WIRED Innovation Fund

Over 2008-09, Southeastern Wisconsin’s WIRED Innovation Fund will invest in projects to transform education, economic, and workforce development to create a pipeline of talent to grow our region’s economy in the 21st Century. This Innovation Fund will invest in a portfolio of programs, projects, and activities that provide new and improved talent development solutions to the business, jobseeker, and incumbent worker communities using a competitive application process.

RWA WIRED will fund projects based on the RSTI Table.doc (30.5 KB) :

R – Regional and Replicable

S – Strategic and Sustainable

T – Transformational and Targeted

I – Industry-driven and Innovative

The WIRED Innovation Fund will make investments in three categories:

Exploratory Investments, awarded in amounts between $5,000 and $35,000, will stimulate the development and application of new ideas and solutions. The smaller investments will allow stakeholders to develop clear blueprints for new approaches and to create a proof of concept or business plan.

Demonstration Investments , awarded in amounts between $35,000 and $100,000 will pilot new talent development innovations and build on successful solutions already in place.

Implementation Investments , awarded in amounts between $100,000 and $250,000, will fund promising practices in talent development innovations and support efforts to bring them to scale across the Milwaukee 7 region.

Round I of the Innovation Fund launched in April, 2008 and awards were announced in June. Round II launches September 10, 2008 and awarded projects will be announced in December.

Potential applicants can view Powerpoint presentations from the 9/23/08 Round II Technical Assistance Session:

Susan Tech Assistance slides.ppt (1.6 MB)

TA Fiscal slides.ppt (610 KB)

Supporting Research.ppt (1.3 MB)

Research Index Rollout for TA Session.ppt (778 KB)