You are invited to join the Maine Workforce Development Compact through the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine's Workforce and the Maine Community College System.
A Skilled Workforce
Maine Workforce Development Compact
Leverage your training dollars and join more than 1,500 Maine employers to get up to a $1,200 match per employee for professional development, training, upskilling, and continued education.
It's free to join and the application takes only two minutes to complete.
A Stronger Workforce
The Compact Grant
Through the generous support of the Harold Alfond Foundation, the Compact grant is to upskill and strengthen Maine's workforce to provide upward mobility for individuals and provide Maine's employers a skilled talent pool.
Employers can receive up to a $1,200 match per employee for professional development that supports their current position or contributes to their growth within the organization.
A Stronger Workforce
Join the Compact
Through the generous support of the Harold Alfond Foundation, the Maine Workforce Development Compact is designed to upskill and strengthen Maine's workforce, provide upward mobility for individuals, and provide Maine's employers a skilled talent pool.
Employers can receive up to a $1,200 match per frontline employee for training and professional development, supporting their position and contributing to their organization's growth.
Frontline employees are eligible if they live in Maine, are 18 or older, and have a high school diploma or equivalent.
Short-term workforce training through
Maine's community colleges
The Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce coordinates all workforce training programs for Maine’s community colleges, working closely with business leaders and workforce specialists throughout the state. By joining the Maine Workforce Development Compact, organizations have access to funding to help upskill their incumbent workforce.
- What can we do for training?
- The question is, what do you need for training? Consider any required training your company partakes in annually, then write down your wish list. Our workforce team can look at existing short-term training, customize one for your organization, pay for a course at any college or university, cover the cost of an industry conference, or cover the expense of specialized training through a third-party vendor.
What are some common trainings you offer?
Talk to our team; we love to customize training to fit your needs and timeline. The following are common across our system:
Amazon Web Services
Blueprint Reading
Business and Technical Writing
CNC Operator
Collaboration, Communication & Critical Thinking
Computer Applications
Computer Aided Drafting
Construction Academy with OSHA Certification
CPR/First Aid
Customer Service
De-escalation
Frontline Supervision Training
LEAN
Learning Facilitator
Line Cook
Land Surveyor
Marketing and Sales
Microsoft Office Applications
Project Management
Quickbooks
Remote Worker
ServSafe
Six Sigma
Social Media
Welding
Technical training for HVAC, heat pump, gas propane, energy auditing, GIS, electricians technology, building construction, and more!
- Who is eligible?
- Any registered business, association, nonprofit, municipality, or school! Trainees must be Maine residents who are 18+, have a high school diploma (or equivalent), and work part-time or full-time for the Compact member. Grant funding is for frontline workers. Elected officials and volunteers are not eligible.
- What's the catch?
- There really isn't one. The grant funding provided is to help upskill Mainers and improve the skills gap in our labor market. Joining the Compact is free. As a condition of our grant, we need to collect data to ensure recipients meet the guidelines and they'll need to complete an exit survey and follow-up survey.
- Why should my organization join the Compact?
- There are two major advantages to being a Compact member. You gain access to funding to provide each employee up to $1,200 in matched professional development funding that supports or grows their position, benefiting both the employee and employer. Additionally, your employees have access to scholarships for courses at any of Maine's community colleges.
- It's easy to get started!
- 1. Fill out the short application here.
- 2. You will receive a Memorandum of Agreement by email that illustrates the grant's parameters.
- 3. A member of our workforce team will reach out to see if you have any questions, discuss your training needs, and walk you through submitting your first funding request. Steps can be found here.
A competitive workforce
The competitive advantage for today's economy.
The Compact represents
305,919
Maine employees - that's nearly half of the state's workforce!
The majority of the Compact members we serve have
fewer than 50
employees.
Our average trainees is
35+ years old
and has a high school diploma but no post-secondary degree.
Some Headline Text Here
There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.
- Some List Text Content Here !
- Some List Text Content Here !
- Some List Text Content Here !
- Some List Text Content Here !
There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text.
A Historic Workforce Investment
Maine's community colleges are partnering with industry to create training businesses need to train their workforce now, while creating pathways for students to earn credits towards a certificate or degree. A historic $62 million investment was made to train 24,000 Mainers by 2025.
Testimonials
Kathie Leonard
CEO, Auburn Manufacturing
Dana Doran
Executive Director, Professional Logging Contractors
Shawn Moody
Founder, Moody's Collision Centers
Troy Cailler
Fire Chief, Sabattus Fire Department
The Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine's Workforce manages short-term training programs for Maine's community colleges. Launched in 2021, the Alfond Center will train 24,000 Mainers in four years through pre-hire training programs for underemployed individuals, professional development for frontline incumbent workers, and scholarships for students to continue their training in certificate and degree programs. These initiatives are possible through the generous support of the Harold Alfond Foundation, Maine Quality Centers, Ascendium, and the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan.