workforce Tour. We will use the resources funded by corporate sponsors–an estimated $1.5 to 2 Million–to enable local communities to benefit from a powerful national program.
This approach makes holding this event a simple job for the local host(s). A considerable amount of work, normally done by local groups, will be performed by our professional management company contracted to handle logistics:
- Mailing of invitations to list provided by community
- Pre-registration of participants
- Preparation of name tags
- Registration list for welcoming of participants
- Assembly of participant packages
- Specifications for meeting facility on set-up
- Directional signage in meeting facility
- On-table signage
- Tour Coffee Mug for each participant (arranged for morning coffee service)
- On-site professional meeting planner
- Specifications for audio-visual support
- Tour shirts for local facilitators/champions to appreciate their assistance and support
- Meals for Roger and Joyce not hosted by community
- Lodging for Roger and Joyce (they will stay in the tour motor home)
- Appreciation gifts for participants
The national public relations firm contracted by Tomorrow's Workforce Tour will be responsible for:
- Arrangements for interviews with local media (community may be involved)
- National news media arrangements
- Preparing and distributing press releases
- Provision of media information support for use by local organizations
The organizational development consulting firm contracted by Tomorrow's Workforce Tour will provide ongoing support for Champions (see below for more information) and other leaders in their work to build a better workforce for today and tomorrow. A broad and deep system of support will share best practices, help solve problems, and keep your community leaders in close touch with their counterparts in every state in the union.
Community representatives will be invited to participate in the capstone national conference in Washington, DC, in the fourth quarter of 2008. This conference will be subsidized to minimize the cost for participants.
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Community Pages
Each participating community will have its own page on the Tomorrow's Workforce Tour web site. This page will contain the following elements:
- Description of the city, town, or county
- Names of the champions and a one-paragraph bio of each
- Local sponsors' logos and descriptions of their organizations
- Information about the event that will or did take place in that community
- Updates about the progress that the area is having based on the goals and action plans created at the conference
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Letter of Intent Template
Right-click on the above file and choose 'save target as..." to save it to your hard drive.
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