All right, everybody, you should have gotten notice that we do record these sessions. People asked that we send them out to them, and we do like to provide that along with the slides. So it looks like it's about ten oh three now. We saw some people rolling in, but we said we get started at 10:03. So why don't we go ahead and get started with that? Colin's going to be running the tech for us today. So, Colin, can you pull up the presentation? Okay. All right. How are we looking? All good? Yeah. We're all good. Thank you. All right, everybody. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you all for joining us. Again, we know it's Friday. At least for me personally, it feels like it's been a long week, so hopefully that doesn't feel the same way for any of you. We're here today talking about Session three, which is organizational readiness. So just a little bit of agenda in housekeeping, as we like to do before all of our sessions. First, I just want to thank everybody for joining us. Today we're going to be going through Module seven through nine. Module seven is going to be my presentation. Then we're going to hand it over to Chase, who's going to talk about types of funding, then over to Lori, who's going to talk about preparation, and that's really talking about your organization and how you can be ready to jump when you see an opportunity. Again, modules are about 20 minutes. We'll have a short Q and A after each module to talk about questions. But please throughout our presentation, if you have any questions, just drop them in the chat, and Colin will be monitoring that and we can circle back to those. And then we're going to conclude with an activity. This one isn't necessarily interactive like our other ones have been, but Colin is going to run you guys through Grants Dv, and hopefully we have a little bit of time for the University of Delaware funding portable portal as well, and as always, our sides will be available. So we call this one setting the stage for success. All right. That's okay, Colin. Please next slide. So as we like to do, we like these questions in the beginning of each of our learning modules. We think it just helps frame our conversations and what we want you to leave with after we're done discussing. So I have a couple very exciting topics for you today. The first one is what is sam.gov and what are the requirements to register? What is grants.gov and what services and information does it provide? Where do I search and find grant opportunities? These are not necessarily the most exciting things, at least the first two, but they are things that you have to have in order to be ready to apply for grants. At this point, we did want to point out to everybody that now we're on session three here, right? We still haven't really gotten into exactly grant development. The reason that we haven't done that is because we want to really impress upon everyone how important all of the front end work, such as planning, such as Sam grant, project readiness, thinking about how your daily work is setting you up to apply for grants in the future. We really think that that's very important. And it's really something that you can be working on now even if you don't know of an opportunity, and it's really what you should be doing so that you're most prepared when the time comes. Next slide, Colin. Again, we also have some key vocabulary here. Again, I'm not going to run through these two specifically because we like to provide them to you just you have them, but we do want you just to be familiar with the terms in case they come up, which they definitely will. So we have the electronic business point of contact. This is basically the person who's going to be responsible for federal grant related activities. So you want it to be somebody who in your organization, who is going to be the key contact with the federal government. When and if you get a federal award. I mean this is actually a very federal term, but it would be the same for a state or local grant to. You're just going to contact who is going to be that person. That person may not necessarily be responsible for everything, but they are the first touch point at your organization. Then you have an authorized organization representative. This person is going to be responsible for signing grant applications, signing the forms, all of the things that will become part of your contract when you do get an award. It's important to say that the authorized organization representative can often be the same person as the business POC. So you can have one person, you can have two persons, depending on the structure of your organization, whatever makes sense for you. The catalog of federal domestic assistance. That's basically the number that is assigned to the award that you're going to be pursuing. Then you have an EIN, which I think the most important thing to remember here is an entity identification number is a three part code, it's 12 characters used by the federal government. This is issued by the IRS. The other term that you're going to hear throughout our presentation is a unique entity ID. The difference is that this is actually issued by Sam, which is more of the grant related number that you'll need. You'll need both, but I just wanted to not think that they're the same. They're different and they're issued by different federal agencies. Okay. So what is Sam DC? So you register for the system for award management, which stands for Sam to access grant.gov and manage grants once they're awarded. So Grand Stock gov and Sam Dov kind of work hand in hand. Grand Stock gov is kind of where you're going to first go, and we're going to talk about Grand Stackov to find awards to submit official applications, all of that. SMDC is kind of where you go to manage all of your communication with the government. So once you're awarded, it kind of goes into the SAM space. So what you want to do is make sure your SAM registration is up to date to do business with the US government. I have a little caveat down here at the bottom and it says, if you've done business with the federal government such as ARPA funding, you have a SMDC profile. However, it may not be updated. And there's ways I'm going to show you on the next screen how to check and see your status. So this must be renewed annually. You have to know some key information for your organization, and it's information that you would all have You want to know your organization's employee identification number or their tax ID number. That's the IRS number we were talking about. And then for Sam DCO registration, you'll be assigned a unique entity ID, which is the UEI, which you'll need when you're working in Grant. I know it's a little bit confusing, but just know you have to apply for both. Most importantly, know that the GAP team is here to help you one going through this. If you want to help you register, we're more than welcome to do that, and we can do that no service like many of all of our services, essentially. Another thing, there's no fee for registering with SAM do all of this is free. So just a little screenshot that I put in here. I wanted you to be familiar with what you're going to see when you go to Sam DCO, and you can see on the right there. It says, Register your entity to get a unique entity ID. You're doing this because you have to register with Sam DCO, but really the number that you need out of this is that UEI. You can it get started if you've never been there? You can renew if you know that you have an active one, or you can check your entity status if you're not sure. So you can do all three depending on what you think you need. I think I would probably always just go and check entity status because sometimes organizations, I worked for the City of Wilmington for a long time. I know that they're always necessarily everybody's not speaking to each other. You may have one. You just don't know. It's always good just to check, and then you'll know if you need to create one or if you need to renew. Next slide, please. In order to do both of these, you're going to need some core data. You're going to need the date of the incorporation, which is the date of the charter of your town. I know that we also have some nonprofit partners on the call as well, the date that your organization was started. You can think of it like that. The date the fiscal year ends. I don't have to read through all of these. We just wanted you to see them. One thing that you can do in these portals, and I know we did it at the City of Wilmington. You could have different departments. Sometimes a department can have one, so you could have the Department of Planning. Depends. Again, organizational structure how big you are. You're going to want your website address, EIN. But then also be thinking about who you want those points of contact to be in your organization. These are people that should be like they consistently, maybe they have a a position of leadership. They can then divvy out responsibilities, but you want to be thinking about who those people might be that you want to have those key contacts with as you're working through the process. So then you're going to want to register with grants.gov too. And we have a short video that we're going to show you guys. I just want you to see it probably sounds more intimidating than what it actually is. But organizations will need to designate again that point of contact, and that could be the same person, you know, across platforms. I would actually recommend that it is. It can take seven to ten business days to fully complete the registration process required. So Hopefully, we're not working within the seven to ten business day window to get a grant application filed. So you can do these early. You can do Sam Doc and Grant SAC Dv, you don't have to have an opportunity identified. You can do these today. When you hop off with us, if that's what you want to do with your Friday afternoon, you can do that, and then you'll be ready to go. Again, it's free to do that. Colin, can we jump into that video now just to see that. It's from the Grand Sac Dv website, and I actually think it's very helpful. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you switch on over here. And then I'll just do a test real quick just to make sure that we here. Okay. Can we hear that. Good good Registering grad involves several easy steps. First, after navigating to the registration page, begin by completing a few form fields. You will be asked for your name, e mail address, and phone number, as well as a user name and password. You will next be asked to confirm your e mail address. Click to send temporary code button and check your email account for the Grand SocGv message with the numerical code. Use this code to confirm your e mail address. If you don't see the message in your inbox, check your spam folder. At the end of the registration process, you will have an option to create a profile. If you only want to receive Grand STGvmils and subscribe to funding opportunities, you can forego creating a profile. Applicants will want to add either an individual applicant profile or an organization applicant profile. To create an organization applicant profile, the applicant must enter the organization's unique entity identifier or UEI, along with a profile name and a title. The UEI is not applicable to individual profiles. Grand tours who are registering with Grands gov will need to contact an agency representative to request that they be affiliated with the agency. All right. Thank you, Colin, for sharing that. UI is generated by Sam eco. True? Yes. Yeah, Colin, can we jump back into the presentation? All right. Okay. In addition to registering on Grants GoGransGv also has a variety of other things that we want to tell you about. It's basically the clearinghouse for federal grant opportunities, which basically means there's a lot of information on there, which leads to some pros and cons that we just want to talk to you about. These are things that I found working in this space and I imagine would be similar to most people who are going to the website. So the pros of Grand Saco is that it's reliable and accurate. You know the information that you're finding there is exactly what you need. You know the numbers, all the dates. It's the official place where all that would be. It's comprehensive. It has a lot of resources, and it has archived information. So if you're curious about previous opportunities, you can look them up. It has that historical look, which is very helpful. The cons of grant.com are sometimes that searching for grant opportunities can be very overwhelming. Currently, there's about 2,500 active grants on there. Many of them are things that just don't apply to people working in our spaces. For instance, nonprofit, local government, state government. One that Colin brought up as we were preparing for this is the Department of State. You'll see a huge chunk of them that are just for that. Colin is going to at the end of our presentation, walk you guys throughGran a little bit and show you But that leads to this next bullet point, which is the grants that are listed on there are not always relevant to the space you're working in. They do have ways to sort, but even when you do that, there's still a lot of opportunities. Navigating the website can be a bit challenging as well, so give yourself some time to do that. Now there are ways to sort on the website, but since it's the place where everything goes, there's just a lot of information. In addition to grants, there are some other things to do on grants too. Okay. So these are really where Grand Skov I find is most useful. It has a list of all the funding agencies. It has grant training videos and documents. Some of the going back to that reliable information, you'll have some standard forms that we'll talk about in a later session that you can find on there. So you'll also if you Google those forms, you'll find those forms on a variety of other websites as well. I would get them from Granskov that's going to be the most updated version of that form. You know it's the right one. So it also has a learning center where you can learn a lot about the grant space, anything that maybe you want to build upon that we're talking about, and it also has agency websites. So DOT, EPA, all of that. So you can link to all of that. So I would just give yourself the space to mentally prepare grant stock and prepare to navigate through it and learn it. It's a good resource, but there are others. So we want to tell you about those as well. Okay. So there's funding portals and navigators. For instance, sometimes environmental justice places advocacy agencies will have funding portals. University of Delaware, we have a funding portal. There can be water grant portals. The White House puts out information. We're going to have a list of some of these resources at the end of our presentation here. You can have newsletters. If you subscribe to things that are very important to you, for instance, if you're a big biker, bike advocacy organizations will sometimes put out grants. They're not the funding agency. They want you to know about the opportunity to advance your projects and webinars. I'm sure there are some people on the call here. For instance, rails to trails just had a webinar on a grant that they see is very vital to their So there's all sorts of places that you can get grant information. Some of them include the GAP funding portal. That would be an example of a funding portal or navigator, the DOT funding navigator, elected officials often put information in their newsletters and advocacy organizations like I was just talking about, for instance, rails to trails. So there's lots of places that you can get these grants and maybe filter them down to kind of your specific interest or a project that you're working on. Okay. This here is an example of our grant assistance funding portal. Really Chase Barnes on our team has really done a lot of work to build this program. The portal is curated by GAP to present relevant and achievable opportunities best suited to Delaware communities. So you can search by category. You can search by eligible entity, and you can search by cost and if it's a loan or if it's a grant. So I don't know. Maybe Chase and his next presentation tell us exactly how many opportunities are on here. I know it's far less than 20,500, but they all basically apply to local governments, Colin hopefully will have some time to walk you through this. So then here's just a couple of resources. You know, the spreadsheet, Sam, you have grants which you have to go. And then the White House Bild really has a lot of information. You can actually dig down and see what's been allocated in the state of Delaware. Some of it has gone through at the GAP team. Other things have gone through other places, not everyone is required to work with us. But yeah, Those are my slides for Module seven. Now I'm going hand it over to Chase and he's going to talk about some specific types of funding. Thanks, Colin. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. Yeah. So to Matt's point, I can answer that question now about the funding portal. There's approximately 100 funding opportunities in there right now. To be honest, our team needs to spend a little time this summer in revamping that and just reviewing the opportunities that are in there to make sure everything is up to date again. That is the one benefit to GrandtoGv as opposed to our portal. Is that Grandto is always going to be up to date? So definitely always double check if you look at our portal double check on Grand Stock v. But we can pause here for a second. If anybody has any questions related to the content that Matt shared, feel free to drop them in the chat or just unmute yourself. And then, you know, if you think of something as we go, we can always answer at the end of the session as well. So just going to pause here for a few seconds to see if anyone has any questions. Chase, I must have just done that thorough job. I think so. I mean, I have no questions. You asked the one question that maybe other folks had, Matt. But yeah, like I said, if you think of something as we are presenting, just drop it in the chat or write it down and at the at the end of this module, we can address it. So I'm going to take off here and I'm going to present some information on different types of funding that are important to keep in mind for your funding mix for different projects. Go ahead, Colin. So some learning outcomes I hope to achieve through this model. Module are who provides funding opportunities? Where does the funding come from? What types of funding are available, then what are the benefits and risks of different types of funding? So key vocabulary, you'll see here a few different repeats. So applicant is the organization who's submitting an application. That's a repeat term. Grant, another repeat term is the grant making entity that could be a federal state agency or a private organization like a nonprofit or a foundation. A grant is an instrument used to provide, you know, federal funding or non federal funding to an entity for public or mission based purposes. Cooperative agreements are like grants, except that the fund the grantor is often more closely involved with all the specific elements of the project. And then there are bonds, which are debt securities issued by almost often by local, state or local governments to fund various projects or day to day obligations. There's loans, which I'm sure many of you are familiar with. These are a sum of money borrowed for a particular purpose. They can come from banks, Um or government agencies. Then again, cost share, you'll probably see this in every training we do. Cost share is something that's very important to all of these different funding opportunities, whether they be grants, bonds or loans. And that's something that you should be thinking about all the time as you're planning for grants. Next slide, Colin. All right. So let's just dive right in here. Obviously, we're the grant assistance program, and a lot of you are here to learn about grants. So let's start talking about funding your projects using grants first. So I like to think about grants as a contractual agreement with the grantor between the grantor and the applicant to use allocated funds to carry out specific activities within a specific period of time. So there's a lot of parameters about how and when you can use grants. A grant or a cooperative agreement is one way to partially fund projects and programs that provide essential services, support the community or stimulate the regional and local economy. You'll notice there, I really emphasize partially. Again, that's just a call back to that cost share is an essential part of grant making. Grants are typically available from government agencies at the federal and state level, but private entities, also like foundations and philanthropic organizations also provide different grant opportunities that align with their respective agency or organization priorities. Grants can support a variety of different projects. I mean, generally speaking, there are grants for every type of project. Um, grants can support critical recovery initiatives after a major natural disaster like a hurricane or tornado. They can help with civic infrastructure like roads and bridges, environmental conservation, water quality improvement, energy, whether that be renewable energy or enhancing your grid, your electric grid, public health, criminal justice, arts and cultures, university or private research and many other priorities. So just a call back to Mattz there is a lot of grant funding available and the grants that you're looking for are really just going to be dependent on the types of projects that you're pursuing. Again, I can't emphasize this enough. Most grants are going to require some amount of local cost share. That's something that you always want to keep in mind. Okay. Okay. So pros and cons and best bets for grants. So on the pro side, you know, the benefits of grants is that this money is given to you and there is no statutory requirement for repayment unless you spend the money from the grant on something that is not allowed for that grant, in which case, the federal government will request the money back. Um, funding for grants is really dependent on the specific program and the applicant. But generally speaking, grants can fund anywhere 50-90% of allowable project costs. One thing to keep in mind is that you know, sometimes grants are formula based. So, you know, grant funding from the government specifically will be allocated to states, cities and towns based on a number of factors, whether that be oftentimes it's population, but it can also be based on other factors like um you know, overall community size or community need or possibly median household income. One common formula grant that many folks might be aware of, whether that be in government or the nonprofit sector is the housing and urban development community development block grant. That's a good example of a formula based grant opportunity. Some kinds of grants, you know, yes. Getting money that doesn't need to be repaid is always great, but that doesn't mean it's just a free for all. Grant applications are often very competitive and are not always available. The BIL and the IRA funding that has provided billions of dollars of grants isn't going to last forever. So, in ten years, that opportunity might not be available. Grants often have project size limits, either a minimum required amount or a maximum project size. Grants are going to require regular quarterly and annual reporting and might also require an audit at the close of the grant. Um, and then considering all of these things, it can take a little extra time to access grant funding. You need to wait. You've seen the grant life cycle, so that life cycle can occur essentially over two years from when the award is initially announced to getting the applications submitted reviewed and contracts negotiated and dispersed. Some best bets for grants are smaller projects for planning and project development, projects that you already have partially funded projects that have a lot of community support or designed and will have a high impact and serve the community in that. Okay. So bonds, I'm not going to get as into the weeds about bonds because it's not as relevant to non profits. And because again, we're really focusing the training on grants. But it's important to know that bonds and issuing debt is a way that local governments and state governments specifically can generate revenue to fund projects. They are essentially three types of bonds. To be aware of. There's general obligation bonds. These are, you know, the most common bonds for local governments. They're backed by the full faith and credit of the issuer, so, you know, local governments have the ability to tax residents in order to pay interest on those bonds. There's revenue bonds which are backed by revenues from specific projects like a toll road or a bridge or a utility project, where the rates that you're going to get from the utility improvement will be used to pay the interest on the bonds. Then there are private activity bonds which are a little less common, but it is certainly a way for local governments or state governments to partner with community organizations who might benefit from bond revenue but can't themselves issue bonds. So municipal bonds, which are also called munis. There are some things to note. They often require a referendum because it's debt issuance, usually in a large amount. The munis are then sold to private investors to generate the cash to fund your project. The value of the bonds sold is based on the credit worthiness of your organization, and that's determined by, you know, the bond the bond broker that you're going to work with. Bonds are very traditional funding stream that are viewed generally as safe revenue streams for local governments and investments for private investors. So pros and cons, best bets for municipal bonds. The pros, again, it's a very traditional funding stream. Bonds have been around for a long time. They're much less risky, than loans, for example. They're a little more guaranteed than grants depending on your creditworthiness. There's fewer limitations on use. For example, you can use bonds as a revenue to stop a revenue shortfall that you might have. And bonds are the application process is not competitive, but the value market competitiveness of your bond is going to be based on credit. Again, might require a referendum which could cost money and take time. If you don't generate additional revenue to pay back the interest which is the benefit that the private investors get is the interest that's owed to them. At the end of the bond term, you could face default risk which could affect your credit worthiness, and then it also costs money to actually issue the bonds. Some best vets for using bonds are large, long term essential projects like infrastructure, projects that are going to benefit most if not all residents, again, like public or civic infrastructure, or, you know, if you are anticipating a future revenue stop gap, because maybe you're funding projects in a specific way or just because that's just, you know, every local government is kind of strapped for cash all the time, you know, bonds are a way to sort of stop that gap and provide some revenue for your town, some liquidity. Okay. So in addition to bonds, there are also loan financing options that might be worth considering for financing your project. There are essentially two types of government loans. There are revolving loan funds, which are pools of capital, which loans can be made as loans are repaid by the entities that apply for them, The money is then re loan for additional projects. Typically, revolving loan funds have lower interest rates and longer repayment periods, and sometimes they can even provide different supplemental grants to offset the total loan amount or depending on your communities, median household income, principal forgiveness might also be an option. Um, There are also traditional government loans, which is a loan that's underwritten entirely by a government entity at the state or federal level. Typically, government loans have lower interest rates and longer repayment periods like an SRF, and sometimes they will also provide supplemental grants or principal forgiveness. The difference between the two is just essentially where the money is coming from. In a revolving loan fund, the money is coming from a revolving loan fund, whereas through the other government direct government lending might not come through a revolving. Go ahead and the next one. Yeah. Okay. So pros and cons of government loans backed by the government. Obviously, the government is a large entity with a lot of resources and is generally trustworthy from a financial point of view. Longer repayment terms, lower interest rates. They can potentially be used as a match for grants. So that's something to think about as well or vice versa, if you have grants and you need a little more money, getting a loan is something to consider. There's also the possibility of principal forgiveness. Um, government loans are still competitive. You're still going to have to apply for them, and there's no guarantee that you'll get the loan. There are oftentimes the same limitations that come with grants, like project size limits, compliance and reporting, timing to access funds. Then the two other things to keep in mind here in terms of your organization's capacity and timing is whether or not by taking on loans, you'll need to have a referendum, will be based in your community. It's based typically on your charter or your municipal code and your current liability to asset ratio. And then, like with any loan private or public, there's always a risk of default. So if you can't repay the loan within the terms, that could lead to a default, which will affect the creditworthiness of your organization. Some best bets for government loans, much like bonds, large, long term, essential projects that are going to benefit most residents. Okay. The last potential funding stream, and I say last because this really should be a last resort is funding projects through private loans, loans issued by private lenders like banks are not required to be disclosed. They typically have higher interest rates and shorter terms, and those lenders typically have first access to assets in the event of a default. So if a local government, for example, is using maybe some land that it owns as a security for a private loan, should they default, the bank will then be able to seize that. Okay. Public bondholders, back to the municipal bonds, taking on private loans can undermine your organization's credit worthiness, which could then affect the value of your potential municipal bonds. Essentially can potentially reduce future access to capital. And then the one thing about private loans, that's different than government loans is they're very market dependent. So again, typically, their interest rates are going to be higher than what the government can offer. Okay. So some pros and cons, private loans are not competitive. There are usually fewer disclosure requirements. They can be executed a lot faster than government loans or grants, and there's oftentimes fewer spending limitations. However, dependent on market rates, so they often have higher interest rates and reduce your credit worthiness. They have shorter repayment terms oftentimes in the five to seven year time range, because they aren't disclosed, there's less transparency and public accountability. While it might be a short term easy way to access money, it can open the door to a lot of other issues that you should think about. Some best bets for private loans will be smaller short term projects that can quickly turn around revenue so that you can repay the loan within the term or essential projects that have no other funding options. Ultimately, though, our opinion and our advice to you is that private loans should be a last resort for funding projects due to all of the risks associated. So some considerations about the different funding streams that I just covered. So for grants, some considerations are again, cost share, you're going to have to put up a little bit of cost share, whether that be financial or in kind to supplement the total project cost. Some entities, nonprofits, and local governments alike require internal approval processes before you even apply for grant. So it's important to know that ahead of time and Lori is going to cover that in the next module. Bonds, similar to cost share are going to require some collateral and credit worthiness. If you don't have anything to put up for collateral or maybe you don't have a great bond rating right now, you might want to consider other financing options. Similar to grants, there's probably going to be a council on board like internal approval process. Then in addition, especially for our local governments, there's most likely going to be a referendum that's going to be required to approve those bonds. Then last, loans pretty much have the same considerations for bonds as well. So quick examples. These are all hyperlinks. So when we share the slides next week, you'll be able to see these resources and explore them a little more. But here, the first two are just examples of different loan examples from the government. So the state of Delaware and every other state have state revolving loan funds, especially for water infrastructure, but also for economic development. The US USDA, Department of Agriculture, they have a great grant program for rural communities called the community facilities loan and Grant Program. FMA also has some loan programs for disaster recovery when there's a nationally declared disaster. And then those last two there, the municipal securities rulemaking Board or the MSRB, which you may have heard of that acronym. Provide a lot of great resources, specifically about bonds. Then the municipal Research and Government Services Center also provides a lot of information to get more details about other funding options that I just covered. So it should just be one more slide here. Some key takeaways to drive it all takeaways to drive it all home. Essentially, there's a lot of financing options out there in addition to grants. So grants are probably a great first place to look, but, you know, it's important to be realistic and pragmatic and understanding that not all grants are going to suit your project. Bonds and loans are traditional ways to finance large projects. That's not something new. All of the financing options, grants, bonds, and loans, all have their own risks and benefits. No one option is necessarily going to be better than the others. Understanding your internal processes and organization financials are an important first step in determining which financing options to pursue. And then, generally speaking, local governments are going to have a little more access to alternative financing than we non profits. So for our nonprofit fends, just something to kind of keep in mind. And then the best financing, ultimately, the biggest takeaway is the best financing option for your project is going to be dependent on your project. So that's again, kind of a call back to the planning process and really understanding the ins and outs of your project and you know what activities are going to be included in that. Okay. Okay. So that's a lot of information. Most of it wasn't about grants. Happy to stop here and answer questions. And I know I kind of zip through that pretty fast. So if you need me to revisit anything, you know, please just give me a shout and we can talk about it a little more in depth. Okay. All right. Well, seeing no hands or unmuted participants. We can continue on. I'm going to hand it over to Laurie, who's going to talk to you about, you know, getting prepared for financing. Good morning, everybody. Yeah. Some of this information today is a little bit dense, but it's all really important to get you to the point where you're ready to apply for funding. So this module is called preparation is key. And these are the learning outcomes. I really want you to be able to answer these questions as we finish, how can you prepare for your application? What elements do you need to build into a schedule and a timeline and how does project readiness impact that timeline that you're going to put together? Key vocabulary. The application window, pretty straightforward. This is the length of time that's available for you to submit a grant. Evaluation criteria is very important. These are essentially the goals that the grantor is looking to accomplish, and that's how they're going to be used. That's how they're going to be evaluating your application. Okay. Procurement comes into play here also, which is the process by which governments and entities acquire goods and services. Project narrative is really the written aspect of the grant, and that tells the story. And then requests for proposals or RFPs are part of the procurement process, and that is going to impact the timeline as well. The thing to understand is that the time that you're going to be required or have to use to write your grant is going to be depending on a lot of variables. The same variables that you were thinking about as you assemble your team for the grant writing process. What type of project is it? How big and complex is it, and how many, if any, partners, do you have? Infrastructure project grants could take just as long as social programs, but be thinking that you're definitely going to need to be working with your team on a weekly basis, at least to move things forward. So last week, we talked about the skills of a grant writing team, right? There's administrative pieces, there are financial pieces, like what Chase just talked about, technical aspects, and there's the writing piece as well. But it's important to know that some of these some of this preparation can be done rather well before the grant opens and even before you know which grant opportunity you're going to pursue. So before the application window, you want to make sure you have your entity registered in sam.gov and grants dot go. Allow enough time for this. There's always sometimes glitches on the websites and things, but you want to allow for that. You don't want to be up against a deadline when you're getting your registration info ready. So make sure you do that before. Always be looking for different funding opportunities. You'll have your projects prioritized, so just always on a regular basis, you'll be researching different ways to possibly fund them. Okay. And then also, you're going to need to consider the timing of approvals that Chase just talked about, right? If you're looking for a bond and you need a referendum, that could add a significant amount of time to your schedule. Okay. So once the application window opens, it's typically 60 to 90 days, you're going to assemble your team if you haven't already, schedule your meetings and your milestones, where you want to be at certain points during that application window, coordinate partner support, if you have that. Work on the project narrative, get all your supporting data and plans together, draft your budget, identify the cost share, and any other supporting documentation and forms that you might need. The next slide we have here is an example timeline for a shovel ready project. And you can see, we have the different aspects of the team listed on the left and the different weeks across the top. Prior to the application window, like I said, you're going to get your registration all taken care of, get that set up. You have your statement of issue or your challenge already because this is a shovel ready project, so you know exactly what the issue is and essentially how you want to solve it. You're going to be reaching out to your partners if you're working with anybody and identify what approvals you might need. Also the financial piece, what type of funding are you going for and what is that going to mean to your timeline? And at that point, you already have a scope of work, right? Because this is shovel ready. So in the writing team will be pulling all the appropriate documents and data together. Week one, once you find an opportunity and it opens, Technically, well, the technical folks are going to review the notice of funding opportunity, and we're going to talk a little bit more about that next week. That's really the announcement, but that has critical information in it. So the technical folks are going to review that. They're going to communicate to the financial folks, what type of cost share requirements are included. They're going to let the administrative team know what forms need to be filled out and where to find them, they're going to let the writing team know. Here's the type of data and supporting documentation that we need, and you'll set your meetings there. So from week three to maybe a week five, And we've found the best way to kind of work through this process is to have someone who's very familiar with the OPO, set up a document and basically create an outline for all the essential pieces of what's going to be involved in the application that everybody can contribute to. So during those next few weeks, everybody's going to be doing their own pieces, adding them to the document, getting letters of support, filling out the required forms, securing whatever approval you might need for cost share and identifying where that's going to come from. Make sure the budget is well defined, and they're just going to start drafting that story. Okay. And then the last few weeks, you really want to tighten things up. It's important to leave we think at least a week at the end. So target your finish date for a week before the grant is due. In order to finalize any last minute items, give it a really good proof reading once over and make sure that you submit early and on time. So this is just an example, but it should give you an idea. And this is a short window. This is a 60 day window. If you've got a 90 day window, you can stretch this out a little bit, but these are some of the general elements that are going to be included. But it's important to know that every grant application is different, right? So let's say the application calls for some community engagement work. You're going to need to build that in here as well. So this is a helpful template, but it's not going to capture everything because it's going to depend on the exact elements of what's required for your grant. Now, what if you have a project that's not quite shovel ready yet? Well, if you have a project that's under development, you can count on at least six months to one year to get it up to a shovel ready state because you don't have all the work done. You may not have engineering or design or other aspects fleshed out yet. So in most of those cases, you're going to need to go through the procurement process and hire maybe a consulting firm, you'll have to draft an RFP, that may take a few weeks. It's got to be posted probably 30 to 60 days, then you receive all the bid submissions and you have to identify which firm you may be hiring within 90 days from bid closing. And then the consultant has to produce the work, so that could take three to six months to really complete a good product or study. So if you've just got an idea or you've got a project and you're like, Yeah, we have most of the information, you're still looking at six months to a year. So be factoring that in. Now, if you've got a project that's in the idea phase, that's going to be even longer. It's important to realize you know the most competitive projects or applications rather are those that have projects that appear in various different plans that show community engagement and community support. So if you've got this great idea, but it's nowhere to be found in any plans that are related to your community, you're going to have to work to get it in there. Comprehensive plans, as you probably know are updated every five years as the hazard mitigation plans are as well. But even if you've got a plan that's under development, it could still take several months to work in your idea. For example, I think the city of Dover has a bike plan that's out now for public comment. They're going to want to keep that window open for a while to get everybody's input and then they're going to have to refine the plan and release it as a final draft. So be ready to incorporate several months if you need to work it into a plan. Then there are other variables that may affect this timeline as well. In addition to what Chase talked about in the financial approvals, some grants require an action plan to be in place before they will fund an implementation project. For example, safe streets for all. If you say, okay, well, we need more lighting in this area or we need to address this crosswalk. It's going to require that either your community or your county has an action plan, a safety action plan in place before they're going to start funding these implementation projects. I'm pretty sure New Castle County has one in place. I think that Dover Kent, MPO is working on an action plan right now. So if you've got a safe streets for all project, that's probably going to be something that you can look at for next year. Some grants also require inclusion in some type of state priority list prior to a grant application. For example, there are EPA grants that require your project to be on a state intended use list prior to getting funding from EPA. And the way that's done in Delaware is to go through the revolving loan application process. So again, that's a whole other process you need to go through before you can submit the application. So even though those grant windows are 60 to 90 days, the process for developing a solid competitive grant could be anywhere from six months to several years. It's important to keep that in mind and how the readiness of your project is going to impact that timeline. When should we start looking for grant opportunities, always. If you know what projects you have, just just always keep your finger on that pulse grant go and the different portals and look at your priorities on a regular basis to make sure you're moving them forward. The bottom line is to be realistic about the timeline. Shovel ready projects could still take six months to a year. Under development projects, they're going to take a year or two, and if you've got an idea, no matter how great it is, you're probably looking at the, maybe even five years, make sure you're adding your ideas into all the necessary processes. Okay. And with that, I think I'm just going to leave you with this plan ahead. That has happened to me so many times when I'm writing on a flip chart, I think we can all relate. But you really do need to plan ahead. And at this time, I am going to turn it over to Colin for his quick demo of grants.gov. All right. Yeah, cool. Thanks, Lori. Really appreciate that. Yeah. So we're going to just really quick. We have about 5 minutes left. I'm going to take you all through grant.gov and show you how you can use their search function and find opportunities that might be relevant to the particular projects that you're working on. Here, give me 1 second. Just to slide. If you've got any questions from what I just covered, drop them in the chat and we can answer them and the Q&A after Collins. Okay. All right. So here is grant. Here's their search for Grants page. So by looking here, you can see a lot of different grant opportunities are posted all kinds of different ones. So they all have an opportunity number that's just going to look like a bunch of gibberish to us because it's really just some kind of complex code that the federal government uses. The opportunity title is the thing that's going to give you the best clue about what's going on here. You'll see the agency. Honestly, you know, some of these agencies like this one, for example, is focused in Hawaii partnerships and plastic pollution research. No one in Delaware is going to be able to go for that grant. So that's one example of one that is just not going to be relevant. They'll also show you the posting date and the closed date for all these different opportunities. You'll see all kinds of different ones. Here's USDA. There's US Department of Justice, DOD, Department of State. This one's supporting the mission, Ukraine, hoping to rebuild and restore things in Ukraine. That's a grant opportunity that gets posted on here. Lots of things get posted, lots of stuff that's not available to us, but you just got to weed through it. So, I mean, as someone who works on grants regularly and does research on grants regularly, I just go through this main page every week or so and look at what was posted and see, you know, do it in descending order. If you don't have as much time as me to look at this sort of stuff, you can use these kind of search functions over here. So You could see ones that are just posted, you could get rid of the forecasted ones if you don't want to see those. You can look at closed and archived. You can search by funding instrument type. You can search by eligibility. So if you're a city or township government, and you don't want to look at a bunch of grants for various Department of State projects in other countries, you could fundel those out by looking at some that are more directly related. Now, again, you'll still maybe get some things that you feel aren't related to what you're doing, but it'll weed down the list a little bit. So You can search by that function. You can search by category. I personally don't use the search the category function that much, but you absolutely could. I think the better search function here is the agency search. So you can expand and, you know, you could see let's look at USDA programs. You can see individually within there, you know, what's posted. You could take a look at, let's see. All US Department of Transportation grants. Maybe you're just looking for some grants under the Secretary. You could do that. You can search here and see, these are all the different DOT grants that are available right now. One other thing, you could search by keywords, too. Maybe you're looking at road safety and you're trying to find something you're trying to make something make your streets safer. You can search. Oh, ban, look, there we go. Safe streets for all funding opportunity. So the last thing I'll show you before because next week, we're going to get more into looking at notices of funding opportunities and picking out some of the really important grant details from those documents. But what you'll do when you find an opportunity on here, you'll click here to see the opportunity. You can see some more information about the opportunity. You can see how much money is in the program. You can see the award ceiling and floor. They'll give you some descriptive information here. Then if you go to the related documents page, they'll give you some links to some different things and then you'll see this folder. This is a zip folder that's going to include all the technical documentation for the project. We'll download that and we'll get into the details of what you do once you download that next week in our next session. So with that I stop sharing my screen, and we can I mean, it's 11:00 now, so understandable if you got to run, but that's pretty much all we have for today for our session. We are more than happy to stick around for a few minutes and answer any questions if anybody has any. I see some things in the chat here. I'm not sure if anyone's keeping an eye on it as I was presenting, if we had any questions. That was just me giving supplemental commentary. Okay. All right. Well, if anyone has any questions, feel free to unmute. If not, you are free to go for our session today. Thank you for attending. And we will go ahead and send out, you know, more the slide set and everything like that, and also the survey to review this session and make sure you track for your engagement. So Have a great day. I did. Yeah. I say there was a good question from Mabel around here. Yeah. I dropped the response in the chat. Mabel asked, are there requirements to have a grand account? No. Anyone can have a grand account. All you need is an e mail and a phone number and some basic information about your person. The e mail and the phone number is mostly just for e mail subscriptions and two factor authentification. Thanks for the answer. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If anyone else has any other questions, I mean, we're happy to stay on and answer them. But otherwise, thanks so much for coming. We really appreciate everyone's time and attention. Thank you. Thank you so much for the information.

Grant Assistance Training Series: Session 3: Grant Research

From Kristie Marmo April 19, 2024

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Do you have projects in your community that need funding? Have you always wondered about grants and how to access these opportunities? We invite you to embark on a journey into the wild world of Grant Funding! The University of Delaware Grant Assistance Program is here to empower and support your funding endeavors. Please join us for our five-part series focusing on grants. Participation in these trainings will earn credits toward the Delaware Certificate in Local Government Leadership and a new Grant Development Certificate. Contact ipa-grants@udel.edu with questions about this training series.

Tags: grant researchdelawaregrant assistance program

Department Name: Institute for Public Administration
Date Established: April 19, 2024
Appears In: Institute for Public Administration