 Good afternoon. This training is for those of you that are interested in applying for the Listos California Cert Support Program. My name is Cindy Logan, and I'm the division chief over the Listos Grants Unit at the Cal OES. Today we have Waheeda Nawad, unit chief over the Listos Grants Unit, and William Chan, program representative. Before we start, I want to go over some housekeeping items. Number one, the presentation is being recorded and will be available for on-demand viewing later. Everyone who has joined us is on listen mode. We can't hear or see you, and the raised hand feature is off as well. This training is an overview of the request for proposal and forms only. We are unable to assist applicants with the actual preparation of their proposal. Because this is a competitive process, we are unable to answer questions during this training. Please do not ask questions in the chat box. All questions concerning the RFP, the process, or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to ListosGrants at CalOES.ca.gov. And we are only able to respond to technical questions about the RFP during the time between the publication date and the completion of the RFP process. With that said, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Waheeda. She's going to go ahead and present the request for proposal overview training. Thank you, Cindy. Today is February 8th, 2022, physical year 21, Listos, California, support grant LC program, request for proposal overview training. The agenda here today is to go over ListosGrants unit and contact information, program overview, purpose of the grant, eligibility criteria, funding for LC program, use of funds, eligibility activities, reporting requirements, proposal rating sheet, checklist of required CalOES forms. ListosGrants unit and contact information. The ListosGrants unit is responsible for the overall grant management of the Listos California statewide grant, LS program, Listos California target grant, LG program, Listos California tribal grant, LI program, and Listos California search support grant, LC program. Questions concerning the RFP, the process or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to ListosGrants at CalOES.ca.gov. CalOES staff cannot assist the applicant with the actual preparation of their proposal. CalOES can only respond to technical questions about the RFP during the period of time between the publication date and completion of the RFP process. Program overview, fiscal year 2021-22, Budget Act included a $25 million ongoing general fund appropriation to the CalOES. $500,000 Listos California search support LC program via competitive process. Applicants can apply for up to $15,000. Grant sub-award performance period is from June 1st, 2022 through December 31st, 2023. Submission deadline is March 1st, 2022 by 5 p.m. via email at ListosGrants.ca, sorry, at ListosGrants at CalOES.ca.gov. Purpose of the grant, 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 and 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 ESL interpretation and building capacity to respond to disasters. For a proposal to be eligibility criteria, for a proposal to be considered read and rated, 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 fiscal agent representing the CERT program. For new CERT programs, approval from the California State CERT Administrator must be included in the grant submission. 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 exercise. Examples are fire suppression, medical triage and crimping, including a disaster simulation drill or utilizing the approved CERT training curriculum. Have an unaltered grant subaward programmatic narrative and a grant subaward budget narrative in accordance with the instructions on part two, section B, of the RFP. Caloas 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 listosgrantsatcaloas.ca.gov by 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1st, 2022. Proposals must be attached as a single document. An example is a PDF and contain the forms outlined in part two of the RFP instructions. Emails should identify name of the RFP and the subject line. Example here is LC-RFP, my brother's house organization, the name of the RFP and the name of your organization. Funding for LC program, $500,000 is available available for the LC program for the grant subaward performance period. Applicants may apply for up to $15,000 for the 19 month grant subaward performance period to enhance existing or establish new California CERT programs. There is no match required for the LS program. Use of funds, funds may be used to increase the capacity for CERT programs to provide CERT training to vulnerable and underserved populations and to approach to purchase personal protection equipment, background checks and liability coverage for CERT volunteers. Funds may not be used for out of state travel or for the cost of foods and or beverages at grant subaward sponsored conference meetings or office functions. Eligibility activities, training, funds may be used to register for CERT related trainings. An example CERT basic training, advanced CERT modules, first aid CPR and disaster response training to travel to and from CERT related trainings, meetings and workshops. Equipments, funds may be used for the procurement of personal protection equipment as needed for their CERT programs, CERT related trainings, and CERT related training equipment and items that support in-person training sessions, 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 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 development, CERT programs may use funding to create, develop, maintain a cater of CERT volunteers for disaster deployment. 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 program. Accommodations, CERT programs may use funding to provide accommodations for training participants that have access or functional needs such as ESL interpretations. Reporting requirement, there are three progress reports required for the program. See the chart below for report period and due dates. You can also find this in the RFP. Proposal rating sheet, this is a competitive grant process meaning your applications will be ranked in comparison to all other applications received. This is also located in the RFP. Proposal required documentation checklist is also located in the RFP and it's just to help you help keep track of all the documents that are required to be submitted with your RFP. Recommendations for award, 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 properties or geographical distribution specific to this RFP and prior negative administrative and 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. Proposal submission, the proposal package must be received electronically no later than 5 p.m. on Tuesday March 1st 2022 to list those grants at Cal OES.ca.gov. Questions, reminder questions concerning the RFP, the process or 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 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 completion of the RFP process. This concludes the California Cert Support Grant LC program RFP training. Training next up is the grant sub-award proposal training that will be administered by William Chan who is one of our program specialists in the LISDOS unit. Hi my name is William Chan and I'm the program specialist with LISDOS grants units. Today we are going to give a presentation on the grant sub-award proposal process. Today we are going to provide guidance on the components that are required of your proposal and we are going to review those forms that we referenced just a moment ago and familiarize you with some tools that are available. As of submitting a proposal begins with a request for a proposal being released. This is our competitive process. Within the request for a proposal you will find fund source information, the background of the program, requirements and expected deliverables and instructions on how to apply. Where do you find a request for proposal? It can be found on the Cal OES website at cal oes.ca.gov and on the upper right corner you will click the Cal OES divisions link. There you will scroll down and click on grants management. Then search for grants. Once you're on the search for grants landing page there are a couple of ways to search. You may search by scrolling through the table shown on the bottom of the screen or you may use search box. I like to use search box when I know which request for proposal I am looking for. You may type the name of the program in the box or if you know the two-letter program acronym you may type that in instead. Although we are talking about a request for proposal I'd like to draw your attention to the mailing list. When the Cal OES releases a request for a proposal or 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 will send an email is when we release a new request for proposal, sending a solicitation to fill 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 so that you can receive these important notices. Cal OES released the list of those California search grants program request for proposals on January 25th, 2022 and applicants have approximately five weeks to put the proposal packet together from that date. Once complete applicants will need to email a copy of the proposal packets to the list of those grants units. 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, grants sub or 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 budgets, administrative requirements and required or additional forms that may apply towards your proposal. Part three is a checklist that includes a list of the documents that are required with a 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 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 will not need to include this form with your proposal. For those of you who have 501 C3 status, once we receive your proposal there is some status verification that your program specialist would do right away. If you do not have a 501 C3 status this will not apply to you. In the next two slides I will go over what exactly we are looking for on the site. The purpose of this is because the state of California account system requires information on the site to be consistent and current in order to pay you when you submit your report 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 FEIN number, employer identification number or organization name. We will have to select charity registration as to the registration type. As a reminder the state of California account system requires information on this site to be consistent and current in order to pay you when you submit your report of expenditures and request for payment. 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. If the program specialist contacts you to update your status please make sure you 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 are selected to receive an award. There are nine forms required with this request for proposal regardless of program type. Please note that most programs will require additional forms so read your request for proposal thoroughly and 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're looking for when we review your proposal. You can find these forms at the very end of the RFP in a checklist section with a hyperlink to each form. But first here are a few helpful reminders. First read the entire request for proposal to understand what is required for the program. Second please note that all forms have instructions so that if you have questions about a form look at the instructions first and then email your program specialist for help. Third use current forms. Cal OES updates our forms often. If you are using one of our forms that you've saved on your desktop it's possible it 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 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 the last four digits of the zip code are often missing. Please be sure to go to the U.S. Postal Services website to look up 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 proposal. For example if you're applying to the Listos California Certs Grants LC program then write Listos California Certs Grants LC program on line 5. Indirect cost rates do not apply for applicants applying for this grant because this is a state funded grant. You can write NA here for not applicable. Okay this is a table that appears on the face sheet we we've zoomed in so that you can see it easier. This is where your funding information will go and you can find all this information in your request for proposal. Please note that the grant year and fund source are now dropped down boxes. Columns A and G can be typed in and 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 face sheet. This is an example of a grant sub award number. There is no need to fill in the sub award line area on the forms requesting it. The sub award number is given once an applicant has been awarded grant funds. This is the project contact information form. The instructions are on the left and the most recent version of the form is on the right. Here's 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. Keep in mind each point of contact must be someone different so that we are able to reach alternate if there is an urgent matter. No whiteout if you have to hand write something. On lines one and two make sure the grant sub award director and the financial officer are different. They cannot be the same person. Make sure to use the correct sub award number. This will be given to the approved applicants. The program specialist can fill this part out. And lastly please make sure the official designated by the governing board on line six is the person who signs the grant sub award face sheets. 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 project contact information form to ensure the grant sub award director and financial officer are the same authorized person now. You can list alternate individuals that have the authority to sign on grant sub award director and financial officers behalf. Just like the grant sub award director and financial officer cannot be the same person you cannot have one person being authorized signer in both areas of this form. It is best to have at least one authorized signer for each position. If someone is unavailable and you need to submit the report expenditures and requests for funds or make modifications it is easy to do so when you have a different authorized sorry it is easy to do so when you have a different authorized signer for each position. If not there's nothing you can do until they return. If you want to 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 so it is important to make a modification request immediately when the changes has been made internally in your organization. This is the 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's tied to the funding source for your program. The checklist and 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. Arrow one subrecipient is the name of your agency. Please have this match what is written on the face sheet. Arrow two pointing at line one the applicant should complete the Cal OES program's name and grant sub award performance period. The grant sub award number should be left blank. Your program specialist will fill this in for you. Arrow three ensure appropriate signers have signed the document. This would be the official designee by the governing board. And arrow four for cert programs it must be the governing board chair that signs this section. All this is California's certs grants LC program must complete and submit the cert certification form with their packet. This is an additional attachment to the RFP on our Cal OES website that would need to be downloaded. Budget is normally the next document in your proposal. Form two dash one oh six B grant sub award budget page single fund source. The Cal OES has three budget categories. Category A is personal services. Category B is operating expenses and category C is equipment. 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 non requested in that category. All three categories must be included in your application packet. The budget spreadsheet template will automatically add the columns to on each tab. Please show the equation on each line item as to how you got the total. The personal services category is where you'll want to put salary benefits and overtime for people you employ at your agency. This is also where you will put your volunteer hours. The operating expense category is the meat and potatoes of your program. This is where you'll want to put just about everything else including rent, travel, and training. The equipment category is where you'll put non expendable property having a useful life of more than one year and the cost of five thousand dollars or more per unit. Just be clear if you're buying six laptops at the cost of a thousand dollars each for a total of six thousand dollars you will put those laptops in the operating expense category as the per unit price is less than five thousand dollars. Now let's talk about the information we need to see on the budget pages. The goal bubbles you'll 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 a program advocate position that's making four thousand dollars per month. Please note that the salary can can be shown as an hourly rates, a monthly salary, or an annual salary. Then we want to see the duration. In this example the program advocate will 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 percent of the time on this program. Then finally we 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 will need to include the benefit rates. In this example the rate is 22 percent multiplied by the total salaries of all employees in the budget that receives benefits. In this example it's 200 000 dollars and finally you want to include a brief description of what benefits are included. Unless you're paying the volunteer a 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 that you have valued your volunteers at. Please know that this rate cannot exceed what it costs your agency to have a staff person doing the same job and that you can include both salary and benefits when calculating the volunteer rates. In this example the value of volunteers is 12 dollars per hour multiplied 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 expenses example. Volunteers that are charged for the following. Per diem gas and mileage should be titled as shown in the slide. Title as volunteer, title of what they are being charged for. In this example they are charging to per diem and the name number of training they are attending. The elements in the gold bubbles need to be included in each calculation for each line item. For this for this example we have postage. The amount for postage is 250 dollars per month multiplied by the duration. In this example it's 12 which probably matches the length of performance period multiplied by how much of the postage will be charged to the grants. Rents is another very common operating expense. For rents you would need to add up the full-time equivalents or FTEs in budget category A personal services. In this example we have 4.5 FTEs then multiply the 4.5 FTEs by 125 square feet per FTE which is what you which is what is allowed as per the subrecipient handbook and then multiply that by the amount you pay for rents per square foot. Please note that two dollars is the up to amounts and you should use your actual rates 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 by the duration. In this example it's 12 months. Final reminders about your budget. 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 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 line items require a justification and calculation. A request for proposal requires a budget narrative which allows the subrecipient 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 mistakes 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 proposal packet to the program units and during their review your specialist determines that several corrections are needed to your budget pages. You make those changes for your specialist but now your budget narrative doesn't match. So please remember if your request for proposal requires a budget narrative 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 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 in previous years even perhaps for another grant and that do not address any or all the questions from the RFP. 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 an appropriate level of technical assistance training and grant oversight to applicants for the award reference above. The questions are related to your organization's experience and the management of federal grant awards. This questionnaire must be completed and returned 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 determining expenditures to be charged to the grant award. An organization refers to the applicant applying for the award and or the governmental implementing agency as applicable. We just spent a significant amount of time talking about the nine required forms for the 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. The final thing 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 your program specialist if you have questions. We are here to help and use the checklist in part five of the request for proposal. Okay, so this concludes the request for proposal and application overview training for the Listos California CERT Support Grant Program. This presentation has been recorded and we will be available and will be available for demand viewing later on the Cal OES website. Please remember to email your questions to listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov and thank you all for attending today. Goodbye.