 Thanks for joining us for this webinar on how to manage your north central region, say your youth educator grant and appreciate all of you who are able to join us today. This will be recorded and we'll post it on our website and we'll send you a link to it and then we can also send the link to anyone who wasn't able to join today. So I am Joan Benjamin and I coordinate the youth educator grant program, but not for long I'm going to be retiring in a couple of months and Liz Brownlee will be taking over. So I'm going to let Liz introduce herself. Hey everybody I'm Liz, I'm a farmer in southeast Indiana, and I worked as an educator on a farm for a number of years so I really love what you all are doing I'm excited to help take care of you help get your your grants cared for behind the scenes so that you can do your good work. Okay, great. Thank you Liz. All right, Marie. We're going to just go through and introduce staff people that you may be working with through the time that you have your green. Plan again I'm the communication specialist for North Central region Sarah, I'm located in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And I am the person who will be running the zoom today, but moving forward I help promote your grant out to the public through news releases press releases social media video all that good stuff. And if you have questions related to outreach and communications about your project. I'm the person who would have you with that. Alright, June. Good afternoon my name is Jean Andreas and I'm a contracts and grants person at ncr Sarah I am located in St. Paul. And I will be reviewing all your budgets and then contacting you with questions. And if there are any if not I'll be contacting you to say I'm sending you a contract and please fill out the paperwork so it will probably be a couple weeks before that happens. So don't expect anything like in the next. Maybe not until the last week of March. Funded 43 farmer rancher grants and they start before you guys do so I've got to get through those budgets first. Thanks, Jane. Aaron. Hi everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Aaron Schneider, I am an administrative associate with the Sarah team. I work from home in Wisconsin and Madison. I also farm and I am part of the reporting. Care team. I love that expression was so I especially if you have questions about our reporting website. I'm in it often, and I know that you all are maybe in it. It's your twice a year to share updates on how things are going so if you have questions feel free to reach out, we might be hearing from me about reminders or just kind of on the back end here to help. Thanks. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and get started and I want to remind you this is being recorded. And also, if you have questions along the way, feel free to ask you can put those in the chat. And Marie will let me know if there are any questions there. The first thing I wanted to let you know is where the north central region Sarah offices are located. Liz is located in Indiana. The main offices for north central region Sarah are Minnesota at the University of Minnesota, and that is because University of Minnesota is the host institution for north central region Sarah. So if you have any questions, check or other things from us they will be coming from University of Minnesota. And also there's an office at the University of Missouri for our professional development program. I'm located in Missouri at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, but that office will be closing after I retire. I'm going to walk you through the grant finances, including receiving your grant payments how you request an extension or a budget change and the steps for reporting on your grant. This is probably going to take about 20 minutes to go through this. And you're welcome to ask questions now or later, you can always contact Liz or me to get other answers to your questions. Okay, next slide please. So the Sarah program operates a little differently than many other grant programs, which usually reimburse you after you've spent the funds. But for this one because we want to be able to give people funds to start their grant project. We do it through a contract so you get a contract to sign and a form stating that you've started your project. You sign and return those and they're approved, then you get the first payment of your grant, which is 75% of your grant. So then, once you start your project, and it's because it is a contract, you are going to receive a 1099 form for the grant payments so you have any questions about that contact a tax professional to see how that might affect taxes. So if you have any receipts and invoices for your own tax purposes, we don't need to see them we don't want to see them all we need is the budget information you're going to provide in your reports showing how you've sent spent your grant funds only. So, at the end of the first year of your project, you need to submit a progress report and a progress report budget. When it's finished, we ask you to submit a final report and a final budget. And at that point, all of the grant funds should be spent that final payment is a reimbursement. And when we approve your final report and final budget, then we release the final 25% of your grant. And your final budget should show how you spent all of your grant funds. If you have a one year project, you can skip the progress report and go right to the final report. And I'll be talking more about reporting as we go on through here. Okay, next slide. So budget changes there are often changes and I'm sure you're aware the prices and everything keeps changing very quickly. So if there are changes to materials or things that you're using. You can make minor changes yourself if there are changes of $1,000 or of less than $1,000, those are usually fine, unless it's something that just isn't allowed through the grant program. If there are changes of $1,000 or more, you need to seek approval first and so we'll ask you to contact Liz Brownlee and make sure the change is okay before you make that change. In the notes section of this presentation, you'll see the contact information for Liz, her email and phone number. So we will make available to you this PowerPoint with all of the notes of what I'm talking about. So we want you to be successful. So we'll work with you on budget changes. So don't worry if something needs to change just contact us and we can tell you most changes are fine. Things do change as you go along. And so we, you know, we're used to having budget changes. Next slide please. All right, no cost extensions. So for this grant program, you have a start date of March 15 of 2024. That's the day you can start your grant project. You could actually start earlier but only funds that you spent from March 15 on can be charged to your grant project. The end date for your project is February 15 of 2026. So if it turns out you are not able to complete your project by February 15 of 2026 you can ask for a no cost extension. And that simply means that you're asking for more time but not more funds. So this can be due to something going wrong with the weather or maybe you're working with other educators and some of them change jobs or something like this. So if you do need a no cost extension, those are typically six to 11 months. So what you would do is turn in a request to Liz and say that you're requesting a no cost extension for your project and you would use your project number which is the YENC number that you were given when you got your notification email and that YENC number just stands for Youth Educator North Central for the North Central Region. It's followed by two digits that are the year. So for you it would be YENC 24 and your grant number. So for instance it might be YENC 24, 215. So for example you would include then tell Liz in your email how long an extension you would like and then a brief explanation of why you need the extension and she'll let you know if that's approved. Most extensions are approved. It might take a week or two to get that approval to you but usually they're pretty quick to get approved for you. Alright then I'm going to go over the reporting system. We use an online reporting system and we ask you to provide a progress report at the end of each year that your project is active. So if you do happen to get an extension you would need to turn in one additional progress report. Your reports are approved by an administrator. They cannot be seen until we approve them. So if you have questions or worried about something being right don't worry about it. We'll look it over and if we have questions we'll let you know before we approve it. Next slide. So the reports are a really important part of SARE grants because this one way that you can share the results of your project with other educators so they can benefit from the research or the education efforts that you're doing. So to access the reporting site you go to projects.sare.org and log in that you're also going to see that there's a help area where you can click on in order to find out more details about reporting. So I'm going to walk you through this and if you click on help it's up at the top right of the page once you log in and you can look up how to fill out the for the reporting instructions. You'll see in this reporting system instructions that are shown here, you have a profile, and then you have a project overview and in the project overview it just shows you the various parts that you can access. There's the project report information products, and these are information products that are produced as part of your grant project. What I mean by an information product is something that perhaps you've published, like if you put together a publication, something along those lines. If it's something smaller, you know, like a publicity piece just in that you want to attach just include that in your report that wouldn't be considered a information product. You'll also see there's a list for benefits and impacts and commodities and practices, and these are just ways for people to help search your for your project so we ask you to fill out these lists if you haven't. Let's go to the next page. So when you click on projects.sare.org this is what you're going to see this is the login page. And if you happen to forget your password or your username on the lower right you'll see that you can click to get those back. Hopefully the username is your email the one that you are using for all your share correspondence so the one that you put in the system when you put in your application and your password and again you can reset or search for it by clicking on the bottom right hand area. If you have any trouble you can email projects.sare.projects.sare.org and that's listed on the website as well. And that those are our it people who can help you if you're having difficulty with something within the site, but we can also answer any questions you have about how to use this system. Okay, next page. Once you click on login you'll see a list of the projects that you've been involved with if this is your first project, you'll only see one listed here. On the right hand side in the box that's your profile, you can change that profile information if you need to that's your address, email and phone number. So this reporting system uses progressive reporting in instead of a separate annual report and final report. You fill out the information that you have at the progress report stage and then you'll add to that to create a final report. And as I mentioned before if you have a one year project, you can just go straight to the final report and fill in all the headings and questions at one time. All right, let's go to the next page. When you click on your report link, it's going to take you to this page and you'll see that this project overview shows you when your reports are due. And it also has a working version listed under your report vision. So here you see this person had turned in a report that was approved and it shows the date it was approved. And then it creates a working version that you can work in and make changes to. And then when you save that, that's what becomes your, your next report. So you can see here that there are another area here called the information products where you can add a product and those are standalone items like a book or a bulletin or some other education product you might have produced. But if it's just a graph or table or something that you're illustrating, put that right into your report. Instead of under information products and under information products, you'll also see the sign media release forms. This is for photo release forms. If you have photos of youth in your project and we'll talk more about that later. Here's where you also see the benefits and impacts and commodities and practices listed. Again, this is just so that people can search your project. These are just checklists we asked you to complete. All right, so when you're ready to begin your report, you click on working version, and that's the version you can work in. So let's see the next slide. You'll see in this particular example, the person has not completed their benefits or impacts or commodities or practices checklist. So it says at the top that those aren't completed. And that you have to complete them in order to submit a report. So you will have to complete those checklists. You'll see the project information has edit next to it and each heading has that edit button next to it. When you click on it, it will open up a section with a text box so you can add text and other items to it. Some of the information from your proposal has been automatically filled in here and you'll see, for instance, the summary and project objectives have automatically been filled in. That was in your proposal that will automatically port over and already be in your project report. If you have any changes to these areas, you can click on edit and make the change and then be sure to click on save or it won't save your work. Mostly in an area like this with the summary and project objectives, you won't need to make any change so you can move on. Click on the project overview in the upper right hand corner. And that will take you back to the project overview page or just scroll down to the next area. Next slide please. So if you scroll down to the next area, you'll see this heading cooperators. This is if there's people helping you with your project to play a major role. This is not for people who are project coordinators. This is for others who might be helping you. If there are any, you can click on edit and add their contact information. If not, just go on and you'll see the budget. The budget also comes over from your proposal and is entered here. And then Jean will make any updates needed if there were changes needed in order to put it correctly into your contract. So that approved budget column will show your contract budget, what was finally approved. And up at the top you'll see it says contract budget has been approved and that's what is in the approved budget column. We're also in the process of adding a new column called revised budget, which will be there to show changes that were made. So at this point, you don't have to do anything, but when you fill out your progress report, you will fill in what you spent in the first year of your project. If there's changes, you can note that in the notes column to the far right. The budget is only visible to administrators, so don't worry about anybody else seeing your budget. But if there is information that you're adding that you think other people would like to know about, make sure you put it in the narrative so they can see it and not just in the notes section. Making changes to the budget like adding your first year expenses, you'll click on edit to open a box where you can start adding information and go to the next slide please. Joan, someone has their hand raised. Yes, Emma, you have a question. Thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm. Did you say that the approved budget would automatically populate from the application. It will automatically populate and then if there were changes that needed to be made, because as Jean prepared your contract, she will enter those changes in here. So what you will see in the approved budget column is the approved contract budget that will match your contract. So yes, you don't have to do anything there that will automatically be there for you. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, next slide please. All right, so when you click on edit in the budget area, it opens up this screen which presents each item vertically so you'll see it has the budget category and description we we've also combined those columns recently so those will those two will be together. It will show you your approved budget and then you can see here where the top arrow is pointing it says grant funds spent year one and that's where you can enter what you spent in the first year. And if there's changes, you can enter that in the notes section. When you're done click on save to save your work. If you have major changes of $1,000 or more be sure to contact Liz first before you make those changes. And the save button will be at the top or the bottom of the page. Next slide. Though as you keep scrolling down this report page you'll see these other headings where it asks you about educational and outreach activities learning outcomes project outcomes participants and information products. So, for a progress report you would just fill out the areas where you have information for if you don't have your project outcomes yet then you, you don't have to fill that area in yet. There's two options for entering information you can just enter information directly into the report which is the preferred method, or you can create a document like a word document and copy and paste but it is possible you might lose some formatting if you do it that way. So, at each of these sections where you have information you're ready to add, you can click on edit, add the information, click on save. And then if you need to make a change later just click on edit again and you can go back in make your change and click save again. All right, let's go on to the next slide. In this learning outcomes if you open that up it's asking you for some numbers here's like the number of youth who reported changes in knowledge attitude skills or an awareness. So of course you might not have that in the first year of your project. And then it has a drop down list asking you which areas they reported changes in so you can fill that out as well. And then use a text box there to explain the kind of changes that you saw. And then again, click save. So under results and discussion you would explain the results you have so far in a progress report. There's also a cancel button there if you hit cancel it'll just take you back out and you won't it won't save your work. So let's go to the next page or in sections where you see an add media button where this arrow is pointing under the results and discussion. You can add photos there you can add tables or other attachments by clicking on this add media button. Let's go to the next page. So when you click on add media you have the option to click on this upload files where the left hand button left hand arrow is pointing and then select files where the middle arrow is pointing and that lets you select files from your computer to add. And then we'll add it to the what's called the media library. And what's here is a showing a illustration of a plot layout. And you'll click insert into post but before you do that on the right hand side you'll see that it automatically puts a title in based on whatever your document is called. And then it asks for a caption. This particular caption doesn't go into your report instead this caption is to help label your photo or whatever you're inserting and helps you find it in the media library later so it's good to add a caption. And then you click on insert into post. There's no trouble with any of this. In the report. You, as I mentioned at the upper right hand corner there's a help button and this is listed in the notes section where you can click on two different links one is inserting figures graphs and other images and videos and the other is inserting tables into your report so all this is laid out for you. You don't have to remember all this. All right next slide. Once you click on insert into post it's going to put this image into your report. So before you click the add media button put your cursor where you want this image to appear. And then put a caption under it like this one is I plan to set up the experiment I'm going to use the plot map as shown. And so people know what it is that you're talking about. Okay, next slide. And we've had a change recently about inserting photos that include youth who are young people 18 and under 18 so I'm going to ask Maria our communication specialist to tell you a little bit more about that. Hi, thanks everyone. So just to be clear, you're not required to submit photos with your grant report. It's certainly not a requirement. If you decide you'd like to submit photos. That's great and we love to see them. If the photos that you're uploading depict you. So that means that the youth are present in the photos you can see who they are, they're recognizable, then an additional photo release form is required. So if you understand that many of you already have photo release forms that you use for your organization that you might pass out to parents to have signed to give consent. Those forms don't meet the requirement for Sarah. We have an additional form that needs to be signed and completed. If you choose to upload images of youth to your report. And so that form will be provided to you so that you can use it and get it signed. You can tell me if you lose track of it and just need another copy. It's on the website, but we'll make it widely available to you. And then it's up to you if you decide you want to upload those images. If you don't upload the form with them. We will, we will gently remind you that we can't publish those images without the consent form attached. When you are uploading the images. There are a couple of spots in your report where you will attach the signed media release forms. You can either attach them in your project overview under signed media release forms or in the body of your report as you're going through your report. You'll just attach the signed media release forms. So that the images that are in the report have the signed release forms associated with them. And any questions about that can be directed to me or Liz or, you know, whoever you happen to reach out to we can help you with that. Thanks, Marie. And in that photo release form it's going to ask you for your Sarah project number. The name of the photo or video, a description of it, and then the signature of the parent or legal guardian of the child. So you will have to get a signature from the parent. Okay, next slide. So when you completed your report, you go to submit report where that top arrow is pointing. If the report is incomplete. If there's something missing the system will show you and and say this this piece is missing. And then you can have an opportunity to add that information before you submit it. When you're done, click submit report. And it will send us an email saying this report is ready for review. All right, next slide. If you're not ready to submit the report report you can click on cancel or if you submit it and then you remember oh I forgot to add this then click on go to unsubmit report and you can unsubmit report make the change. Click on save and then submit the report. Or it you know you can also contact us and we can unsubmit it and and you or approve it and so that you can work on it some more. So you are welcome to add information after your project ends and we welcome that. So anytime later even after your final report is approved and you've got your final payment if there's something that you want to add to the report you can go back in and add information and we'd love to hear how these projects are working out not required at all, but if you do get a chance to do that people love to hear more about your project and how it's going. So, when you submit the final report there's no working version created at that point so then you start a new version by clicking on start a new draft report and that will let you add more information, and then you can edit save and submit as you have before. Feel free to ask questions anytime. Let's go to the last slide. And I know this probably seems overwhelming with all this reporting information but we can walk you through it and we're glad to do a zoom meeting with you or talk to you on the phone if you're having issues. If you run into a glitch, we'd much rather have you call us than spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. Occasionally there is a glitch in the system and we don't want you to waste your time trying to sort out what's happening when we can tell you very quickly if there's a way to get to get to what you need to do. So any questions. Well we're looking forward to hearing from all of you and how things are going. Ask us questions anytime that's why we're here. And we're glad to help. We hope you explore the reporting system there's a lot of great reports on there from other youth educators, as well as reports from all of our other grant programs from across not just the north central region but the entire country. Okay, yeah, you have some budget questions go ahead. Just realized with my budget that I'd like to. I'm working with bees and I forgot to include anything for safety equipment. So I'd like to take some of the money for I allotted for three hives so I'd like to take some money and move it over to safety equipment because I'm working with kids and camp. I'm not sure how I overlook that part, but it's under $1000 for that. So how, you know, and this can be, you know, on my own I can email one of you regarding, you know, switching. Okay, this is going to be spent on veils and gloves versus a hive. Gene at this point, would you rather make that change now or have him just put that in his progress report. No. So what we will do is when I contact you, you'll remind me that we had that we talked about this during this conversation or during this webinar. We can fix the budget before we submit it as a contract. So if we make adjustments to the budget, I just want you guys to know that we can't change the total amount of your award. So we can work within the total amount to get to get the budget that the way that you need it to be, and what's allowable near the program for your project so. So when I email you, we can talk about it then and get it set up then. Anybody else have questions. Not. Thank you very much. We'll send you a link to this presentation in case you need it. And then you should be good to go. You'll be hearing from Jean, if she has any questions about your budget or to find out how you prefer to receive your contract. And you're, you'll all hear from me no matter what, whether the budgets, dandy or not quite so. So, I appreciate your time. Likewise, it's good to get a first chance to meet you guys and we're here so eager to talk with you more. Good luck with your project. Thank you.