 Right, I think we're going to go ahead and get started. My name is Leslie Cainan and I'm the senior manager for preserving black churches and welcome to our preserving black churches. Question and answer session. I don't want to welcome you all. And so first I want to let you know that if you have any questions to use the Q&A function that is at the bottom of your screen, we will not be answering any questions in the chat. Feel free to use the chat to talk to each other. We will also be using the chat function to drop helpful links throughout the presentation, but we won't be actually answering any questions in the chat. So again, if you do have any questions for us, please use the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. I would also note that closed captioning is enabled. So if you do need that function, please use, please use the closed captioning button at the bottom of your screen. Also, next slide please. I would also note that this session is being recorded. So for those of you who are registered, we will be sending a recording of this session to view email within the next few days. I just want to remind you that during the session, we will also have both live Q&A and we will also, we did get from many of you on pre submitted questions, and later in the session, we will be dropping those in the chat as well. And now I would like to introduce you to Alaska McGuinness, the director of our national grant program. Thank you everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening. It's a pleasure to be here to discuss this incredible program with the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. I am Alaska McGuinness, the director of the national grants program, and I really wanted to meet and discuss with you some tips to remember in terms of this process overall, and what you would need to do in order to submit an application for this opportunity. The first tip of course being that the applications are due on August 23 at 1159 local time, your time. And for information on exactly what we're looking to learn from the questions on this application, we have a prerecorded informational webinar at savingplaces.org black dash churches, this is basically our frequently asked questions page. That link will be included in the chat. This informational webinar is incredibly informative. We have information there that literally walks through the entire application and gives applicants an idea as to what we're looking to see in the answers. So giving you some clarity and some direction on exactly how to best present the information that you're sharing with us in submitting this proposal. Next, we really encourage everyone to take time to review the guidelines and eligibility that's available on our website as well on our guidelines page. All of the information there is incredibly useful. A lot of the information there is actually what we would directly refer to in some of the questions that were submitted via the registration process for this webinar. Again, we encourage you to really take some time and look at that before starting your application just to make sure that your church is one that would align with these eligibility requirements. Another tip is once you are in a space where you're ready to sit down and complete this application. Number one, something I'd like you to note is this is a pretty lengthy and very involved application process so please do give yourself a significant amount of time to work on it. This isn't one of those that you would want to wait until the day before it's due or the day of it really will probably take a little time to gather all the data that you need to submit this application in full. Also note that when you're filling out any narrative on this application that spaces count toward that whatever it is say 500 character limit spaces do count towards that toward that 500 so try to be succinct in those places. And as a side note I'll add here that when you're completing the application, and you are giving us information on the historic historical significance of your church, please be mindful of the content there as it as it's not necessarily looking for like a list of the senior members of your church and their tenure there and what they were able to accomplish is really looking not necessarily toward a historical telling of exactly who played a leadership role at the church, but more the historical significance in terms of the institution and its relationship to the community at large. So that's another tip that I wanted to make sure folks are mindful of as they're completing these applications. Also, make sure that the main contact for the grant is the person that would steward this process from beginning to end and be a readily available point of contact for us as administrators. Sometimes folks will place the person as the main contact who is, say a senior member of the, the institution, say the senior pastor or someone along those lines, but they may not necessarily be the person who would be working on the process in terms of the grant application on a day to day basis so that may be a secretary that may be a deacon, whoever it may be, please make sure that they are the main contact and able to readily receive and send emails about the application status and answer any questions that may arise from us. But if your organization is already in the system that you will get a warning, basically indicating that the, the information that you're enter entering is similar to something is already there at that point you would reach out to us at action fund grants at saving places org and we would work with you to make sure that we can get you logged into the system. That's a final kind of tip. All questions on the application that have an asterisk next to it. They are required. So, there's quite a few questions that are not optional in this application so you will want to make sure that you completed all of those questions in order to submit your application. Additionally, these three email addresses are the ones that you would be engaging with the most. And so we would ask that you kind of save you save these that email addresses and make sure that they're not in your headed to your junk folders or system questions login questions, or anything around the system that you're any challenges that you're running into definitely reach out to us at action fund grants at saving places.org. And ideally for your questions that are more specific to your project. And if you wanted to make an appointment for office hours, please email black churches at saving places.org. And please note if you're looking to reach out for office hours, we're definitely going to inquire and get a little bit more information from you about what you're looking to discuss in those office hours so again, we can't stress enough how is how important it is to really familiarize yourself with those guidelines and those frequently asked questions so that by the time you're meeting with a staff member. You're aware of where you are and but you were a little bit more clear on exactly what your, which your issue is and how we can help you. See you. And now we have our eligibility discussion and I will turn it back over to Leslie. Thank you. When I was looking at some of the pre submitted questions there are two things that came up. I have two questions about eligibility. And so I just wanted to go over this briefly. And the first is so what is a black church. And there are a couple components that go into this. One is religious buildings built and erected by black congregations and continuously occupied by active black congregations. So it could be religious buildings designed and or constructed by black architects or builders currently occupied by active congregations or repurposed for arts, culture, community and social justice programs. But they can also be religious buildings not originally built by or for black congregations but continuously occupied by active black congregations for at least 50 years. And then as you see on our screen here, we have a list of all sorts of active historic black congregations and so every once in a while, I get a question about a denomination that's not on here. And so of course we couldn't list every single denomination so it's it's not meant to be if your denomination is not on here that that means that you. are not eligible. And so just always reach out to us at black churches at saving places.org if you have a question or you think that your denomination isn't is in question, because it this is not an exhaustive list. The main question is, you know, is your, you know, is, are you an active historic black congregation is what we are looking for, and that includes non denominational churches. We also get questions about non Christian churches, and we can look at those on a case by case basis. So reach out to us about those as well. Please. The other question that we got both in our and questions that were pre submitted and a lot in our session yesterday had to do with what makes a good application and what makes a bad application. And so our general criteria are, you know, historic and cultural significance, leadership support, planning and project development, capacity to manage grant project, capacity for continued stewardship and maintenance and capacity to leverage grant funding. So how does that actually connect to the application components themselves and how we look at your application. So how that translates is as we're looking at your application. The first thing is, when we look at historical and cultural significance in your application. Is that clear. Have you shown us that your that your resource in question is historically significant. That doesn't mean that someone famous was there. It could mean that it's historically significant locally. It's historically significant regionally. It could also be historically significant. But nationally, it doesn't have to be locally designated, but you do need to clearly show to us that the resource is historically significant. And I want to reiterate what Alaska said about I also there were a lot of churches that says our congregation is 200 years old it's 100 years old. That doesn't mean that we want you to, you know, cover that 200 years of history by telling us every single pastor over the 200 years really focus on how your church is connected to African American history and thinking about that you do only have so much space, and you want to really show us what the historical and cultural significant is. I want to give us a sense of readiness. Is your project going to be ready to go if we were to grant your grant you the money. Is your are you ready to start your project, and their questions in the application that let us know that and that has to do with planning. Have you done planning around your project. Are you ready to go. Now we want to know and this is really important has to do with preservation and sustaining of the resource. We want to know if the work that you're doing is going to lead to the preservation and sustaining of your building of your church is the work that you're doing going to lead to that. And so you need to show us with the project that you're proposing that that's what's going to happen in the end. And that leads me to the next thing, which is a clear scope of work. You want to make sure in your application that you're clearly showing us what your project is, even if that means that you're using bullet points. What is your project. And that leads me to the last point, and that is, what is your budget. And that means not a single number. If you're asking for $200,000. Don't just put $200,000 on your budget break down that budget and show us how that budget is related to your scope of work and really show us that those are real numbers that you really thought about how much this is going to cost, and how it's related to your work. And if you have all that, then that is going to be a competitive project. I will say overall though, is that we got 1300 applications last year. And it's a very competitive application and we, and they're really wonderful projects. And so a lot of times, the reason why people weren't funded is not because it wasn't an amazing project. It's because there's just so many amazing projects, and we can't fund them all. And a lot of times the feedback is, you had an amazing project, and we just did and there was just too much need. But if you want to have a great project, make sure that your application components are really clear and have all of these things in it. That would be my advice. I know I want to move into your questions and answers. And if we could for those pre submitted answers or I'm sorry, questions, if we can drop those into the chat. So I'll start with, what does it mean to be a steward of the church we have the church churches permission to apply for this grant on her on her behalf but we have a separate preservation nonprofit. And so the church means basically the person or the group that basically takes care of the church. And it sounds like in this situation, perhaps, maybe they're not the 501 C three so maybe they're asking you to apply on their behalf so maybe you're going to be the fiscal agent. Maybe that's the situation and that's perfectly fine that happens all the time, where you have another nonprofit who's a 501 C three that acts as a fiscal agent on behalf of another organization, and that's perfectly fine. That's actually a great situation because there are churches that are not 501 C threes and I'll answer that more broadly because this question comes up a lot is does a church have to be a 501 C three. And I will tell you, if you are not a 501 C three, you do need to have another 501 C three as a fiscal agent in order to receive the funds. The next question is I work for Preservation Texas. We are currently administering a 750,000 brand grant. This is funding 11 capital projects across the state for rural black historic buildings, several which are churches congregations these desperately be funding for continuing phases of structure of construction can we apply on behalf of a historic black church, perhaps in the capacity of as a fiscal sponsor. Absolutely. Absolutely, you can apply. And again, in the case of Preservation Texas is is a perfect example of a fiscal sponsor. We've had other similar, you know, state organizations of this kind be fiscal sponsors. So the answer is yes. Alaska you were. Did you want to answer a question. Yeah, I'm you. Apologies. All right, I just wanted to clean up a couple of those that were answered already in the in the groupings for the Q&A. And now I'll answer this question how can we best determine whether to use a capital project or project planning for funding. So for this one, definitely a hard look at the, the intended impact associated with each of these funding categories compared to what you're looking to do with your institution these are very different in terms of the use of funds for these different for these specific categories. Again, project planning is just as is described it is intended to be not funding utilize for any work on a physical space. So much so is this meant to support the development of a plan for a potential new project for your church. So, if you needed a little bit more support in developing what this proposal should look like. This is one that you would probably want to reach out to us to kind of flesh out what you're looking to do, and help you select what category would fit best for what you're looking to kind of gain support for at your specific church. So one more question here, what do you do to resolve the warning signal from the system. Because your organization is already in the system. This is one of them whereas I mentioned before you would want to reach out to us at action fund grants at saving places.org, and we can look into this issue for you to reconcile what existing profiles in the system is your login information so that we can get you set up and able to apply for for this opportunity. Okay, there's one that says the church we are wanting to preserve was a one room schoolhouse. Currently the building is used for an annual homecoming. The building was the African American school in a rural area in southwest Virginia since we meet one time a year are we eligible. So as long as the building is a church and and and meets the requirements for a historic black church, what you would want to apply for is as a non active church. So you'd be eligible for less money. For a capital project you'd be eligible for 100,000 as opposed to 200,000. But as long as it's a church building, you would be eligible even if it was used as a schoolhouse. There's another question the pictures of churches awarded grants for 2023 are all relatively large structure to what extent are small churches able to be awarded a grant. I can think of at least two or three on our list that were smaller churches and more rural churches. And I know that we definitely have concerns about smaller rural churches as a matter of fact we actually have a researcher whose project is all about looking at the barriers of preserving rural black churches so we definitely have concerns about that. So definitely small churches are able to get grants. And I have another question here asking, can there be multiple persons for contact purposes. Yes, you can have multiple contacts in the system for contacts for this particular grant, however, there will be a main point of contact for say default messages around the system that is the system will notify notify one email to remind remind you about follow up documents or remind you that the application is do anything like that so that main point of contact is definitely an important one but you can have multiple people attached to a profile and an application within the system. Here's a question milestones are missed through no fault of the awardee is there a process to accelerate activities to help the awardee get back on track and example would be a delay in funds distribution. Are there funds that were not used in the last cycle that could be made available to worries that did not receive the full ask. So number one that they're they're not funds that were not used from the last cycle we definitely used all of our funds from the last cycle. So I'm trying to let me read this again milestones are missed through no fault of the awardee is there a process to accelerate activities to help the awardee get back on track. So you can always, you know, help. We, we have technical assistance for all of our awardees, and we work with them, you know, very closely to help get them on track and figure out, you know, what's going on. And always, once you're, we start working with you, we will work very close closely with you to, you know, keep you on track and and make sure that your project is going well whether that's, you know, a delay and and getting a ward or or a problem with a contractor or a problem with materials whatever that is will always work with our grantees. So a quick question how many projects will be funded we don't know exactly what that number is but so far, we're at roughly 30. And I think I anticipate that will be in that range this year. So again, the volume of applications, as we anticipate will be roughly 1000 or more more. So again, we can have to stress to everyone that engages in this process that it is a highly, highly competitive process with a lot of need, a lot of very hard work that's happening across the country, and everyone there's not a lot of enough opportunities like this one for folks to seek out support for their initiatives and for their buildings. And so it's important that folks really take the time to work on these applications and be as clear and descriptive and intentional as possible in completing these applications and give yourself time to do so, as opposed to waiting for the last week, because there will be a high demand in terms of the inquiries that we will receive as you can see tonight we are a pretty lean team. And while we have the desire to reach out and give everyone that personal response and engagement around the questions they have toward the lucky those last few weeks leading up to the due date. The demand will be so high that inevitably there will be people that we just can't get to. So we encourage everyone to be proactive and try to get to this and start working on this as quickly as you can so that we can be responsive and answer any more direct questions and offer that service because, as you know, come the week of the third when say almost 1000 people are working on this and have questions. We, it's tough it's going to be difficult to really get to everyone that would like. So it's definitely important that folks are proactive here. And again, we anticipate it'll be in the range of roughly 30 projects that will be funded. There's a question about whether this is an annual grant. We certainly hope so. This is only our second round and we're planning on having another round next year and we'll we certainly hope that we'll be able to continue. The next question is if there's a scoring guide available to applicants, and there's not the only thing we can sort of offer you is the guidance that I offered earlier. And of course if you have, you know, more questions and need more help with your application we have our one on one sessions that we have through our office hours that you can sign up for. There's a question about will capital projects for property that has been purchased by the historic church be considered. Certainly, well, so if. So not for properties that have been purchased by the church. So if it's, unless it is a historic church that that they've purchased. So this program is only for historic churches, and also possibly auxiliary building such as parsonages and things like that. We don't meet those requirements but not for other properties, just that the church has purchased. What is the likelihood. Oh, there is. What is the likelihood that a church was less than 30 members would be selected for this grant. That's certainly a possibility. I mean we've had non active churches selected. We had members with churches with less than 30 members selected as well. It's really about where they're going back to sort of the components of the application that I talked about about whether they're showing through their application. Historic significance readiness ability to preserve and sustain the building it really goes back to that, as opposed to the number of members. Okay. Okay, I have a question here what if you started on a project and need the financing to complete it. So, this is a really good question as it's one that's kind of come up. We are in the process with applicants. It's important to note that the funds for this particular grant cycle will number one, not be paid out until we are pretty clearly in 2024. So the all work and the all the work that is specific to this project should not have any work completed or in process that these funds are intended for, because there is an element of this this that's clear and outlined in the grant that we will need to sign before starting on any of this work so well there's a aspect of this as associated with competitive bids, there's an aspect that's associated with getting approval for any contractors as a scope of work process. So there's a lot of elements that need to be kind of addressed and reviewed by our internal team before the actual funding is paid out. So we would definitely want any work that's happening now that you were looking to have action fund support applied to kind of cease. And then we would essentially if it's phased work. I feel like that there's, there's a way to discuss and we would encourage you to reach out to us via black churches at savingplaces.org. So we can get some clarity on what's happening right now. But as a default. Yes, we would like for there to be a starting a very clear starting point where action fund resources will be utilized for any projects. Based on the signing of the grant agreement as the beginning of that work. Let me know if I've missed anything there listen. See, if we applied in the first round, do we concentrate on where we were lacking or should we resubmit the information we previously sent. So if you the one thing I would say if you submitted a letter of intent last time. The one thing I should clarify is that we are not asking for letters of intent this time we're asking for full applications and full applications require a lot more information than a letter of intent did. There's going to be a lot more information asked of you so you definitely want to consider this a whole new application and make sure that you're really looking at it as a new information as opposed to just resubmitting. You can certainly start with what you submitted last year but build on that and making sure you're thinking about the advice that we talked about tonight. Watch the video and think about what we say in the video about in terms of what we're looking for. Also think about if you get stuck or you have questions think about reaching out to us for our office hours to talk about to talk to staff. If you have some questions about individual sections I definitely say that to build off what you did last year but consider this a new a new application. The next question is can for profit companies or be core companies with work with a black church to respond to this grant opportunity. So, on this one, I think I need some clarity here on what that would mean by responding to this grant opportunity and we definitely need some clarity on exactly what that would mean for the payout of the grant. We are a nonprofit organization that is going to as a default be paying out these grant funds to a nonprofit organization. When, of course, when I when I read for profit, my, you know, attention is peaked there. I think that this is one that would warrant a one on one conversation about what that would look like and what we could do and what we couldn't. Next question is, are you able to allow to add allowed to add a budget line for unexpected overages. And yes, we see those and budgets all the time. Can the grant be used to correct structural damage that exists, such as framing and floor structures. Let's see correct structural damage. I think that this is okay. Leslie correct me if I'm wrong this seems like this would be in line with the capital projects even actually for planning if you needed to develop a plan to address these particular issues to figure out what you should address first and what needs to happen in order for these changes and corrections to be made. So yes, the answer to that is yes. Yes, and the one thing I do I do want to back up one thing because this is a good point about the difference between submitting a capital project and submitting a planning project. Capital projects are our most competitive project. And I would say that if you have not done planning first, if you do not if you not if you if you have not done some planning, then you probably will not have the most competitive capital project and you might want to consider taking a step back and looking at a planning grant instead. As the best advice I can give you if you are currently thinking about capital project, if you have not done any planning for it, then I would, I would strongly encourage you to take a step back and considering looking at a planning grant instead. Let's see, does the 501 C3 entity have to be connected to the church. Can it be an entity that manages grants for the four community organizations just need clarity on this so yes I think this is a description of a fiscal agent, like a function of a fiscal agent and yes we would work with organizations that have such entities that are looking to support churches in this way. The question is the church I'm working with suffered damage from Hurricane Ion, they need a new roof repair water damage to doors and the floor and remove a tree that is looming over the church and could fall on it. Could all of these be modeled into one grant proposal, absolutely. And this is and this is one of those things like this this is what you're describing is really a scope of work here, and you know just this is this is sort of, you know, bullet point this and sort of talk about exactly what needs to happen. Talk about how it impacts the building and how this is going to, you know, doing this work is going to help preserve and sustain the building and you're on your, you're on your way to, you know, helping us understand what's going on there. Absolutely. Is submitted by a fiscal sponsor score lower than a congregation submitted application. Is there anything we should be aware of when applying as a fiscal sponsor. The answer to that is definitely no, there is no lower score or awaited. There's not a system in which we wait applications submitted by fiscal sponsors lower than congregations submitted applications. Again, the goal is on our end to make sure that we can actually award this funding in a way that is compliant and this is a way for us to do so so this that would not there's no penalty for, you know, organizations that have sought out the support in this way. Is there anything we should be aware of. Not beyond the default eligibility requirements and the guideline standards that will be that are readily available online. There's no special like allowances that I should make note of here unless I'm missing something please let me know, Kelly or Leslie. Now only that they have to be a nonprofit fiscal sponsor. The next question is, is this for work on the physical building. And yes, the, well the only. Well, it depends on the type of project, it does relate to the physical building so for instance. If you're doing interpretation. Some folks do interpretation on the site related to the church we've seen that there are also some people do planning projects and one of those planning projects could be a cemetery but that's not physical work. That's a planning project about cemetery, which is not a physical building. And then there's endowments, which is related to the physical building but it's not physical work so it depends on the project but usually it's related to the physical building yes, but it does depend on the project. So what kind of project do you have do you have to have estimates from contractor to do structural or repairs to our church and is it required for the application. So, this is information that yes we would need at some point in the process we do have a space for this information to be uploaded on the application but at this point, it is not required to have all of this information. It is helpful again to demonstrate readiness, I would say, and in terms of like estimates. Yes we did. We again there's a space for this but it's not a place that is required for this one on the application are correct Leslie. There's a space for information in terms of estimates and contractor quotes and things like that on the application but it's not at this point required this we will get into that. If your project is selected and you are organization that we're working with you're considered a grantee and then we will absolutely kind of look to that documentation review it with you and make sure that it's an approved scope of work before paying at the grant. Can churches hire for a profit consultants to respond to this grant opportunity included as preservation personnel. Yes. Well, in terms of helping you. You know with the application. But when you say included as preservation personnel. I think I need a little bit of clarification there. So in terms of if you're asking someone to help you put the application together, you can do that, but you can't ask for reimbursement. For work that's already been done. I guess that's, I just want to make sure so you can so you can ask for someone to respond to this but you can't when you're putting in your budget, you can't be reimbursed for work that's already been done. So just want to make sure that yes you can use for profit consultants. So when you're putting your budget together if there's a consultant that you want to use in your future project if you were granted. Yes, those can be for profit consultants. But if you're asking for someone to help you put together your grant now, you can't then use the grant if you were given the money to then pay that person that already did the work. I just want to make sure that that's clear and give me one second just responding to the question there. All right, please care, clarify that the repurposed arts cultural community and social justice program. This use must be also be designed or constructed by a black architect or builder. I'm a little confused by what, by this question. What they're talking about this there and I need to pull up this exact quote is a little out of context, this is the definition of a black church is there pulling ice ease of a quote from that. And so I need to look at the full quote to see where, what exactly that says because out of out of context, I can't. At a context, it's, it's, it's, it's throwing me off a bit. Hold on to the fact that it's actually in our, in our PowerPoint tech. But it's, it has to do with a with a non it has to do with a non active church or non active congregation in a church that in a build in a church that's now being repurposed for different use. I see so this is the part where we indicate that religious historic buildings that were designed by black architects or builders currently occupied by active congregations or repurposed culture community and social justice programs. Yes. So this is, so then I would say clarity on, yeah, how we define a historic black church and really trying to the intent here, as I understand it and as I communicated with other people is to make sure that we are capturing churches that have been repurposed and are doing work in the community and wanting to make sure that those organizations are represented in this application pool. But again with the intent that they are organizations that are were established as black spaces. That is the point is really like ensuring that the origin was specific to the benefit of the black community wherever wherever it was based. Yes. So does does capital expenses such as AC church signs landscaping apply or qualify my apologies so AC, there's a conversation to be had there that but that again that's that's one that there's a discussion to be had a more direct conversation. Again, because I know that they're, it's technically kind of outside of the eligibility requirements but there are, there is a space in which the discussion is had about like just generally the health and the ability to provide services without HVAC, but the church signs and landscaping those are two that would fall outside, as I understand it unless there is like a very specific historical significance on the signage. Is there a loophole there Leslie, but we haven't done we haven't done church signs are landscaping and HBAC would really be on a would be on a case by case basis. I thought so yeah. So that's one that you would definitely want to reach out to us to so that we could get some clarity on exactly what the situation was there. See, can you apply under multiple categories for the grant submission or is it one for one relationship. So you, you can submit so one organization can submit for different categories. So, but it's it's a separate application for one category for it for each, I'm sorry for each category. So you'd have to submit a separate application for each category. What I would say though is that you would only be, you can only ever be funded for one category so one organization can only be funded for one category, and you won't be able to choose what a one of happening is that we will look at whatever application is is strongest in terms of as we review the different ones. So, but if you apply for too many it can sometimes cause a little confusion so I would, I would really look at what is the priority for your church, you know, for your organization. You know, I wouldn't suggest that you apply for all categories you could do that. But technically you can do that, but really look at what's the priority, because sometimes what happens is people I've seen people submit applications that contradict each other, and can somehow and can sometimes as we read over both of them actually in both. So just be careful when submitting multiple applications because I've actually see when we start to compare them that what winds up happening is they as you wind up weakening both your applications by submitting multiple ones. But yes, you can do it. First, for historical churches from rural areas without an or, or administration capacity. What can be strategies of support. So, for this one, we definitely want to make sure that we are really supporting and intentional about offering our support to historical church churches in rural areas and we really are looking to offer a specific level of TA to those institutions. Please be in touch with us to kind of clarify your needs in this space. If you're talking about the organizational capacity actual grant. I'm hoping I'm not reading this incorrectly but if you're talking about organizational capacity in terms of the grant. This is a opportunity that we are looking to support a paid staff position that is unique to the preservation needs of the institution. So that's really the core of what we're looking to support there, or in some cases part time work, but again toward the same end. Do you read that question any other way. If I read another way, if it's not read that way the other way that I could read it is if they're saying that they don't have administrative capacity. What are some of the other ways that they could get support like let's say they let's say they're not going after organizational capacity, like what are some of the ways that they could get support. And it's interesting because it depends on where you are. Some rural areas, depending on where you are might be near a university like I think about someplace like Tuskegee. Which is, you know, more more rural and so you might be near a college or university depending on, you know, where you are. You might also be near another church. Churches can sometimes rely on each other you might be able to find a volunteer like a student maybe like a high school student it depends on what type of support but I agree with Alaska. If we know more about your situation. Because I think about a particular church that's in a rural area that we happen to know that there was a bigger project nearby in a bigger it was in a bigger city but we started thinking hi I wonder if we can ask from support from another project to help out in this this smaller community. If you reach out to us and and let us know where you are and where you might need help, then we might be able to figure out how we can be more helpful if we know any resources or talk about strategies because like I said it's actually something that we are working on a project on we are actually now working on a project on the barriers of preserving black churches in rural areas and figuring out how we can be more helpful so please. Sister Calaway. Sorry for calling you out. Thank you for joining us at black churches at saving places.org I'd love to talk to you about the barriers that you're experiencing whether this is specifically for capacity. Grant or whether you're talking about strategies of support in general. I'd love to talk to more about you and anyone else on this call frankly that's living in a rural area. I'd love to talk to you, whether it's about this grant in particular or just generally, because we really are looking into that and trying to figure out how we can help you. Let's see. So does the church have to have remained in the same physical location throughout its existence. The answer to that is no, but we do require that the congregation be based in the current location for at least 50 years. It does have to be based in one exclusive location throughout its history and its existence in general. But again it does have to meet that 50 to 50 year threshold in order to be considered for this particular program. If we do not have a 501c3 status but have a IRS letter of determination do we need to have a 501c3 organization to serve as our fiscal agent. So ideally this status will be formalized at the time of grant awarding. So we would encourage or we would essentially not encourage require that you keep us posted on the IRS status. Otherwise, yes, we would have to utilize or have you utilize a fiscal agent. But ideally that 501c3 status would be in place. As you start this application process sometimes it's better for organizations to just wait until it's in place but if we understand if those if your need is very specific and you want to go ahead and put your hat in a ring now. Totally understandable but we would prefer that obviously that that be in place but we do work with organizations. As long as there is either a fiscal agent that you can utilize and or at least a process and we know that you are in the process of getting that determination. So, the next question is, are we eligible for less money if the black congregation has moved buildings and it's now renting to the church, renting to the church to a predominantly white congregation. I think I'd need to understand a little bit more about this situation because now we have a situation where it's not a black congregation, but is the church itself. Was it built for built for African Americans. So I think this is a situation where you should contact us directly at black churches at saving places.org to give us a little bit more information. Is a vacant church building that was home to black congregations eligible. If yes, may funds be used to plan adaptive reuse to church owned community healthcare facility. So, we do fund like churches that are not active. Number one. But if there are plans to reuse this for for this specific purpose. This is, this is a little different because again I'm thinking about the typical default guidelines which indicate something that is specific it's arts based it's a community like a gathering space. This one's tough. I'm not sure we will probably need to have a conversation about this one Leslie, I've not seen any applications in previous. Well, any examples in the previous pool where they were looking to reuse the space in this way. I mean I think that it was it's it's non active black church. I think, I think, I think it could be eligible, but I think they should contact us and we can, you know, discuss it as a staff to double check but I think it, I think it could be eligible. Thank you. Yeah. So, this has to do we are converting renovating an old convent to create the African American pastoral center, the conflict and is in need of renovations on four rooms that we will use. Currently the building is used by one community school for special needs and the KFC men's group and other church ministries. This center will be the primary center for black Catholic discernment designed to hold learning, leading sessions, table talks about evangelization black theology and other group meetings which category might we consider applying for. Well, the first thing I mean on the face of it, it could potentially be a capital project but that depends on if you've done planning. So my first question would be is if you've done planning work. If you haven't done planning work. Then, then it would be planning. If you've done planning work and you're looking to do renovation then it could be a capital project. I would need to, there's not, there's not enough information here from me to determine whether it is a historic black church. So we'd want to talk about that too so I want to know if it's eligible to be a historic black church. And I'd also want to know how much planning you've done to see whether we need to do this as a planning project, or whether we need to do this as a capital project. So consider reaching out to us so that we can have some further conversations with you. And I have another question here. That's asking, is this a reimbursement grant. This is actually that so there's, there's several categories as you know that are associated with this particular opportunity. And so there's no reimbursement associated with this but there is a match associated with one of the opportunities and that specifically the endowment. That is a one to one match kind of situation, but none of these function as reimbursements in the sense that a lot of federal, for example, kind of grants function. Not the way that this works on this these grants don't work on a reimbursement basis. I think that was like two different questions that were speaking to that as a point of inquiry. And I'll go to the next one. Can we use a federal tax ID. We are not a 501 C3. That or submit their federal tax ID information on these applications but again, we are looking to again churches don't necessarily fall outside of that absolute requirement to have that 501 C3 status. But that is something that we are looking for orders to make sure that they do have in place. This is one we would probably be in touch with you directly to confirm. And I hope I'm not me speaking there but I do believe that that's associated with the eligibility requirements that we have listed. So it's, it would have to be one of the three just to clarify as a base level historically black church with your federal information as you listed a 501 C3 or nonprofit organization or a public agency. So those are the three types of entities that have the ability to receive funds via this opportunity. And what do you look for in letters of support whom do you prefer they come from preservation specialist architects community leaders church leaders. Is it a letter to support the project or that supports the organization applying. So this is one that is totally optional on the application. But it is one that we are looking to learn a little bit more about both the support for the project is ideal and support for the organization as a whole. Anything that speaks to again the historical significance of the organization and the impact that this project could have on the community at large is helpful. Any other context there Leslie. Sorry, I was answering your question. No problem. I was just making sure that I touched on everything that we thought was important in terms of the letters of support historical significance, the impact of this project on the larger community, and letters that support the organization that's applying all of that is a helpful context for us as we take a look at these applications as we're reading them. Great. Thank you. Our church is the first black church in the state of Alaska and the first black church in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. We are structural damage inside and out is this grant a grant that can be used for structure repair wiring. The church is also without any ventilation system AC fire sprinkler system etc is the grants out there for us to explore. Definitely structural damage is definitely something that this grant can be used for. And so we would, some of this and some of this would be eligible some of it wouldn't be. And so I think we could sort of go through some of it and look at the parts that are eligible and not eligible is a letter of determination required with the application. So, this is something that is required. I do believe we have a place for this on the application I'm trying to envision where we have that I don't think that that's associated with the actual follow up. This is associated with the application I do believe. So, I would say yes and if you have any or having any issues with this please let us know, but I believe that this is a requirement is associated with the application. Do you have resources for grant writers to assist with applications from from small churches. We don't have what we don't have as resources for grant writers to assist, but what we do have is we have one on one sessions with our staff members if you have questions or need some assistance with your application you can always email us at black churches during places.org and we have appointments that you can make with our staff. If you run into some issues with your application. And another building on the campus that is used for community events such as food pantry campus or camp for kids in the community for community work be eligible. It depends on again where we're speaking again to the history of this building. If this is a, I guess you can describe it as an annex. We'd need a little bit more information on the actual structure. I do believe I don't think that it's limited to the fact that it supports community events. But again, understanding its connection to the main church space, I think that that is an important element here. So we need a little bit more information to confirm. Yeah, I think that this is correct. Let me know if I'm clear on that Leslie. Yeah. If we didn't get the full last the last time can we resubmit the same project so we can finish the work. You can but you would likely be less competitive because we would look at the fact that you did get funding last time because they're trying to help as many people as possible. And since you did just if somebody just got funding like maybe if somebody got funding several years ago, we might look at that but someone who just got funding in the last round are definitely going to be less competitive than someone who hasn't received any money from us recently. And this question is, is it possible for multiple churches to apply together, say in the instance of a small rural church or churches with similar projects, can they apply together in an effort to improve their chances for an award. I definitely understand the logic here. But unfortunately, this is one that would create a bit of it. Well, quite a bit of an issue in terms of the actual process of awarding. Given the fact that we would need to award the support directly to a organization and one organization would also be held responsible in terms of the grant agreement. So we don't currently have a structure built out for a kind of group or grant and as this is described. But I do understand the idea being that you kind of band together to support a singular kind of themed project. And as of right now, it's not something that we've kind of mapped out mapped out a process for how that would work internally. So I'm seeing now that we're actually past 10 o'clock. It's 1010 now. Well, for you on the West Coast, it's 710. But for those of us on the East Coast, it's 1010. And I do want to be respectful of people's time. So we're going to take a few more questions. There are lots more questions in the Q&A. And we will answer those and get back to you. All those people who have put questions in the Q&A, we will answer them and get back to you in the next few days as soon as we can, we will answer every single question. But we are going to be wrapping up in the next few minutes. But if you do still have questions, please put them in the Q&A because we will in fact get back to you as soon as possible. So the next question is, can you give some examples of how one might document capacity for continued stewardship and maintenance and capacity to leverage the grant funding? And so what I would say is that in our application, we do have prompts with a lot of our questions that sort of help you guide you how to actually document those things. So I would say pay attention to the different places where we have different bullets and sort of different places where we ask for additional information to help you answer those questions is what I would say. Alaska, do you have anything to add? No, I think that's pretty clear. And then there's, has there been any past applicants of historically black mega churches? The one thing I would say is this grant, this is only our second round. So we've only done this, we've only had one round before. And I'm not aware of any historically black mega churches just because of the historic black requirements. I don't remember seeing any in the last round. Do you ask or Kelly? I can't think of any that were included that came through that were approved that were in that. Well definitely not definitely not that got grants I'm trying to think if we even got like applications. Not that I can think of. No, I can't think of any. No. So I'll wrap up with this one last question and again, as a reminder, we will because there's still quite a few just to let y'all know I don't know there's like at least 40 more questions in the Q&A to answer and we will get to them as soon as we can, we promise. But we're going to wrap up with this one last question says you emphasize the importance of understanding the historic significance of the church within the local community. Given that what a capital project that preserves and upgrades portion of the church that is used primarily for outreach to the community be eligible for capital project funding. And definitely. Again, we're looking at preserving historic black churches. So, and there's even a portion of the application that that asks that that asked what type of outreach, the church is doing it asks what type of relationship that the church has with the community what the view that the community has of the church. And definitely, and very important aspects. And of the church's role in the community. So absolutely. That would be eligible. Thank you for that for that question. And with that, thank you very much for all of you who came out to the webinar it's been great having you all here. And please check out the links that we dropped in the chat. Watch the video go to the FAQs read over the criteria. Please also reach out to us through black churches at saving places.org. If you want to make appointments with one of our staff members. And we will, it's going to take us a few days. So please be patient with us. But we will start getting to those questions. I apologize that we couldn't get to live. And thank all of you for being here. Have a good evening.