Canada: Future Skills Centre launches Call for Proposals

Deadline: 16 September 2019

The Future Skills Centre has launched a call for proposals to invite applications from stakeholders across the country with projects that develop, test, and evaluate innovative approaches to skills development.

Focus Areas

The Future Skills Centre is currently seeking proposals for innovative projects that develop and test new or emerging approaches in following areas:

Supporting workers to manage labour market transitions;
Engaging employers in developing and delivering solutions to skills gap challenges; and,
Optimizing skills development systems by building the capacity of service providers to better collaborate with each other and other organizations that could expand or improve their services.

Objectives

The objective of this Call for Proposals is to identify, test and evaluate innovative projects that have the potential to generate actionable evidence about how to better equip Canadians with the skills required to navigate a fast-changing labour market. The Future Skills Centre is seeking proposals that address one of these three questions:

How can we best support Canadians facing labour market disruption to transition to new jobs or industries?
How can employers be more effectively engaged in developing and delivering demand-driven solutions to skills gap challenges?
How can skills development systems be optimized, building up the capacity of service providers and encouraging collaboration between organizations?

Funding Amounts and Project Duration

Projects of all different sizes and stages of development will be considered.
The total budget for this call is $36 million. The maximum award for an individual project under the Innovation Stream is $1.5 million, but they aim for most projects to be funded within the range of $500,000 to $1 million. The maximum award under the Evidence Stream is $2.5 million, but they aim for most projects to be funded within the range of $1 million to $2 million. The maximum duration of projects is 24 months.
Applicants’ Letters of Interest must include an approximate project budget and their requested funding. Funding requests should be commensurate with the level of effort required to successfully deliver on project outcomes. While direct matching funds are not required, a demonstration of in-kind support on a 1:1 basis is strongly encouraged.
If shortlisted, proponents will be required to submit a detailed budget as part of the full application.

Eligibility Criteria

Applications may be submitted by a sole organization, or a consortium of organizations, including:
- Legally incorporated not-for-profit organizations, including not-for-profit social enterprises and registered charities
- Publicly-funded post-secondary institutions
- Industry associations
- Professional associations
- An Indigenous organization that is a legal entity
- Municipalities or District Social Services Administration Boards
- For profit organizations (provided the project is undertaken at cost, with no mark-ups or profit incorporated)
The following types of organizations are not eligible to apply:
- Provinces or territories; and
- Federal government bodies.
- Individual persons
Applications with multiple partners are eligible to apply. However, one organization must be identified as the lead applicant for the purpose of signing the funding agreement, receiving and managing the funds, ensuring coordination of project parties and activities, and communicating with the Centre regarding the status of the project on behalf of all partners. The lead organization must be a Canadian entity. All participating organizations must be eligible as set out above.
Applicants are only eligible to lead on one application, but may participate in more than one application.