City governments face significant workforce challenges that threaten their ability to provide services to their residents and limit overall economic growth in communities. NLC is partnering with the American Institutes for Research to launch the Growing and Retaining Our Workforce (GROW) Learning Lab.

GROW is designed to:

• Support city governments to overcome long-standing workforce challenges and transform their approaches to talent development.
• Help cities recruit, train, and retain a skilled workforce and create talent pipelines for critical local government jobs.
• Engage city leaders, along with education, workforce, and community partners, to identify and adopt new policies, practices, and programs to meet their workforce needs.
• Build on-ramps to high-quality local government jobs that provide stability, good benefits, positive workplace experiences, and opportunities for advancement.

NLC is seeking three cities committed to enhancing their support for their municipal workforce to participate in an 8-month intensive action planning process to build city capacity to drive changes in policies, practices, and programs that advance economic opportunity for city residents and employees.

Participating cities will benefit from free coaching, technical assistance, and connections with peers tackling shared challenges. Additionally, participating cities will help inform NLC’s future work, and possibly serve as national models for their peers.

Eligibility

This initiative is for cities, towns, and villages willing to come alongside the National League of Cities (NLC) and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) in a learning venture to address persistent municipal workforce challenges and talent development opportunities.

Additional requirements include:

• The support of your city, town or village’s top executive is required.
• Cities will be expected to participate in one in-person convening in September 2026 in Washington D.C.

How to Apply

Applicants are encouraged to read the full Request for Proposals (RFP) before applying.

Applications may be submitted online at NLC's application portal. Please note that an NLC account is required for application submission.

Webinar

NLC will host an information session for Learning Lab on December 9^th, 2025 at 2 pm ET. Click here to register for the webinar.

Contact

For questions, reach out to McKinzie McGuire at McGuire@nlc.org.

Deadline

Applicants must submit a fully completed online application by 11:59 PM EST on Friday, January 16th, 2026.