 Hi, this is Katie Hardaway, and I will be discussing today the FY23 Loser's California Cert Program, LC Program Request for Proposal Overview. The agenda today is Loser's Grant Unit and Contact Information Program Overview, Purpose of the Grant, the Eligibility Criteria, Funding for the LC Program, Use of the Funds, Eligible Activities, Reporting, Requirements, Proposal Rating Sheet, Checklist of Required Cal OES Forms. The Loser's Grant Unit is responsible for the overall grant management of the Loser's California Statewide Grant LS program, the Loser's California Target Grant LG program, the Loser's California Tribal Grant LI program, and the Loser's California Cert program LC program, and the Loser's California Youth Development Grant LI programs. Questions concerning the RFP, the process, or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to the least grants at caloes.ca.gov. Cal OES staff cannot assist with the applicant with the actual preparation of their proposal. Cal OES can only respond to technical questions about the RFP during the period of time between the publication date and the completion of the RFP process. I'm going to be reading the slides to you today in order for us to go over some very pertinent information, so please bear with me. The program overview, the FY23-24 Budget Act included 25 million ongoing federal general fund appropriation to the Cal OES. 500,000 of that was for the Loser's California Cert program LC program via a competitive process. Applicants can apply for up to 25,000. The grant sub-award performance period is June 1st, 2024 through December 31st, 2025. The submission deadline is Monday, March 4th, 2024 by 5 p.m. via email at leastgrantsatcalos.ca.gov. The purpose of the LC program is to provide funding to new and existing cert programs to support projects that help prepare vulnerable and underserved populations, including providing cert training in languages other than English, providing cert training to underserved and or populations that are at high risk for disasters, providing accommodations for training participants that have access or functional needs such as English as a second language, interpretation, and building capacity to respond to disasters. For a proposal to be eligible to compete for the funding, i.e. read and rate, all the following conditions must be met. Applicants must be registered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, website as an existing cert program, a new cert program approved by the California State Cert Administrator, a cert program sponsoring agency or a physical agent representing the cert program. For new cert programs, an approval letter from the California State Cert Administrator must be included in the grant submission packet. Applicants must be conducting classroom-based instructor-led cert training based on the 20-hour FEMA curriculum, incorporating all nine modules and all hands-on exercises, e.g. fire suppression, medical triage, cribbing, including a disaster simulation drill, or utilizing the approved cert training curriculum. If an applicant is in a county where classroom-based training has not resumed, utilizing hybrid cert training will suffice. The hybrid cert training can be taken for free on Cal OES CSTI Learning Management System. Be ready. Train CSTI. One proposal must be emailed to listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 4, 2024. Proposals must be attached as a single document, e.g. a PDF. Emails should identify the name of the RFP in the subject line. An example, LCRFP, My Brother's House Organization. $500,000 is available for the LC program. Applicants may apply for up to $25,000 for the 19-month grant subaward performance period to enhance existing and established new California cert programs. There is no match required for the LC program. Funds may be used to increase the capacity for the cert programs to provide cert training to vulnerable and underserved populations and to purchase personal protection equipment, background checks, and liability coverage for cert volunteers. Funds may not be used for out-of-state travel. Out-of-state travel is only allowed in exceptional situations. They may not be used for the cost of food and or beverages at grant subaward-sponsored conferences, meetings, or office functions. Eligible activities are training. Funds may be used to register for cert-related trainings, i.e. cert basic training, advanced cert modules, first aid, CPR, and disaster response training. To travel to and from cert-related trainings, meetings, and workshops, to attend Leistos California training classes monthly throughout the entire grant subaward performance period, equipment funds may be used for the procurement of personal protection equipment as needed for the cert programs. Cert-related training equipment and items that support in-person training sessions i.e. laptops, software, projectors, portable screens, and speaker systems. Supplies and materials. Cert programs may use grant funding for cert-related training supplies, printing, training manuals, and materials. Liability coverage and background checks. Cert programs may use the grant funding to provide liability coverage for cert volunteers in their program. The coverage and supplement of California Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Program to provide background checks for cert volunteers in their program. Disaster Deployment Cert program may use funds to create, develop, maintain cadre of cert volunteers for disaster deployment. Cover the costs of deploying cert volunteers for emergency disaster response. Staffing. Cert programs may be used to fund or to hire staff that manage all aspects of their cert programs. Accommodations. Cert programs may use funding to provide accommodations for training participants and have access or functional needs such as ESL interpretation. Leistos California branded materials is required and will be provided by Cal OES. If the subrecipient chooses to produce their own materials with Leistos California grant program funds, they must receive prior approval from Cal OES, including the Leistos California logo. Subrecipient must respond within five business days to all Cal OES required programmatic requests. The subrecipient for training must incorporate the materials and resources developed for and provided by the Leistos California grant program in any emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation training conducted with grant funding. Attend training classes, meetings, to receive updates and resources throughout the grant subaward performance period. There are three progress reports all listed in your RFP. You'll notice the due dates have a 30 day special date for a grace period. Please look at these dates and apply them to your calendars. The engagement reports are based upon direct public engagement activities. Subrecipients are required to submit data directly through the online database immediately after an engagement activity or training commences or no later than the end of each month. This is a competitive grant process, meaning that your applications will be ranked in comparison to all other applications received. You'll notice on this slide on the right hand side a rating sheet or an example of. Each of the above categories contain questions assigned of a point value. The point scale is divided into five columns labeled one, two, three, four, and five. The applicant responds to each questions as is evaluated on the following criteria. Absent. The response does not address the specific question. Unsatisfactory. Response does not completely address the question. Information presented does not provide a good understanding of the applicant's intent. Satisfactory. Response addresses the question and provides a good understanding of the applicant's intent. Adequately supports the proposal and the intent of the program. Above average. Responses above average and provides a clear and detailed understanding of the applicant's intent. And my favorite. Excellent. Responses outstanding with clear, detailed and revelant information. The response presents a compelling argument and supports the proposal and the intent of the program. The proposal also has required documentation as will be found in your RFP at the final pages. Each one of these forms needs to be filled out and you'll notice that there is a link available for you to be able to get into the most current versions. Recommendation for the award. The final funding decisions are made by the director of Cal OES. Funding decisions are based on the following. The ranked score of proposal. Consideration of priorities or geographical distribution specific to this RFP and prior negative administrative programmatic performance if applicable. Once the decision has been made, the applicant will be notified in writing. Those not selected will receive a denial letter and information on the appeal process. Once again, take note. The proposal package must be received electronically no later than 5pm on Monday, March 4th, 2024 to the least those grants at Cal OES dot ca dot gov email. Reminder questions concerning the RFP, the process or the program. Issues must be submitted in writing by email to least as grants at Cal OES dot ca dot gov. Cal OES staff staff cannot assist the applicant with the actual preparation of their proposal. Cal OES can only respond to technical questions about the RFP during the period of time between the publication date and the completion of the RFP process. This concludes the least those California cert program for the LC program on the RFP training. Up next is the grant sub award proposal training. This is the grant sub award proposal training. I'm going to give the presentation on the grant sub award proposal process. Today we are going to provide guidance on the components that are required for a proposal and we are going to review the forms on the RFP checklists that I just referenced a moment ago and familiarize you with some of the tools that are available. The process of submitting a proposal begins with the request for a proposal being released. This is our competitive process. Within the request for a proposal you will find fund sources, information and background of the program requirements and expected deliverables and instructions on how to apply. So where do you find the request for proposal? It can be found on the Cal OES website at caloes.ca.gov and on the upper right corner you will click on initiatives and from the drop down menu select search for grants. Once you are on the search for grants landing page there are a couple of ways to search. You can find the list of California RFP by scrolling down on the page or you can use the search box. I like to use the search box when I know which request for proposal I'm looking for. You can type the name of the program in the box or if you know the two letter program acronym you can type that instead. Although we are talking about a request for proposal I would like to draw your attention to the mailing list that Cal OES releases a request for proposal. Our competitive process for funding. We send an email notification to anyone who has signed up for the mailing list. Please know the only time we will send an email is when we release a new request for proposal. Sending solicitation to find a position for one of our advisory bodies or when we post a public meeting notice. If you are not signed up already we strongly encourage you to do so that you can receive these important notices. Cal OES releases the Leastos California Cert Support Grant Program request for proposals on January 8th. The applicants have approximately eight weeks to put the proposal packet together from that date. Once complete applicants will need to email a copy of the proposal packet to Leastos Grant Unit at Leastosgrants at Cal OES.ca.gov. Let's talk about the request for proposal or RFP itself. The RFP has three parts. Part one is what you have to do. It explains the Public Records Act, submission, deadline, eligibility, grant sub-award performance period, funding and programmatic requirements. Part two refers to policies or administrative requirements and includes references to the sub-recipient handbook components that are required with your proposal. Policies concerning the budget, administrative requirements and required or additional forms that may apply towards your proposal. Part three is a checklist that includes a list of documents that are required with your proposal and links to the most current forms. This is an example of what the checklists look like. It includes all the required components and links to each form under the Additional Forms section. These forms may or may not be required depending on what you have in your budget. For example, if you do not have out-of-state travel, you do not need to include this form with your proposal. For those of you who have 501C3 status, once we receive your proposal, there are some stats verification that your program specialist will do right away. If you do not have the 501C3 status, this will not apply to you. In the next few slides, I'll go over what exactly we're looking for on this site. The purpose of this is because of the state of California accounting system requires information on this site to be consistent. The current in order and current in order to pay you when you submit your report for expenditures and request for payment. Your program specialist will verify the DOJ verification through the website listed in the slide here. It can be verified using your F-E-I-N number, employer identification number, or organization name. We will have to select charity registration as a registration type. As a reminder, the state of California accounting system requires information on this site to be consistent and current in order to pay you when you submit report of expenditures and a request for payment. When we check your registration status, we're looking for it to be current. This makes us happy because we can continue to review and process your proposal. If we see reporting incomplete or delinquent, it makes us sad because we'll need to come to you and update your status so that we can continue to process your proposal. If the program specialist contacts you to update your status, please make sure to address this immediately. As we do not have control over the length of time it takes to update your status and we do not want this to affect our ability to process your proposal or make payments to you if you're selected to receive an award. There are nine forms that are required with every request for proposal, regardless of the program type. Please note that most programs will require additional forms, so read your request for proposal thoroughly. In these next slides, we're going to tell you about some of the more common mistakes that we find that these nine forms so that you know what we're looking for when we review your proposal. You can find these forms at the very end of the RFP in the checklist section in the hyperlink to each form. But first, here are a few helpful reminders. One, read the entire request for the proposal to understand what is required for the program. Please note that all forms have instructions, so if you have a question about the form, look at the instructions first and then email the program specialist for help. Use current forms Cal OES, update our forms often. If you're using one of our forms that you have saved on your desktop, it's possible it may have been updated and you'll be asked to redo the form which may delay the delay the processing of your award if selected. Okay, let's start with the grant sub award face sheet. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the face sheet is on the right. A few of the most common mistakes we find on the grant sub award face sheet include one, look at the two red arrows on the right. The last four digits of the zip code are often missing. Please make sure to go to the US Postal Service website to look up your plus four and include that on your face sheet. Two, arrow on the left pointing to the five of this spreadsheet. Disaster program title needs to match the name of the program you are applying for. This can be found in the request for proposal. For example, if you're applying to the Leistos California cert program grant LC program then right Leistos California cert support grant LC program on line five. Arrow on the left pointing to the side. The indirect cost and federal approved ICR. This is where you will indicate whether you're using the 10% minus rate or your agents federal approved indirect cost rate. A copy of the approved ICR negotiated agreement must be enclosed with your application if you're using a federal approved ICR. If you will not be claiming indirect cost under this award type in NA. Okay, this is the table that appears on the face sheet. We've zoomed in so you can see it easier. This is where your fund information will go and you can find all this information in your request for proposal. Please note that the grant year 2023 and the fund source LIST are now in the drop down boxes. Column A can be typed in and column G will automatically total for you. In your request for proposal in part one section F funding information you will find the information needed to correctly fill out the spread the face sheet. This is an example of the grant sub award number. There is no need to fill out the sub award line area on the forms requesting it. The sub award number is given once the applicant has been awarded the grant funds. This is a grant sub award contact information form. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the form is on the right. Here is a list of things to keep in mind. Remember to use the most updated forms from our website. Don't forget to write the entire nine digit zip code number. All lines need to be filled out with complete information. Do not use wide out to fix corrections. Leave the grant sub award number and section blank. This will be filled in for you if you are awarded on lines one and two. Make sure that one the grant sub award director and two the financial officer are different. They can't be the same person. On lines two and five make sure that the financial officer and the executive director are different. They can't be the same person. Number seven chairperson also can't be listed again on any of the other positions. Number one through six line number six and seven can't be the same person. Lastly please make sure the official designated by the governing board on line six is the person who signs the grant sub award face sheet. This is the signature authorization form. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the form is on the right. When we review the signature authorization form we compare it to the contact information form to ensure the grant sub award director and financial officer are the same authorized personnel. You can list alternate individuals that have the authority to sign on the grant sub award director and financial officers behalf. Just like the grant sub award director the financial officer cannot be the same person. You cannot have one person be an authorized signer in both sides of this form. It is best to have at least one authorized signer for each position if someone is unavailable and you need to request funds or make a modification. It is easy to do this when you have different authorized signers for each position. If not there is nothing you can do until they return. If you want to change authorized signers you must submit a grant sub award modification to Cal OES as soon as possible because it takes approximately two weeks to process. So it is important to make a modification request immediately when a change has been made internally in your organization. Having a second signer is going to be beneficial to you if either one of the director of the financial officer leave so that you can continue on with your business. This is a current list of certification of assurance of compliance documents we have. A common mistake is signing and submitting the wrong one. We must receive the one that is tied to the fund source for your program. The checklist in part three of the request proposal will tell you exactly which one is needed. Another mistake is using an old version of the document. The way to ensure you have the current version is to download it from our website. Again the checklist will have the link for the correct and current version. Please be sure you're reading this document in full so you know what the requirements are because when you sign this you certify that you are compliant. The red arrows are some areas I want to bring to your attention. The subrecipient for number one is the name of your agencies. Please have this match what is written on the face sheet. Number two pointing at line one the applicant should complete the Cal OES program name and the grant sub award performance period. The grant sub award number should be left blank. Your program specialist will fill this in for you. Number three ensure appropriate signer to have signed the document. This would be the official designee by the governing board. Number four for cert programs it must be the governing board chair that signs this section. All Easto's California cert support grant LC program applicants must complete and submit the cert training certification form with their packet. This is an additional attachment to the RFP on our Cal OES website that will need to be downloaded. The budget is normally the next document on your proposal. This is the form 2-106B grant sub award budget pages single fund source. The subrecipient should be the same as listed on the face sheet from 2-106B has three budget categories. Category A is the personnel cost category B is operating cost category C is equipment cost all three categories must be submitted with your application whether or not you have items in that category. For example if you do not have equipment you can write none requested in the category. All three categories must include be included in your application packet. The budget spreadsheets template will automatically add the columns on each tab. Please show the equation on each line item as to how you got the total. Properly space the line items to include all information. The personnel category is where you want to put salaries, benefits, over times for people you employ or your agency. This also where you can put your volunteer hours. Operating category is the meat and potatoes of your program. This is where you want to put just about everything else including rent, travel, training, office supplies, etc. Equipment category is where you'll put non expendable property having a useful life of more than one year and cost of five thousand or more per unit. Just to be clear if you're buying six laptops and at a cost of one thousand each for a total of six thousand you would put those laptops tops in the operating expenses category not in equipment as laptops per unit price is less than five thousand. Now let's talk about the information we need to see on the budget pages. The gold globes you see on the next few slides contain the elements that need to be included in each calculation for each line item. In this example we have program advocate position that is making four thousand per month. Notice the equation is written out. Please note that the salary cost can be shown as an hourly rate. A monthly salary or an annual salary when we then we want to see the duration. In this example the program advocate will be paid for 12 months which just probably matches the length of the performance period in this example. And then we want to see the full-time equivalent for the position. In this example the program advocate will work 50% of the time on this program. And then finally you will want to include a brief description of the line item and explain how it furthers the goals and objectives of the program. For the benefit calculation you will need to include the benefit rate in the example as the rate in this example as the 200,000. And finally you'll want to include a brief description of what benefits are included. Unless you are paying the volunteer a salary you should have it in the operating section. Volunteers are also captured in the category budget category. A the first element needed is the rate that you have value your volunteers at. Please know that this rate cannot exceed what it costs your agency to have a staff person during the same job. And that you can include both salary and benefits when calculating volunteer rate. In this example the value of volunteers is $12 per hour multiplied by the number of hours to be charged to the agent. In this example 1200 hours and then include the description of the activities that volunteers will be doing. Now we're going to show you a few operating expense examples. Operating volunteers that are being charged for the following per DM gas mileage should be titled as shown in the slide. Title is volunteer title of what they are being charged for. In this example they are charging for to per DM and the name number of training they are attending. Again the element in the gold bubbles need to be included in each calculation for each timeline item. For this example we have postage and amount of postage is 250 per month multiplied by the duration in this example is 12 months which probably matches the length of the performance period multiplied by how much of the postage will be charged to the grant. Yet for the purpose of this grant it would be 19 months. Rent is another very common operating expense for rent. You will need to add up the full-time equivalence to the FTEs that's full-time employees in budget category A. Personnel services in this example we have 4.5 FTEs then multiply the 4.5 FTEs by 125 square feet per FTE which is what is allowed as per the subrecipient handbook and then multiply that by the amount you pay for the rent per square feet. Please note that $2 is the up to amount and you should use your actual rate of your calculation. If your landlord charges you 65 cents per square foot that's the rate you need to use. Finally you will need to multiply by the duration in this example is 12 months in your example it would be 19 months. If you are claiming indirect costs under this award please make sure you are calculating the total correct. A common mistake is multiplying the total award amount by the indirect cost rate. It's not what you calculate the indirect cost. You will first need to calculate your total direct cost. To do this add up any personal salaries, wages, benefits, operational costs, and up to $25,000 of your second tier sub awards but do not include any distorting costs such as equipment, rent, capital expenditures, and second tier sub awards beyond the first $25,000. In this example after doing the calculations they got $233,215. Once you figure out your direct cost you simply multiply the total by the ICR or the federal approved ICR. In this case it's 10%. Please make sure the ICR matches what you entered in the section 7 of the face sheet and that if you are claiming the federal approved ICR you must include a copy of your approved ICR negotiating agreement in your application. Some final reminders about your budget please be sure to refer to the RFP to identify required prohibited expenses and that you build your budget accordingly. Be sure to use whole dollar amounts only. Often when your budget is off by a dollar it's due to rounding errors but so please be sure to put you are checking the amounts entered into your budget columns. Please include the expenses in the correct category and lastly all budget line items require a justification and calculation. A request for proposal requires a budget narrative which allows the sub recipient to provide detail about their budget. The budget narrative typically includes how the budget supports objectives and activities, the need for administrative costs, and the necessity for sub contracts. The most common mistake we see with budget narratives are that sometimes they don't match what's on the budget pages. For example let's say you've emailed your proposed package to the program unit and during their review your specialist determines that several corrections are needed on your budget pages. You make those changes for your specialist but now your budget narratives doesn't match. So please remember every time your budget pages are updated your budget narrative must be updated as well they must match. Next is the programmatic narrative where you provide details about how you will meet the objectives of the program. Please be sure that you're reading your RFP and that your narrative addresses each of the questions from the RFP. We have often seen applicants use the same narrative that had been used for the previous year even perhaps for another grant that do not address any or all of the questions from the RFP. This narrative also needs to speak to how many people you intend to reach. Next is the grants management assessment form. Per Title II CFR section 200.332 Cal OES is required to evaluate the risk of non-compliance with federal statutes, regulations, and grant terms and conditions posed by each subrecipient of pass-through funding. This assessment is made in order to determine and provide the appropriate level of technical assistance training and grant oversight to applicant for the award reference above. The questions are related to your organization's experience in the management of federal grant awards. The questionnaire must be completed and returned with your grant proposal materials. For purpose of completing this questionnaire, grant manager is the individual who is primarily responsible for day-to-day administration of the grant. Bookkeeper, accounting staff means the individual who is responsible for reviewing and determining expenditures to be charged to the grant award. An organization refers to the applicant applying for the award and or the governmental implementating agency as applicable. We've just spent a significant amount of time talking about the nine required forms for every request for proposal we release, but sometimes additional forms may apply. Be sure to check part five of your request for a proposal to find out if additional forms may apply for your organization. Some final things to remember. All forms have instructions. Use the forms on the website. Those will be the most current version. The checklist that comes with the request for proposal will tell you which forms are required. Email Listo's Grants at Listo's Grants at caloes.ca.gov if you have questions. We are here to help you. Use the checklist in part five of the request for proposal. This concludes the grant several word proposal training. Thank you for your time. This concludes our training.