Grant Management Resources

Guidance on managing the WIOA ESE 15% Discretionary grant

Recordings

March 2026: Employer Engagement Series

Session 1 Reading the Labor Market — Understanding Demand, Opportunity, and Limitations

Tuesday, March 3, 2026 11:00AM-12:30PM

  • Recording | Passcode: $54C4q0V
  • Resource: Community and Regional Mapping Guide. To be used first. This guide helps ESEs identify the most relevant local stakeholders who can help validate labor market findings before they move into employer outreach and surface where useful labor market intelligence may sit outside the data aligned with what we discussed in the webinar.
  • Resource: Employer Organizational Partnership Charter. This outreach guide It is designed for ESEs to first speak with critical regional partners and then with employers to pressure-test what the labor market data appears to show. It is intended to help ESEs assess whether opportunity is real, whether it is accessible to the population being served, and whether it is sustainable enough to build around, and not meant to function as a rigid questionnaire.

Session 2 The Employer Value Proposition — Building Champions and Understanding the “Why”

Tuesday, March 10, 2026 11:00AM-12:30PM

Session 3 Sustaining Employer Partnerships — From Pilot to Practice

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 11:00AM-12:30PM

  • Recording | Passcode: Q614*$NJ
  • Resource: Sustainability Plan Template. This is a practical planning framework to help ESEs design durable, employer-aligned programs by defining cost‑sharing and co‑investment strategies with employers and partners, establishing clear partnership milestones that move relationships from transactional to strategic/system‑level, and tracking ongoing impact, value, and ROI to support continuous improvement and funding sustainability

January 2026: Executive Skills

Session #1: Intro to Executive Skills Workshop

This session introduced Executive Skills to ESE staff attendees, exploring what they are, how they develop, and why they matter, with attendees reflecting on their questionnaire results and how these skills showed up as behaviors that helped or hindered their work and participant outcomes. The session also introduced the Neurosequential Model of Engagement, building attendees’ understanding of the link between co-regulation, positive relationships, and Executive Skills and how this could shift programming for barriers to participant job readiness and retention.

Session #2: Implementing Executive Skills in ESEs

This workshop began with a reflection and refresher on Executive Skills using real-world ESE examples, then introduced the Learn, Innovate, Improve (LI2) framework for designing low-cost road tests to pilot new strategies. Attendees drafted their road test design, finishing the session with a completed plan, Executive Skills materials, and a clear step-by-step model for implementing and evaluating their new Executive Skills-informed practice.

12/16/25: ESEs and Workforce Board Partnerships

10/15/25: Resource and Partnership Mapping

  • Follow the instructions on slides 17-20 of the Launch Webinar to submit a budget or project modification (e.g. budget realignment, administrative changes, statement of work changes, changes in key staff/contractors). Keep in mind the entire process takes up to 7-9 weeks.

Review the List of Policies for WIOA ESE sections to see guidance on procurement, financial requirements, allowable costs, and cash requests.

Federal Grant Management

  • If this is your first time managing a federal grant, we recommend your compliance, finance and leadership teams watch this Federal Grant Management 2-part training.

WIOA Monitoring Resources

  • WIOA Discretionary Funding Monitoring Checklist Example. Note: This document serves solely as an example of a monitoring questionnaire for recipients of WIOA discretionary funding. The sample questions featured here may not be exhaustive and are likely to change, and the actual questionnaire’s scope is likely to expand beyond the provided content.
  • Sample Policies Templates for ESEs. Based on the list of policies outlined in the Monitoring Checklist Example above, Redefine Alliance compiled templates of sample policies implemented by Local Workforce Development Boards for ESEs to adapt.
  • Review the List of Policies for WIOA ESE for a comprehensive overview of all relevant directives and policies. Full list of EDD Directives is here.

Expected WIOA Monitoring Process

  • This is based on previous monitoring processes led by EDD, and is subject to change.
  • EDD’s compliance team typically sends subrecipients an engagement letter with a program-specific questionnaire, and ask for samples (e.g. procedures, record keeping, notes, expenditures) to be ready for the onsite review. Usually a virtual meeting occurs prior to the onsite visit.
  • During the review week, EDD staff may interview grantee staff and has shifted their approach to providing onsite technical assistance in real time for staff to be compliant. EDD staff then have 25 days to release a report. If there are findings, the grantee has 25 days to respond and/or take corrective action.
  • In 2024, WIOA discretionary subrecipient monitoring occurred between February through June, but this schedule is subject to change.

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