 So welcome to this webinar about preparing an application for the North Central Region SAIR's research and education grant program or for the partnership grant program. I'm going to go over a few general slides about SAIR and about North Central SAIR to give you an idea about what we look for and what reviewers are looking for in proposals. And then I will go into some specifics about each of the grant programs. And I'll talk about what reviewers are looking for in each of those grant programs. And we're doing this on both those grant programs because there's a fair amount of overlap in all that information. And also it can be a good strategy. You are allowed to apply to both grant programs. And you might think about whether your project fits one or the other, or maybe if there's one aspect of your project that would fit one of the programs and another aspect that could fit another program. So if you are in the right place, if you are located in one of the 12 upper Midwest states or tribes or nations that share geography with those states, and if you want to share sustainable ag information or do research on sustainable ag practices in one of those states. So we go from the Dakotas down to Kansas and across that southern border to Ohio and the states and tribes and nations that are north of that in the United States. I am going to go over that information and then hold questions. Hopefully for later, I know everybody is muted at this point when we go to questions. You can either unmute yourself or you can put questions in the chat. So Aaron Schneider and Marie Flanagan are helping to host this webinar today. And we appreciate you taking the time to follow. I do go through the information pretty quickly, but these but PowerPoints for each of the individual programs along with notes, which basically repeat what I'm saying on the webinar are also on our North Central Sare website. So you can go back and review some of this information there. We do currently have four grant programs open. The other two grant programs that are open are the Farmer Rancher Grant Program and the Youth Educator Grant Program. Aaron Benjamin is the coordinator for those programs and she'll be presenting webinars about applying for those in early October. So you can go to our North Central Sare website and sign up for those if you're interested in those grant programs. I am Beth Nelson. I direct the North Central Region Sare Program. And then I also directly coordinate the Research and Education Grant Program and then I co-coordinate the partnership grant program with my colleague Rob Meyers, who's located at the University of Missouri. And contact information for us will be on the last slide. And you are welcome to contact us, especially with specific questions about your idea or your concept. Let's see. I think I'm going to go ahead and have Marie put up the first slide, which just kind of gives our general statement about the Research and Education Grant Program. So it's a competitive grant program that funds collaborative teams of scientists, farmers, institutions, and educators who are exploring sustainable agriculture through research projects or through education demonstration projects. We do use a pre-proposal process and I'll talk a little bit more about that. Those pre-proposals are due Thursday, October 5th at 4 o'clock p.m. Central Daylight Time. And so please make note of that and close a business time or almost close a business in the Central Region and get your project in by then. You can go to the next slide, Marie. Then I'm also going to be talking about the partnership grant program and that's intended to foster cooperation between agricultural professionals and small groups of farmers and ranchers to catalyze on-farm research, demonstration, and education activities related to sustainable agriculture. And those proposals are due October 19th, also a Thursday at 4 o'clock p.m. Central Daylight Time again. Those have a maximum amount of 50,000. And the research and education grants have a maximum amount of 250,000. The partnership referred to in these projects refers to the partnership between the ag professional and the small group of farmers. And we usually require three or more farmers to be working with the ag professional on that. You can go to the next slide, Marie. So we are the North Central Sare Region Sustainable Ag Research and Education Grant Program. And that is actually a USDA program. And we are part of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NEPA. You can go to the next slide, Marie. We fund grants and outreach to advance sustainable innovations to the whole of American agriculture. And so you can tell that's a pretty broad charge. So we cover a lot of territory in the topics that we fund. You can go to the next slide, Marie. We like to think that we are a different kind of federal grant program. And I like this slide because it kind of highlights some of the ways that we think we are a little different. So we have been around for about over 30 years. We were started as a decentralized program that just means that we have four different regions, science-based, grassroots, practical, problem-solving, and inclusive competitive grant making and outreach program. So I just want to break that down a little bit. So we are science-based, but we do farmer-driven research. That's that grassroots aspect. And it is practical problem-solving research. So we recognize that basic research is critically important in agriculture, but we fund applied research. It's just not, we don't fund basic research, we fund applied research. So we're looking for projects that might be implemented on farmer's fields in the next few years. And we seek to be inclusive. One of the ways that we do that is, I told you, we're governed by an administrative council, and that's made up of farmers and ranchers, researchers, extension educators, non-profit personnel, also state and federal government personnel. So really kind of a wide range of people and expertise. And that's one thing to remember when you're writing your proposal, is that you won't necessarily necessarily have a group of people that have specific expertise in your area reviewing your pre-proposal or your proposal. So you want to make sure you don't use jargon, you explain terms, not necessarily for a general audience, but for a general agricultural audience. We are a competitive grant program. So we generally get about 150 proposals, or pre-proposals, I'm sorry, and fund, invite 30 to 35 funds, 16 or 17 in our research and education program. In the partnership grant program, your odds are a little better. We usually get about 40 to 50, and we fund 20. So that's one reason to consider perhaps applying to both if you can make your project work that way. You can go on to the next slide, Maureen. We are primarily a grants organization, but I just want to quickly point out that we have a lot of materials available for your use as well that are based on the results that have come from the many grants that Sarah has funded over those 30-plus years. The bulletins that you see here are available for free online as PDFs to download. The books mostly are also available as PDFs to download, or you can order print copies at fairly reasonable prices. The bulletins, especially if you're an educator or if you put on workshops, you can order bundles of those bulletins for free that you can distribute at workshops. So I just wanted to make you aware that those resources were available. Next slide, Maureen. So talking about what Sarah is looking for in projects. So we emphasize in sustainability those three major aspects of sustainability, social, economic, and environmental. So when you submit your pre-proposal or your proposal for the partnership grant program, you'll want to be telling us how your outcomes address NCRSERS outcomes, which are improving the economic viability of farmers and associated ag businesses, sustaining and improving the environmental quality and natural resource based on which agriculture depends, and enhancing the quality of life for farmers, ranchers, communities, and society as a whole. And on the next slide, I just want to comment that we realize that we have not always been great about emphasizing the social aspect of sustainability, and we're trying to do a little bit better at that. If you were trained in agricultural sciences, you may not have had a lot of exposure to social sustainability either. And so we've had some SARE resources recently developed that this is a short bulletin that you can find at this link that helps you understand and measure social sustainability. It's very short. I feel it's well done. It's a great introduction to social sustainability. And so I wanted to make sure you knew that was available as a resource as well. Next slide. I already said we have a very broad short charge, and so we have funded projects in integrated pest management, in marketing, in specialty crops, cover crops, and soil health, pastured livestock and grazing systems, urban ag, pollinators, broad range of topics. Again, you just want to bring it back in your proposal to how this addresses the outcomes of North Central Region SARE. Next slide. So I've already told you about four of the grant programs that NCR, the North Central Region offers. And if you go to our website, again, we have pretty good web pages for each of these grant programs. So Farmer Rancher and the Youth Educator Program are also open now. We're talking today about the Research and Education and the Partnership Grant Program. The Graduate Student Grant Program and the Professional Development Program, those calls will come out in February, and those proposals are usually due in April. The Professional Development Grants are train-the-trainer grants, but again, more information about those grant programs are on our website. Next slide. So these are some of the specifics about the Research and Education Grant Program. Again, it is a pre-proposal process, and the pre-proposal is fairly short. Basically you're just pitching the concept to let the reviewers know how this fits with North Central SARE's outcomes and what the impact might be on sustainable agriculture in the North Central Region. The grants themselves are for $250,000, and you can have 10% of that as during costs. But the pre-proposal does not require a budget. You'll have to sketch things out, obviously, to figure out an estimate for the cost. We do ask that you indicate the range of funding you might be seeking. I think the categories are like zero to 50, 50 to 100, etc., but you don't have to submit a budget, which makes the pre-proposal a little easier to prepare. The term for Research and Education Grants is 36 months. We do have a long-term funding option. That's primarily it. It means that you can get funded for the first cycle of three to four years and then get another cycle of funding without having to go through the pre-proposal process. It's a little complicated to explain. I do have a slide about it I'll go through quickly. If you are considering applying for that, there's just a checkbox on the form where you can say long-term, I will tell you that our reviewers are really looking for projects that can't yield outcomes in the first three to four years. They're generally projects that take a lot of time to set up, either by building relationships or by setting up a long-term crop rotation or agroforestry. Those are the type of projects. If you're considering applying for that, I would suggest you give me a call to talk over your idea. Again, the projects can be for research or they can be for education or demonstration projects. We do insist on outreach for all of our programs. Even if you're doing a three-year research study, at the full proposal level, you have to outline what you are going to do for outreach. You do have to share the information that you are gathering. The pre-proposals again are due October 5th. We invite about 30 to 35 pre-proposals to develop full proposals and we'll be funding, we have funding for about 16 proposals this year. Another point that I'll show the timeline later, but funds for the R&E, because we use a pre-proposal process, it takes a while. The funds that you would be applying for in October of this year will be available to start November 1st of next year. There's a year delay in when the funding starts. I think you can go ahead and move on to the next slide. This is just about the long-term funding. It is reviewed by a specific team that looks at the long-term funding. You do need to include a strong justification for why it requires long-term funding. We note that most projects will lead to another project. When you get to the full proposal, you're just submitting for that first three-year cycle, but you have kind of a work plan for the other cycles. Again, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about that. When you apply at the pre-proposal level for long-term funding, the review committee may come back to you and say, they may say this is a good long-term proposal and this fits our criteria and invite you to submit as a long-term funding in the full-proposal stage. They might say not a strong long-term, doesn't justify long-term funding, but you should apply in the short-term at a full proposal and invite you for a full proposal as a short-term. They may say, yeah, the way it's written, it's not long-term, could be, and then you have to make the decision at the full proposal level whether you're going to apply for a long-term. At that point, if you submit as a long-term project as a full proposal, you will only be funded if they approve it as a long-term project. Like I said, it's a little bit complicated. It's less risky to say that at the early level, but you do want to make sure that you have a project that basically fits those long-term funding criteria. So please contact me if you're planning to do that. Next slide. So I just want to tell you a little bit about the review process. For the R&E pre-proposals, they're reviewed by our administrative council and they're reviewed in small groups that are loosely based on expertise and topic. And they basically are scoring on relevance to sustainable agriculture in our region and farmer engagement. So all of our projects require farmer engagement, again, because we fund farmer-driven research. They will be looking at your methods and approach, but there's less emphasis at the pre-proposal level on the technical aspects. And you'll note you don't have a lot of room. You can't put in tons of details about methods and approach. But you do need to kind of say, at least your treatments, your experimental designs, some of that, because they just want to know if your approach is likely to yield a solution to the problem you're addressing. So they just want to know that your approach is likely to be successful. Next slide. These are now the specifics about the partnership grants. So these are grants for up to $50,000, and they are two-year duration. Again, they can be research, demonstration, education, or even marketing. And they involve a team of three or more farmers or ranchers. In, I guess I would say rare circumstances where it's maybe a new area or there really aren't three or more farmers or ranchers working in that area. We may allow you to have fewer farmers as part of the partnership. But again, that would be something you should contact us for. And they're led by an ag professional. And we kind of envision this program as being something where a group of farmers say, boy, we've heard about this idea. We weren't just not sure it'll work on our farm, but we don't want to write a grant about it. And they approach an extension educator or a nonprofit person who works at a nonprofit, and they actually write the grant and kind of coordinate the grant. But the work is done with the farmers and the ranchers. And again, those are due October 19th. You can move on to the next one. We do broadly define ag professionals. This might be one of the most common questions that we get about this program is, am I an ag professional? So contact us if, if you are unsure. But I would say that if you're on this webinar, you likely are an ag professional so they can be extension educators or university educators or researchers, nonprofit personnel, agency staff, certified crop advisors or other ag and natural resource consultants, farmers and ranchers. If you, you know, give talks or present information about your own on farm research to other farmers and ranchers, you, we would consider you an ag professional. But again, if you have questions, just give us a call. Next slide. So I want to talk to you a little bit about successful proposals. Some of these should be self evident from what we've already discussed. So they should demonstrate relevance to the north central region and specifically address our broad based outcomes that are based on social, environmental and economic outcomes. And I will say that, especially for the partnership grant programs, a smaller amount of funding, we completely understand you may be emphasizing economics more or environment or social more, but you should at least be thinking about how your, how your project will lead to outcomes in those other areas. And critically, you must involve farmers and ranchers in your project. If you, if you're at a stage in the research where you can't, it may be that it's just not a good fit for this program. So you don't, we like to have you identify the farmers and ranchers at the pre-proposal process for the research and education grants. For the partnership one, you actually have to have letters from the three participating farmers. And what we say in the, are any pre-proposal is if you can't name them yet, let us know why and what your approach is to be able to get those farmers. And you may not have all of your farmer cooperators lined up, but in that pre-proposal, you sure want to show that you have the capacity to involve them. And at least a few of them are already engaged in the project, because again, we fund farmer-driven research. Next, next slide. So I'm, I'm repeating myself, but again, you want to discuss what the impact of your work will be in the north central region by addressing specifically and CRSAIR's proposed outcomes in economic, environmental, and social sustainability. You can go to the next slide, Marie. And you want to have clear outcomes. And I'm going to say a little bit more about outcomes. I think there's sometimes misunderstanding about outcomes and results. So your outcomes are what you want to happen as a result of having done the project. And if you've done program logic models, you know that we talk about short-term outcomes, which are basically changes in learning or attitudes or skills or longer term outcomes, which will be changes in what your, your audience does, so how they've changed their behavior. So I want to just mention a little bit more about what the difference might be in those outcomes, whether you're doing a research project or an education project. And Marie, I think you can move to the next slide. So in an education project, so the example I'm going to use is doing post-harvest handling workshops. So you are going to basically, the idea, if you're doing that either for the research and education pre-proposal or for the partnership grant, you're going to be spending your time doing that, doing that education, doing the outreach, basically, or the education on some kind of a practice. So since you're going to be able to do two years or maybe three years worth of workshops, you will have an opportunity to follow out and see if people have made behavior changes. So if you're doing a post-harvest handling workshops, you might, in the first year, you know, you can do a survey and find out that farmers have learned post-harvest handling and packing techniques for sales to institutions. And then you could follow up six months to a year later to see if they have changed the behavior. So your outcome could be farmers will use post-harvest techniques and increase sales to institutions. Next slide. So generally, outcomes do refer to your outreach portion. So if you're doing a research project and you're going to be doing three years of gathering research information, like I said, we do insist on outreach. So you are going to be going to a seminar or sharing your results. But you might wait until you have two or three years of data to do that. And so you may not have the time to follow up on action outcomes. So you can say what you think they will be, but we understand that you may not be able to really follow up and guarantee that farmers have changed those practices based on the research results you presented in the third year. So the example I give is if you're doing a research project and you're going to look to see if landscape diversity influences pollinator population on vegetable crops. So your learning outcome is you're going to be sharing, you may collect the data for two years and then you attend a conference and you share what your results are up to that point. So farmers are going to learn how diverse landscape influences a number and type of pollinators. The action outcome would be that they're going to actually maybe plant biodiverse plantings to increase their pollinator population based on your results. But we don't expect you to be reporting on that. You won't have time to do that in your three-year proposal. So that's just a little bit about how you frame the outcomes that you're going to put into your pre-proposal or your full proposal for the partnership grant program. Next slide. So the pre-proposal application for the R&E grant as well as the proposal application, all of our grants go through our online submission system and there is a link for that in the calls for pre- proposals and in the call for proposals. We suggest that you maybe work this up as a word document before you go in and then you can answer the specific questions. The call for proposals does have all of the questions that you'll be asking the online system, but you can go into the online system at any point and that's at projects.sir.org. I gave it away and then I'll show you at the end some of those screenshots for some of you who want to go into it and actually we may have a few of them here for registering as well. You can go on to the next one. So the first thing you need to do is make sure that you download the call for proposals. Most of the information that's in there, I'm going over in this webinar, but sometimes there's extra information in there and you want to make sure you have the current call for pre-proposals. I've had instances where someone was using an old one and was just completely caught off guard when there was a new question. Usually they're very close to what the previous year was, but you need to download the new one. If you go to our website north central sir.org, click on research and education grant. You can download that sample, that call. Actually this one shows the sample call. The current call for proposals is on that website right now. Most of you have already seen it because I think that's probably where you registered for the webinar as well. Same for the partnership grant program. You'll go to the partnership page at north central sir.org and download the call for proposals. So that's the first step. Next, this is just the one for the partnership grant program. So again, this is applying for a grant making sure that you're in the right spot. These are resources that you can use. This is to get you to more information on the websites about the research and education grant program or the farmer rancer grant program. And again, it's going to look a little different now that we have those grant programs open. So one really important resource for you is your state coordinator and you can go to, again, north central sir.org, click on state programs and you can find the contact information for your sir, state coordinator. And then they often will look over your pre-proposal discussion idea with you. Sometimes they can be helpful if you're not sure they're farmers and ranchers working in an area that you're interested in or you need additional contacts, they might be able to hook you up with some of them. And they're just a great resource. Sometimes they will even read through a draft. They're not going to edit or do heavy, heavy editing, but they often will try to read through your draft and see if you're on track with what Sarah reviewers are looking for. So make sure you take advantage of that. Next slide. This is just how you get into the system. So it's projects.serr.org. And this is where you do apply and you do need to go in here and create an account. But the other thing that you want to do is look up past serr projects to see how your work differs or builds on past projects. And again, that idea of how it differs. So we do recognize that sometimes, especially a project that's environmentally dependent. So project on cover crops in Michigan may be very different from a project on cover crops in Western Nebraska. We recognize that. But you should note that, you know, Sarah has we funded these projects, but our area is different because we have a very sandy soil or, you know, something like that. So or you want to say they showed this, but we want to go beyond that and do something else. So we have all of our serr reporting is in a project database at projects.serr.org. And you can go to search projects and you can go to the next slide. And you can enter in a keyword either under project title or under project reports. And it will pull up a whole list of projects that have been funded in that area. I think the next slide maybe shows the list of cover crop proposals from 2017 to 2022 that we have funded in our region. And you click on those links and you can pull up the report. So it's good to know what we've already funded, especially recently. And you can find that at projects.serr.org search reports. So next slide. So these these are just the categories I took. These are in the call for proposals. These are the sections for the RNA pre proposal body. Again, it's pretty simple. Project summary objectives, outcome relevance, method approach, farmer rancher engagement and your team. You don't have a lot of room to put in team members, but you should list the name their expertise. And that doesn't have to be credential. It can just be what their experience is in that area or why what what they will be doing on the project. You'll have we would have more room to do that on the full proposal. But we just want to know that you have the right team members together to to do the work. Next slide, please. These are the proposal sections for the partnership grants a little more involved, especially you do have to do a budget and a budget justification. But again, relevance objectives. What are your activities? And we do ask you in the partnership one, because it is a full proposal, you are defining what the ag professional is doing and what the farmers or ranchers are doing. Again, you should go to talk about what the previous research on the topic is, especially in the SEAR grant system, what your outcomes are and what you expect the impact will be your budget. You do have to attach resumes. There's a signature page that's needed, and you need the letters from your participating farmers. Those are uploaded as attachments to the program. The animal welfare statement, and most of you might be familiar with that. If you're working with animals, you usually need your institution to sign off on animal welfare or provide a different kind of statement. That is not needed at the proposal level. You can wait to see if you're funded and then get that week. It's called I a cook institutional animal care committee. And there's also some other paperwork. If you're working with human subjects, but again, those are the kind of things we can approach if you're funded. Next slide. This is the timeline for the grant cycles. So again, this is for the 2024 research and education program. Pre proposals are due the 5th. February is when the applicants are you'll be notified if you're invited to submit a full proposal with the full proposals due in April. Committee meets to review those and the AC approves it in July. We award and notify you whether you've been funded or not in August. And then you go through a budget review. The funds are available November. So your project cannot start before November 1st. And then the timeline for the partnership grant program is on the next slide. So those again are due October 19th by four o'clock p.m. Central Time. So five o'clock Eastern, three o'clock Mountain. I hope I said that right. Early February is when you will be notified and the funds are available for the partnership grant program in April. So that's another reason to consider the partnership grant program is that they're available for this next growing season. The research and education full proposal funding will not be available for the next growing season. And I think you can go on to the next slide, which contains the contact information. So again, I coordinate the research and education grant program. So if you have questions about preproposals, you're welcome to contact me. I will take general questions about applications. But if you have specific questions about your idea or your or your topic, you can email me or call me and arrange to set up a time to call. Rob Meyers does co coordinate the partnership grant program. He will be on sabatic leave this month. So if you're going to be, if you have questions this month, you probably should contact me first. He might be responding to some email, but he's trying to focus on a sabatic project. And so contact me first after October 1st, he will be back in the office and you can be reach him. I do also want to note that for that full proposal and some institutions also for the pre proposal, you do often have to go through your administration, especially if you're at a college or university, you have to go through your grants office. And that sometimes can take a while. It may take as long as a week. So while we say the deadline for the application is the 19th, you do have to upload a signed page from your grants office, or if you're at a nonprofit from your financial person that goes with the application. And so leave plenty of time to do that. So even though the partnership grant program applications are due the 19th, you might need to have that into your administrative office, your grants office by the 12th, or maybe even earlier in some cases. So make sure you find out about that ahead of time as well know who needs to sign off on it and how much time they need. Next, I think the next slide is questions unless I've missed something. Yep. So again, you can go I know I went over things pretty quickly. Again, most of this information is available in the PowerPoints that are on our website. But if you have questions about applications, you are welcome to either unmute and ask or if you put them in the chat, Aaron or Marie can funnel those to me. Thank you for your talk, Beth. That was really helpful. There's a question in the chat from Catherine DeLong. It says for the partnership grants, can we work with non operating landowners? Or is it preferred to work with the operator? Hmm. So so, call me. We do recognize if the non operating landowner is making a lot of the decisions about conservation, you know, implementing conservation measures and that. We maybe would say that is eligible. And I would just suggest that in the application, you make sure you justify that as well. And the non operating landowner would have to write a letter. And so they could say in that that they their lease or their contract, you know, stipulates these conservation measures or whatever. So they actually are making the management decisions on the on the cropland or for the pasture. The next question is what percentage of the partnership grant budget should go to the farm partners? So it depends on the work they're doing. So they there is not. We don't have a guideline and I haven't seen reviewers come down too heavily on that. We do understand that part of the funding is going to compensate the ag professional for the time they're using to coordinate. But if you have them doing on farm research and they're spending a lot of time implementing the research, if they're if they are collecting data or those type of things for all ser projects, we generally recommend that you estimate hours and try to compensate them at about $25 an hour. So there's not a total that's assumed. But you should be compensating them fairly for the time you're expecting them to put in. The next question is, does the R&E pre proposal need to go through University grant office before submission to Sarah? It depends on your university. So at Minnesota, it does not. If what Minnesota tells us is if you don't are if you're not submitting a budget, we don't need to see it. I've heard of one institution. Now I can't remember who it is who wants to see it no matter what. But in general, so check with your grants office, but because you don't have to supply a budget, you're just indicating a range of funding. Most institutions don't require that you go through the grants office. So check with your grants office. Next question for the partnership grant, a budget needs to be submitted and a budget justification. Can you please explain the latter? So the budget, you will see when you go into the online system, and actually, we can look at that a little bit. I should say to the PowerPoint presentations that are online actually walk through the application process. So you'll see screenshots of the budget process. So in the budget process, you have to put in the amount and then the justification is not necessarily why is this necessary for the research. But we do want to know what it's for and how you came up with that number. So if you say I want $5,000 for travel, and we realize you're making gross estimates, but we need to know how you're estimating that 5,000. So if you're saying, well, when I go, I'm going to do a workshop, I'm going to need two hotels. I'm going to, you know, it will probably be a 300 mile trip mileage reimbursement per DM. So you put that calculation in there in the budget, that's part of the budget justification. And again, we do have some screenshots of that and some samples of that in the PowerPoint that's online. And call us if you have questions. Are there any special considerations for revising and resubmitting proposals that were rejected in previous grant cycles? That's a great question. And it's not necessarily that you get extra points technically. And that's maybe the wrong word to use. So we don't, we wouldn't score that. But I will tell you that they do give consideration to projects that have come back and addressed reviewer comments. I think both the pre-proposal and the partnership program have a part that says, is this a resubmission and give you a section where you can show how you've addressed reviewer comments. And I have found reviewers really can focus in on that. And part of their comments will often be, I think they did a really nice job of addressing reviewer comments. And I do want to say that we recognize that sometimes there may have been a reason for what you were doing and your your reaction to the reviewer comment may be to say, well, we considered that, but we didn't do it because X, Y, Z and that's equally valid. So it just gives you a chance to kind of react. And one of the big hints I give, especially in research and education proposals is to make use of that extra space you get for commenting about how you've responded to reviewer comments. So I do I do think there can be an advantage to coming back and addressing those comments. Next question for research and education grants, what type of farm partners can we work with? Small urban farms or only large acreage farms? Yes. All farms. You can work with all farms. So and I one thing I should note is that we have a very liberal definition of farmers and ranchers in the north central region. So we define a farmer or rancher as someone who grows crops or raises livestock, especially as a business. But there is not a dollar amount there. They don't require to submit a schedule F. We don't have those kind of requirements. So we're a little bit more liberal with our definition than the traditional USDA definition. And I think you probably answered that with this last question. But for research and education, do farm partners need farm numbers? So no, they just have to be growing a crop or raising livestock. So yeah. Next question, where can we find more information on allowable costs for the partnership budgets? Can budget be used on plants, hiring personnel, equipment, etc? So yes, to most of those equipment is kind of and again, that's in the call for proposal. So I didn't go over much of that at all in this, but it is in the call for proposals, what are not allowed costs and what allowable costs are. So most things are allowed except equipment. And if you're talking major equipment and we define that as over five thousand dollars, we generally don't fund that, especially equipment that's going to last beyond the use, the grant term. Things that are under five thousand are considered supplies and materials. So those can be in your budget. We don't fund purchase of land or infrastructure. So building, you can't retrofit a building, you can't build a new building. It has to be mobile. We have funded things like putting up a high tunnel as long as it's technically mobile. So can have cement footings. Those are the kind of, and some things like computers, you know, or expensive cameras, if they will last beyond the term of the grant. Sometimes we have to ask it, or if it's going to be used for another purpose, we might ask you to prorate it. I will say some of those expenses are things that we work out after you've been funded. We have never rejected a proposal out of hand because it had unallowable costs unless there was a way we just couldn't work it out. And it was the whole proposal. So some of those small things we can say like, well, you can't you can't pay for that, but we can change it. Another thing that people get caught up is paying for food. And we say that you can pay for a meal for a workshop, as long as there's programming before or after. So it has to preserve continuity of the meeting. So it would be hassle to hassle to send everybody out to get lunch and then bring them all back. So there has to be programming before and after. I don't know if I covered all of that question or not. But again, look at the call for proposals for the partnership grant program, and then contact me if you have some specific questions about charges. That's the end of the questions that were listed in the chat. I am would invite anyone at this time if you have a question that you're not comfortable putting in the chat to go ahead and unmute yourself and ask that question. There's another question in the chat. Our grant administration administration staff effort allowable costs or are those indirect only. So they so if it's time for the ag professional or for the researcher, that is allowable. But if it's things like you want to pay, you know, you're covering office rent or something like that, that is not that has to come under that 10% indirect costs. That's so things like office, general office supplies, office rent, you know, unless they're playing completely devote personnel that it's not completely devoted to the project or you have to allocate the time they'll spend on that project. That might be allowable. But otherwise, most administrative costs come under that 10% indirect. And again, that's something if you have a cost in there that is has to go under indirect and you're funded are grants and contract person works with you on your budget to just revise that. Another question. What do projects usually use funds for that are not the 10% percent? I would say mostly personnel, probably. So if you are doing a partnership grant program, we would maybe pay, you know, part of the ag professionals time for the work that they're doing. And so that's kind of grants administration, they're applying for the grant, they're going to be coordinating the grant, they're going to be writing up the reports and we don't that's those are direct costs, though, of the report. So I think those are most of the things. Sometimes if there's something that is needed that is really specifically for the program, I know we've had some education projects where they've had iPads that they're some of their students, their training need to have. Those are those are things that we have allowed that don't come under indirect costs. But again, call me if you have questions about that. I don't have any more questions coming through the chat right now. So again, we give you our contact information so that you feel free to contact us. So please reach out if you have questions. And I am going to I'm going to keep Marie and Aaron on. If those of you have already been in the projects.serr.org, you don't want to you don't need to look at the screen the screenshots just got about five slides, I think, of screenshots coming up that we can go through. So thank you for making the time to be here. Contact me if you have questions and we look forward to getting proposals from you. Marie, why don't you line up the screenshot for the projects.serr.org. All right. So this is again, you go into projects.serr.org and you either have to create an account. Or if you've already submitted a grant in the past, you can just log in. And so you click on one of those two and we'll just go to the next screenshot. If you are making a new account, you have to fill out the information that has the red asterisk found by it. And I will note that in order for us to kind of track our progress and how well we're reaching communities that have been historically underserved by USDA programs. We do collect demographic information when you first register in the system. It is in no way connected to your proposal at all. It just helps us kind of track who's applied for program what groups have been applying for programs, whether we're reaching people and whether we're giving sufficient information that they can be successful in getting grants. So I always in our system, you have to usually go down to the bottom and look for that register thing to advance you to the next page. Sometimes it's not all that obvious. So you click on register and you will have an account. You can go to the next slide. You're going to start a new grant proposal. And again, this is for all four regions. So on the next slide, you'll see you have to choose the north central region and you're going to want to choose the correct program. So again, we have four programs that are open right now. So you're going to this one is choosing the pre proposal for 2024. So you would click on that to begin a new proposal. And this is what pops up. So you're going to fill in the title, the description, the description is just something that our search engine uses. So it's really short. And your title should be descriptive, but not too long. And then you'll see under proposal requirements and you you can go through these in any order. One caution I will give you is the way our system is set up under WordPress. It doesn't save as you type. You have to hit save. So if you are typing and you've typed in a paragraph and the phone rings and you get distracted and get logged out, it's not going to save what you have. So please remember to save often so that you don't lose paragraphs that you're very carefully crafted to put in there. To do the cover information, you just click on that section and you go to the next slide. You just hit edit. And as you're going to put in when your project starts the end date, whether it is a resubmission or not, whether you're focusing on historically underserved farmers and ranchers and if so, how? So there's a whole series of questions on that. You can go to the next slide. Once you've completed those, you will see. So these are the four sections that you do for the partnership grant. So there's a cover institution information, which is kind of your grants, administration or your organization. Then the proposal body itself, the attachments and the budget. And once you've completed all of those, you will not have the red, the red asterisk by them. That tells you that you've completed all the information and the submit proposal will be highlighted. Otherwise, I think it's there, but it's not dark green. So once everything's completed that's required, you'll be able to submit your proposal. And so you hit submit. And you also can unsubmit your proposal if you find you've made a mistake. And I should say you should you should have someone else proofread your projects. You know, we we try to be understanding of mistakes, but I know that sometimes reviewers when there are a number of typos or those types of things do get annoyed. So have someone proofread. But if you find mistakes, as I just found in this PowerPoint presentation right before we started and had Marie correct it, you can hit on submit proposal, but you need to make sure that you resubmit it before the deadline. And I think go to the next slide, but I think that might I guess that's it. So you do get just a note that says you have successfully submitted. And I'm sorry, I don't have the individual budget application screenshots in there. But for whoever asked, those are on the those are in the PowerPoint that you'll go through. And again, if you have questions about what's needed in that area, just contact us. I'll just say thanks and we look forward to getting your proposals.