Mott Community College (MCC) has a long history of connecting education with opportunity in Flint, Michigan. The public, two-year institution serves more than 8,000 students annually through associate degree, certificate, non-credit, and alternative training programs. With 46% of students eligible for Pell assistance and 37% identifying as first-generation college students, MCC has a strong focus on creating accessible pathways to education, training, and careers.

That commitment extends deeply into workforce development. MCC launched its first apprenticeship program in 1959 and has continued to build relationships that connect students with employers, work-based learning, and clinical training opportunities.

Mott Community College first connected with New Growth in 2023 while exploring federal funding opportunities, including EDA Recompete and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Strengthening Community Colleges initiative. The College engaged New Growth through a multi-grant writing retainer, beginning a relationship that would ultimately extend well beyond proposal development.

In 2024, New Growth worked with MCC to develop its successful Strengthening Community Colleges Round 5 proposal, Realizing Equitable Access to Careers in Healthcare (REACH) Pathways. The proposal secured $1,446,400 in federal funding to strengthen equitable healthcare career pathways.

Following the award, MCC brought New Growth back as its third-party evaluator, extending the partnership from grant development into implementation, learning, and continuous improvement.

One particularly promising practice highlighted through the evaluation work is MCC’s Student Advisory Committee for its healthcare programs. The committee creates an intentional way for students to share their experiences and perspectives as the College develops and strengthens healthcare career pathways.

MCC is exploring how this student voice can be elevated even further by expanding the Student Advisory Committee and creating a stronger connection with its Employer Advisory Committee. The vision is to establish parallel channels for student and employer input—and meaningful communication between the two.

That connection has the potential to provide valuable insight from both sides of the workforce pathway. Students can speak directly to their experiences with education, training, work-based learning, and barriers to success, while employers can share evolving workforce needs and expectations. Bringing those perspectives together can help MCC identify opportunities for improvement, strengthen communication, and create learning and working conditions that better support students as they move from education into healthcare careers.

The clearest outcome of New Growth’s work with Mott Community College is not simply one successful grant. It is the evolution of a longer-term strategic partnership focused on funding, implementation, evaluation, and continuous improvement.

New Growth helped MCC move from identifying funding opportunities to developing a competitive application and securing a $1.45 million federal award. Through third-party evaluation, the partnership now also provides an opportunity to examine how the funded work is taking shape, identify promising practices such as the Student Advisory Committee, and support MCC as it considers ways to strengthen student and employer engagement.

In spring 2026, MCC again reached out to New Growth—this time to look further ahead. That conversation resulted in a year-long Strategic Funding Forecasting engagement designed to help the College anticipate funding opportunities, align them with institutional priorities, and make more proactive decisions about which opportunities to pursue.

MCC and New Growth are also discussing an additional grant-writing retainer, continuing a relationship that began with individual funding opportunities and has grown into a broader approach to grant strategy and organizational readiness.

For New Growth, the partnership demonstrates how our services can work together across the full funding lifecycle. Grant strategy and proposal development help organizations pursue the resources needed to move ideas forward. Third-party evaluation helps partners learn from implementation, elevate student and stakeholder voices, and strengthen their programs. Strategic funding forecasting helps organizations anticipate what is coming next and prepare before an opportunity is announced.

Together, those services support something bigger than a single successful grant: a more intentional, informed, and sustainable approach to workforce development and growth.