Home » Greater Louisville Foundation receives $767,000 grant for talent attraction

Greater Louisville Foundation receives $767,000 grant for talent attraction

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The James Graham Brown Foundation is making a significant investment in the Greater Louisville Foundation’s talent attraction and retention efforts. The Foundation announced this week that GLF will receive a $767,000 grant over the course of the next year.

The Greater Louisville Foundation is an affiliate of Greater Louisville Inc. GLI is the metro chamber of commerce.

“The James Graham Brown Foundation is pleased to support GLI’s talent attraction and retention initiative that will strengthen the workforce and improve the long term economic vitality of our city,” Mason Rummel, President of the James Graham Brown Foundation, said.

The grant will be applied to the GROW! (Greater-Louisville Region Optimizing Workforce) initiative. GROW! is a three-year plan developed to retain and attract talented people to the Greater Louisville region.

“A grant of this size is going to really accelerate our efforts to promote Greater Louisville as the place to be. It’s time for our region to step into the spotlight, market itself, and really compete for top talent,” Diane Medley, Chair of the Greater Louisville Foundation Inc. said.

GROW!’s central purpose is to materially increase the rate of net migration of talented people to the region and fill the employee pipeline with skilled and educated professionals resulting in a faster job-fill rate, a strong candidate pool, a higher median wage, and an increase in the overall skilled population, thereby allowing Greater Louisville to become a true ‘community of talent’.

The programming and execution of GROW! will be conducted by GLI, with the funding support of the Greater Louisville Foundation.

“GLI remains steadfast in its focus to attract more people to the region by embracing the things that make our region unique,” John Crockett, Chairman of GLI said. “We are grateful for the investment made by the Brown Foundation. This is how we move the talent retention and attraction needle in the right direction.”

This diverse and robust effort includes (but is not limited to) outreach to cities and universities, a regional branding strategy, brand development with a national marketing campaign, a social media movement, and a community initiative to recruit friends and family, who could influence decisions of talented people to move to the area or stay here, to act as ambassadors for attraction purposes.

Additionally, GROW! includes specific initiatives around partnerships that help secure career opportunities for veterans and collaborative efforts to attract and retain international professionals.

The GROW! project will also partner with local businesses and organizations on specific strategies to retain the qualified population that presently lives in Greater Louisville. This means nurturing programs that already exist, while developing creative ways to attract and retain professionals, and developing a sense of loyalty to and pride for the community.