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New Program Supports Talent Attraction and Retention

Several CMF members are engaged in talent attraction and retention efforts to encourage residents to stay and work in their home communities. 

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Three individuals wearing graduation caps and gowns holding their diploma and celebrating

Several CMF members are engaged in talent attraction and retention efforts to encourage residents to stay and work in their home communities. 

The Four County Community Foundation is matching students who graduated from high schools in the community with local companies through its new Return to Earn Internship program. 

The goal of the program is to entice students to “return to earn” and to also connect them with higher-wage jobs in their home community. This will also work to address “brain drain” in the community, which occurs when talent leaves their home community to work and live elsewhere. 

“In addition to our traditional scholarships, we want to support our students after they enter college. Our internship program will provide up to $2,000 towards a local business or industry hiring college students who graduated from a high school in our service area. The other half comes from the employer,” Kathy Dickens, executive director of Four County Community Foundation said. 

Students will receive eight weeks of valuable on-the-job experience through the internship and earn up to $4,000.

“This program also helps smaller businesses and organizations access interns when they have not been able to before. Smaller employers may not have the time to build a program or post openings, we are helping to provide them with a ready-made program,” Dickens said. 

The community foundation is partnering with local businesses to provide internships for students who are majoring in subjects from pre-law to biochemistry. 

“We are in an area known for manufacturing and automation in the automotive industry. However, it doesn't seem that there is an existing pipeline connecting college students with interested intern hosts in our local communities,” Dickens said. 

Dickens shared that many colleges and universities utilize job seeking platforms that not all businesses in the area know about. The community foundation is trying to raise awareness, create opportunity and empower connections through this work.

“The Return to Earn program will partner with Michigan College Access Network to offer interns a weekly cohort session about how to leverage the experience, advocate for themselves, request help, identify needs, lift up the praise of their host, raise concerns and more. This will provide advocacy, guidance, voice and soft skill enrichment,” Dickens said. 

Through the guidance of the CMF Community Foundation Committee, a grant was provided through the Community Foundation Endowment Fund to support the program in hopes of offering learning and insights for our statewide network of community foundations.

Several CMF members are working to attract and retain talent in their communities.

The Community Foundation of St. Clair County’s Come Home Award is a talent retention program and pays graduates on the back-end of their college career, after they have completed a degree in a STEM related field, if they agree to move to and work within St. Clair County after graduation.

The community foundation shared that they are expanding their efforts to “attract more remote workers, artists in residence, entrepreneurs and others who will grow the number of families, homeownership, quality of employment and the overall prosperity of St. Clair County.”

The Huron County Community Foundation used a grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy to support its Community Hub project, will offer access to reliable internet and could become a home base for self-employed professionals, entrepreneurs, startups and students, serving as a talent attraction in Huron County.

Want more?

Read more about the Return to Earn Internship.

Read more about the Come Home Award.

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