 Hello. This training is for those of you that are interested in applying for the fiscal year 22 LISTO's California Thirt Support Program. Today is February 16th and my name is Cindy Logan. I'm the division chief over the LISTO's grants unit here at the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Today with us we have William Chan and Katie Hardaway, program representative. Before we start I'd like to go over a few housekeeping items. Number one, the presentation is being recorded and we and will be available for on-demand viewing later. Everyone who has joined should be on listen mode. We can't hear or see you and the raise hand feature is off as well. All questions concerning the RFP, the process, or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to leastosgrants at caloes.va.gov. We're going to be presenting two presentations today. The first one is the request per proposal overview training. This will be an overview of the request for proposal and then the second training will be for the forms on how to complete the forms. So with that said, Katie is going to present the RFP training. Take it away Katie. Thanks Cindy and welcome everybody. This is the request for proposal overview training. Let me go through the agenda first. The leastos unit and contact information is part of our first and the agenda program overview purpose of the grant, the eligibility criteria, funding for the LC program, use of funds, eligible activities, reporting requirements, proposal rating sheet, and the checklist of required Cal OES forms. I'm going to apologize upfront because I'm going to be reading from the slides, but a lot of the information is very relevant and we need to go over it together. The leastos unit grant is responsible for the overall grant management of the leastos california statewide grant LS program, the leastos california target program, the LG program, the leastos california tribal grant LI program, and the leastos california support grant LC program. Questions concerning the RFP, the process or the programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to leastosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. Cal OES staff cannot assist the applicant with actual preparation of their proposal. Cal OES can only respond to the technical questions about the RFP during the period of time between the publication date and the completion of the RFP process. For program overview of the FY22-23 budget act included a 25 million ongoing federal fund appropriation to the Cal OES. 500,000 leastos california cert support LC program via competitive process, applicants can apply for up to 25,000. Grant sub award performance period is June 1st, 2023 through December 31st, 2024. This is a date to take note of. The submission date deadline is Monday, March 20th, 2023 by 5 p.m. Pacific time via email at leastosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. The purpose of the grant for 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 or end or populations that are at high risk for disasters, providing accommodations for training participants that have access or functional needs such as ELS interpretation and building capacity to respond to disasters. The eligibility criteria for the proposal is 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 physical agent representing a cert program. For new cert programs, an approval letter from the California State Cert Administrator must be included in the grant submission packet. Eligibility criteria for applicants must be conducting classroom-based instructor-led cert training based on a 20-hour FEMA curriculum, incorporating all nine module and all hands-on exercises, e.g. fire suppression, medical triage including a disaster simulation drill or utilizing approved cert training curriculum. If an applicant is in a country where classroom-based training has not resumed utilizing the hybrid cert training will suffice, the hybrid cert training can be taken for free on the Cal OES C-S-T-I learning management system. Be ready. Train C-S-T-I. To continue, have an unaltered grant subaward programmatic narrative and grant subaward budget narrative in accordance with the instructions in part two, section B of the RFP. Cal OES cannot accept alternate or modified forms without undermining its neutral competitive selection process and will not read pages more than the maximum allowed. One proposal must be emailed to Leistos, California. Cal OES.ca.gov by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 20, 2023. There's that date again. Proposals must be attached as a single PDF document and contain all the forms outlined in part two RFP instructions. Emails should identify the name of the RFP and the subject line. An example is LC-RFP-MyBrothersHouseOrganization. Funding for the LC program is that 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 or established new California CERT programs. There is no match required for the LC program. The use of funds, a fund may be used to increase the capacity for 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-the-state travel or for the cost of food and beverages at grant subaward sponsors' conferences, meetings, or office functions. Eligible activities would be training funded by use to register for CERT-related trainings, i.e. CERT basic training, advance CERT modules, first aid, CPR, and disaster response training, or to travel to and from CERT-related trainings, meetings, and workshops, also to attend at least as California training classes monthly throughout the entire grant subaward performance period. Equipment funds may be used to the procurement of personal protection equipment as needed for their 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 be used to grant funding to provide liability coverage for CERT volunteers in their program. The coverage can supplement the California Disaster Service Worker Volunteer Program to provide background checks for CERT volunteers in their program. Disaster Deployment, CERT program may also use funding to create, develop, maintain a CERT for CERT volunteers for disaster deployment or to cover the cost of deploying CERT volunteers for emergency disaster response. Staffing, CERT programs may use funding to hire staff that manage all aspects of their CERT programs. Accommodations, CERT programs may use funds to provide accommodations for training participants that have access or functional needs, such as ELS interpretation. California Listo's grant program materials and communication requirements. This is Listo's California branded materials is required and will be provided by a CaloES vendor. Further information will be provided once a vendor is selected. If the subrecipient chooses to produce their own materials with Listo's California grant program funds, they must receive prior approval to CaloES, including the Listo's California logo. Subrecipient must respond within five business days to all CaloES required programmatic requests. For training, the subrecipient must incorporate the materials and resources developed for and provided by Listo's California grant program in an emergency preparedness response recovery and mitigation training conducted with grant funding. There are three progress reports required for the program. See the chart below for the report period. Notice the June 1st, 2023 through November 30th, 2023 gives a due date of December 31st that gives you a 30-day leeway in order to be able to get your reports in. My suggestion is that you do it towards the first of the month so these aren't forgotten. Engagement reporting, subrecipients are required to submit data directly through an online database immediately after an engagement, activity, or training commences, or no later than the end of each month. Engagement reports are based upon direct public engagement activities. You'll notice here that here is an example of engagement tracking and what the primary reason and information is on an engagement and what it is. This link is available in your RFP. I would all suggest that all of you take a moment and look for it. To determine that constitutes an engagement, which is the previous form I just showed you, refer to the primary guidance for defining and tracking engagement slink listed on the request for proposal. The link will direct you to the document that outlines what is considered an engagement. Examples would be training, exercises, events, or demonstrations. Best to be the link to make sure what qualifies. The next up is your proposal rating sheet. This is a competitive grant process, meaning that your applications will be ranked in comparison to all other applications received. Each of the above categories contain questions assigned a point value. The point scale is divided up to five columns labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. The applicant response to each question is evaluated on the following criteria. Absent, the response does not address the specific question or a response is not provided. Unsatisfactory, the response does not completely address the question. The information presented does not provide a good understanding of the applicant's intent. Satisfactory, the response addresses the question and provides a good understanding of the applicant's intent. The response adequately supports the proposal and the intent of the program above average. The response is above average and provides a clear and detailed understanding of the applicant's intent. The response presents a persuasive argument that supports the proposal and the intent of the program. And then there's my favorite, excellent. The response is outstanding with clear, detailed, and relevant information. The response presents a compelling argument that supports the proposal and the intent of the program. Here on this spreadsheet, we have the list of the forms that will need to be filled out for the one PDF submitted with your application. All these forms need to be filled out and are found at the bottom of your RFP. Final funding decisions are made by the director of Cal OES. Funding decisions are based on the following. The rank score of the proposal. Consideration of priorities and geographical distribution specific to this RFP. And then prior negative administrative and programmatic performance, if applicable. Once 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. Please mark this down. The proposal package must be received electronically no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, March 20th, 2023, to list those grants at Cal OES.ca.gov. Questions concerning the RFP, the process or the programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to list those grants at Cal OES.ca.gov. Cal OES staff cannot assist the applicant with 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 completion of the RFP process. This concludes the training on the RFP. William, take it away. Thanks, Katie. Hi, my name is William Chan and I'm the program specialist for these those grants units. Today we are going to give a presentation on the grant subword proposal process. Today we are going to provide guidance on the components that are required of the proposal and we're going to review those forms that we referenced just a moment ago and familiarize you with some tools that are available. Process of submitting a proposal begins with a request for proposal being released. This is their competitive process. Within the request for a proposal, you'll find a fund source information, the background of the program, requirements, expected deliverables, and instructions on how to apply. So where do you find a request for proposal? It can be found on the Cal OES website at Cal OES.ca.gov and in 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 those California RFPs by scrolling down on this 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 may type the name of the program, the box, or if you know two letter program acronym, you may type that in instead. Although we're talking about a request for proposal, I'd like to draw your attention to the mailing list. When the Cal OES released a request for proposal or a competitive process for funding, we send an email notification to anyone who has signed up for a mailing list. Please know the only time you'll send an email is when we release a new request for proposal, then the solicitation to fill a position for one of our advisory bodies, or when we post a public meeting notice. If you're a nice sign up already, we strongly encourage you to do it so that you can receive these important notices. Cal OES released the least those California search support grant program request for proposal on February 8th and applicants have approximately six weeks to put the proposal packet together from that date. Once complete, applicants will need to email a copy of the proposal packet to the lease those grants unit at lease those grants at Cal OES.ca.gov. Let's talk about the request for proposal or RFP itself. The RFPS reports. Part one is what you have to do. It explains the public records act, submission deadline, eligibility, grant, subboard, performance period, funding, and programmatic requirements. Part two, refers to policies or administrative requirements and includes references to the subrecipient handbook, components that are required with your proposal, policies concerning the budget, administrative requirements, and required or additional forms that may apply to your proposal. Part three is the checklist that includes a list of the documents that are required with your proposal and links to the most current forms. This is an example of what the checklist looks like. It includes all the required components and links to each form. Under the additional form 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 will not need to include this form with your proposal. But those of you who have 501c3 status, once we receive your proposal, there's some status verification that your program specialist would do right away. If you do not have a 501c3 status, this will not apply to you. In the next few slides, I will go over what exactly we are looking for on this site. The purpose of this is because the state of California accounting system requires information on this site to be consistent and current in order to pay you when you submit your report expenditures and requests for funds. Your program specialist will verify that DOJ verification that the website listed in the slide here can be verified using your FEIN number, your employer identification number, or organization name. You will have to select charity registration as to the registration type. When we check your registration status, we are 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, this makes us sad because we will need you to update your status so that we can continue to process your proposal. The program specialist contacts you to update your status. Please make sure you address this immediately. As we do not have control over delinquent 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 are selected to receive an award. There are eight forms that are required with every request for a proposal, regardless of the program type. Please note that most programs will require additional forms, so read your request for a proposal thoroughly. In these next slides, we're going to tell you about some of the more common mistakes that we find with these eight forms so that you know what we are looking for when we review your proposal. You can find these forms at the very end of the RFP in the checklist section with a hyperlink to each form. But first, here are a few helpful reminders. One, read the entire request for a proposal to understand what is required for the program. Number two, please know that all forms have instructions, so if you have any questions about a form, look at the instructions first, and then email your program specialist for help. And number three, use current forms. Cal OES updates our forms often. If you are using one of our forms that you've saved on your desktop as possible, may have been outdated, you'll be asked to redo the form, which may delay the processing of your award if selected. Okay, let's start with the grant subwar face sheet. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the face sheet is on the right. Three of the most common mistakes we find on the grant subwar face sheet include, the last four digits of the zip code are often missing. Please be sure to go to the US Postal Services website to look at your plus four and include that on your face sheet. Disaster slash program title needs to match the name of the program you are applying for. This can be found in the request for a proposal. For example, if you're applying to the Lease Dose California Cert Support Grant LC program, then write Lease Dose California Cert Support Grant LC program on line five. Indirect costs and federal approved ICR. This is where you will indicate whether you're using the 10% de minimis rate or your agency's federally approved indirect costs rate agreements. A copy of the approved ICR negotiating agreements must be enclosed in your application if you are using a federally approved ICR. If you will not be claiming indirect costs under this award type in NA. Okay, this is the table that appears on the face sheet. We zoomed in so that you can see easier. This is where you'll find, this is where your funding information will go and you can find all this information in your request for a proposal. Please note that the grant year and fund source are now drop down boxes and columns A can be typed in and column G will automatically total for you. In your request for a proposal in part one section F, find the information, you will find the information needed to correctly fill out the face sheet. This is an example of a grant subboard number. There is no need to fill in the subboard number in areas of the form requesting it. The subboard number is given once an applicant has been awarded grant funds. This is the grant subboard contact information form. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the form is on the right. There's lots of things to keep in mind. Remember to use the most updated forms from our website. Don't forget to write the entire nine digits of code number. Do not use white out to fix corrections. On lines one and two, make sure the number one grant subboard director and the number two financial officer are different. They cannot be the same person. On lines two and five, make sure the number two financial officer and the number five executive director are different. They cannot be the same person. The number seven chair person also cannot be listed again in any of the other positions numbers one through six. Leave the grant subboard number section blank. This will be filled in for you if you are awarded. Lastly, please make sure the official designated by the governing board on line six is the person who signs the grant subboard face sheet. This is a 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 subboard director and financial officer are the same authorized personnel. We can also alter individuals that have authority to sign on behalf of the grant subboard director or financial officer. Just let the grant subboard director and financial officer cannot be the same person. You cannot have one person being authorized signer on 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 so when you have a different authorized signer 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 subboard 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 the change has been made internally in your organization. This is the current list of certification and assurance of compliance documents we have. A common mistake is signing and submitting the wrong one. You must receive the one that is tied to the fund source of your program. The checklist in part three of the request for proposal will tell you exactly which one is needed. Another mistake is using an old version of a document. The way to ensure you have the current version is by downloading it from our website. Again, the checklist will have the link for the correct and current version. Please be sure you are 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. That recipient is the name of your agency. Please have this match what is written on the face sheet. The applicant should complete the Cal OES program name and the grant subboard performance period. The grant subboard number should be left blank. Your program specialist will fill this in for you. Ensure appropriate signers have signed a document. This would be the official designee by the governing board. For cert program, it must be the governing board chair that signs this section. All of these 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 would need to be downloaded. The budget is normally the next document in your proposal. This is form 2-106B grant subboard budget pages single fund source. The Cal OES has three budget categories category A as personnel cost category B is operating costs and category C is equipment costs. 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 that category. All three categories must be included in your application packet. The budget spreadsheet template will automatically add the columns on each tab and please show the equation on each line item as to how you got the total. The personnel category is where you'll want to put salaries, benefits, and overtime for people you employ at your agency. This is also where you will put your volunteer hours. The operating category is the meat and potatoes of your program. This is where you'll want to put just about everything else including rents, travel, training, office supplies, etc. The equipment category is where you'll put non-expendable property having a useful life of more than one year and a cost of $5,000 or more per unit. Just to be clear if you're buying six laptops at a cost of $1,000 each for a total of $6,000 we would put those laptops in the operating expense category not in the equipment as the laptops per unit price is less than $5,000. Now let's talk about the information we need to see on the budget pages. The gold bubbles you'll see on the next few slides contain elements that need to be included in each calculation for each line item. In this example we have a program advocate position that is making $4,000 per month. Please note that the salary cost can be shown as hourly rates, a monthly salary, or an annual salary. Then we want to see the duration in this example the program advocate would be paid for 12 months which probably matches the length of the performance period. 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 on this program. Then finally you'll want to include a brief description of the line item and explain how to further the goals and objectives of the program. For the benefit calculation you need to include the benefit rates. In this example the rate is 22% multiplied by the total salaries of all employees and the budget that receives benefits. In this example it's $200,000. And finally you'll want to include a brief description of what benefits are included. Unless you're paying the volunteers the salary you should have it in the operating section. Volunteers are also captured in budget category A. The first element needed is the rate that you have valued your volunteers at. Please note that this rate cannot exceed what it costs your agency to have a staff person doing the same job that you can't include both salary and benefits when calculating the volunteer rates. In this example the value of volunteers is $12 per hour. Multiply by the number of hours to be charged to the grants. In this example 1200 hours and then include a description of activities the volunteers will be doing. Now we're going to show you a few operating expense examples. So operating volunteers that are being charged for the following per diem gas mileage should be titled as shown on this slide. Title as volunteer, title of what they're being charged for. In this example they're charged to per diem and the number of name, number of trading they are attending. Again the elements in the gold bubble needs to be included in each calculation for each line item. For this example we have postage. The amount for postage is $250 per month multiplied by the duration and this is in this example it's 12 months which probably matches the length of the performance period multiplied by how much other postage will be charged to the grants. Rent is another very common operating expense. For rents you would need to add up the full-time equivalents or FTEs 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 sub-recipient handbook. And then multiply that by the amount you pay for rent per square foot. Please note that $2 is up to amounts and you should use your actual rate in your calculation. If your landlord charges you 65 cents per square foot that's the rate you need to use. Finally you will multiply it by the duration and in this example it's 12 months. If you're claiming indirect costs under this award please make sure you're calculating the total correctly. Common mistake is multiplying the total awarded amounts by the indirect cost rates. That is not how you calculate the indirect cost. You will first need to calculate your total direct costs. To do this add up any personnel 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 calculation they got $233,215. Once you figure out your direct costs you simply multiply the total by the ICR or federally approved ICR. In this case 10%. Please make sure the ICR matches what you entered in section 7 of the face sheet that if you're claiming a federally approved ICR you must include a copy of your approved ICR negotiating agreement in your application. Some final reminders about your budgets. Please be sure you refer to the RFP to identify required and 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 is due to rounding errors so please be sure you're checking the amounts entered in your budget columns. Please include expenses in the correct category and lastly all budget law items require a justification and calculation. The request for proposal requires a budget narrative which allows the sub-recipient to provide details about their budget. The budget narrative typically includes how the budget supports objectives and activities, the need for administrative costs, and the necessity for subcontracts. The most common mistake we see with the budget narratives are that sometimes they don't match what's on the budget pages. For example let's say you've emailed your proposal packet to the program unit and during the review your specialist determines that several corrections are needed to your budget pages. You make those changes for your specialist but now your budget your budget narrative 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 program act narrative where you provide details about how you will meet the objectives of the program. Please be sure you're reading your RFP and that your narrative addresses each of the questions from the RFP. You have often seen applicants use the same narrative that they had used the previous year or even passed for another grant that does not address any or all the questions from the RFP. Next is the grant management assessment form for Title II CFR section 200.332. Cal OES is required to evaluate the risk of non-compliance of federal statutes, regulations, grant terms, and conditions posed by each sub-recipient of pass-through funding. This assessment is made in order to determine and provide an appropriate level of technical assistance, training, and grant oversight to applications for the award reference above. The questions are related to your organization's experience in the management of federal grant awards. This questionnaire must be completed in return with your grant proposal materials. For purposes of completing this questionnaire, grant manager is the individual who has primary responsibility for day-to-day administration of the grants. Bookkeeper slash accounting staff means the individual who has responsibility for reviewing and terming expenditures to be charged to the grant award and organization refers to the applicants applying for the award and or the governmental implemented agency as applicable. So we 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 proposal to find out if additional forms may apply for your organization. The 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 listosgrants at listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov if you have questions. We are here to help. Use the checklist in part five of the request for proposal. Okay, great job William and Katie. So this concludes the request for proposal and application overview training for the listos california sturt support grant program. This presentation has been recorded and will be available for on-demand viewing later on the Cal OES website. And I want to thank everyone for attending today and good luck on all of your proposals. We look forward to seeing them. Goodbye everyone.