By Joe DiDonato – President, ESource Corporation

With training budgets always under constant pressure of cuts, where does the money come from to invest in infrastructure, new courseware, and people? That dilemma is faced by almost every education and training operation in corporate America when businesses have to “tighten their corporate belts." But don't despair. There actually is a way of potentially adding millions of dollars to your corporate training budgets by simply taking advantage of Workforce and Economic Development Program funds administered by the various States. All of these programs have one of two goals: to either keep jobs and employers in their State, or to increase the numbers of jobs and employers who want to do business in their State.

There is nearly $600 million dollars available from the various States, with only 3 States not offering programs. But for many companies whose operations span many States, there seems to be a never-ending supply of dollars for those companies who know how to access these monies.

As a rule of thumb, and with some guidance from experts in dealing with the multiple State programs, an enterprise can average around $500 per full-time employee in training reimbursements across the multiple states in which they operate. A company with a full-time employee base of 20,000 in the US will usually be eligible for around $10,000,000.

As you can imagine, each State has different rules, so each company’s situation might differ, depending on the States in which they operate. But understanding the program details can yield some very big dollars. Here are some of the highlights:

Eligible Training Topics:

?Training on new or improved products, processes or systems;

?Job or occupation-specific workplace skills training;

?Technical, IT, ISO, and computer systems training;

?Manufacturing training;

?Sales or customer service training;

?Soft skills training; as well as

?Other forms of training…

Eligible Costs for Reimbursement:

?Instructional costs (in-house employees, or third-party vendors);

?Curriculum development costs (in some cases);

?Vendor and some tuition costs;

?Training supplies and materials; and

?Trainee wages (in some cases).

Employee Eligibility:

?“Full-time" workers employed in each State (and generally, most States also require that employees are residents of that State);

?New hires, as well as incumbent workers.

Training Delivery Methods:

?Instructor-led classroom, or lab-type training;

?E-Learning (Interactive or self-paced); and

?Some States will allow on-the-job training.

State Program Characteristics:

?In California, reimbursement amounts are driven by trainee hours. These training hours are then reimbursed at an hourly rate (varies from $8 to $26 per trainee hour);

?In all other States, reimbursement contracts are determined based upon overall worthiness of a company application. Reimbursement is then determined based upon training actually delivered, and the eligible training costs.

Are these programs worth a look? Most definitely. Imagine being able to say:

"We had no idea where the money would come from to invest in our new LMS - and still do a revamp of our Corporate University. Finding out about these State training reimbursement programs was the best news we ever received..."

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