 So also this PowerPoint presentation is posted on our website and we sent you a link to it. The notes are all there for you so you don't really have to take notes. Everything I'm gonna cover today is in the notes section if you go to the PowerPoint and look at the notes view. One thing that I wanted to let you know about this grant program, if you can go to the next slide, Marie, is about the grant finances and the way that you will receive your funding through this grant program. It's different than most other grant programs that you might participate in. So at the start of your grant project, you're gonna receive 50% of the grant to help you start your project. That's after your contract is signed which is gonna take, it's gonna take about four weeks to get your contract. Things are moving a little slow at the University of Minnesota and we have to get some paperwork done on that end before you can get a contract. And of course, Jean has to have all of your budget questions answered before she can even begin to put the contract together. So once all that's done and you've signed the paperwork and returned it, you get the first payment which is 50% that's to help you start your project. After the first year of your project is completed, you have to turn in a progress report to us and an update about your budget. At that point, you receive another 35% of your grant total and that is once we approve your progress report. You don't have to turn in any paperwork other than your progress report and an update on your budget in our reporting system. We approve it on our end and we'll send the check out to you. Because these are issued as a contract, you will get a 1099 form for the grant payments. And if there, you think there might be any issues with that we recommend you contact a tax professional to see how that might affect your taxes. Save your receipts and invoices. Those are for your own tax purposes. We do not need to see them. We don't want to see those. All we want to see is the updates that you put in the reporting system but save those for your own records. When your project is finished, you are required to turn in a final report and a final budget. And so at this point, all of your grant funds should have been spent. That final payment of 15% is a reimbursement. So when you complete your final report, all your grant funds should have been spent at that point. If you have a one-year project, you can turn in a final report at the end of the first year instead of a progress report. Let's go on to the next slide, Yuri. So a lot of people have questions about their budget and we understand that budgets change over time because the prices change over time. So if it's a minor change, which is under $1,500, you can go ahead and make that change in the budget yourself. Those are usually okay. Just something costs more than you expected or less than you expected. But if it's a change of $1,500 or more, contact me first and get approval because we want to make sure that it's something that you can purchase through the grant program. We don't want someone to get stuck buying something and then finding out that that's something that's not allowed through USDA grant rules. So if it's $1,500 or more, contact me before you purchase it and before you make any changes to your budget. If it's under $1,500, you can go ahead and make the change yourself. If you need to add an item that wasn't in your grant before, then also contact me so that we can see if that's something that we can approve. Or if, and it same goes, if you need to remove something from your budget and add it to another budget line, just contact me first. All right, let's go on to the next slide, Marie. Another thing that we allow is no cost extensions. So this is because sometimes you need more than the original 23 months that you are given to complete one of these grants. You're going to receive a contract for your grant for 23 months and it doesn't matter if you're planning on a 12 month project or a 23 month project, we're still gonna give you a contract for 23 months. And the reason for that is over the years, we found that because of the weather, because of supply issues or other things, many people need extensions. So we just give all of you 23 months that gets rid of some of the extension requests that are needed. But if you need more time than that because something has gone wrong with the weather or whatever it is, then you can request a no cost extension. And what that means is you're requesting more time but not more funds because of course we can't give you any more funds than what you are awarded. So typically we give an extension of six months but we have because of the COVID and other supply chain issues we have been allowing up to 11 month extensions. So if you can't complete your project in the 23 month time period, the September before your project ends, make sure you request a no cost extension. And before you request a no cost extension, make sure that you're up to date on your reporting because that's at a requirement. You have to be up to date on your reporting in order to get an extension. And I did see a question. So what if you're able to finish the project earlier than your proposal estimate? That's okay. If you're able to complete everything early, then go ahead and complete your final report early and we can go ahead and process your final payment from there. All right, the steps to requesting a no cost extension are pretty easy. All you do is send me an email that says you're requesting a no cost extension for your project and include the project number which is that FNC number. FNC, it'll be FNC 23, that just stands for Farmer North Central. The year it was funded 2023 and then whatever the project number happens to be. Then explain what you're asking for, how long of an extension you would like. And then a brief explanation of why you need the extension. And if it's a longer extension than six months, make sure you give plenty of detail of why you need the longer extension. And we usually can have an answer back to you on that within a week or two. But make sure you get it in before your project end date and by September is when we're really expecting it. So your progress report for 2023 projects is gonna be due January 31st of 2024. Your final report is gonna be due January 31st of 2025. So if you need an extension, you would need to ask by September of 2024. Okay, let's go on to the next one. All right, reporting is a big part of what we ask you to do in exchange for the grant. As I mentioned, you have to submit a progress report and budget update after the first year and a final report and final budget update after you've completed the project. If you get an extension, we will ask you for an extra progress report. So while your project's active, you need to turn in a progress report instead of a final report that second year and then a final report when the project is completed. But these reports are really important because this is how one of the ways you can share information about what you've found with other farmers and ranchers across our region and throughout the United States because these reports are posted on our SARE Reporting website. And that is really a treasure trove of information. If you haven't looked at that, you can find all kinds of information about other projects that people have completed. You can search by topic and you can search by state. You can find out a lot of information from people from across the country who've had SARE grants. So in order to report on your project, we'll look at the next slide and you'll see how we go about having you do that. It's an online reporting system. So next slide, Marie. So there's reporting system instructions and what you will do is go to projects.sare.org and there you can find instructions and other information and that's where you enter your report. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. So when you go to projects.sare.org, this is what you're going to see. And the first thing you're gonna do is log in. Click on log in. And the log in that appears, it asks for your username or email address. Your username is typically your email address, the one that you get all your SARE communications from unless you have changed your username. The password is whatever you've created it to be and you put those in and you log in. If you've forgotten either of those, you'll see where that red arrow in the bottom right corner is pointing, you can click on create or reset your password or find a lost username. And if you have trouble logging in, there's a help link that you can click on and it'll show you the email for projects at SARE.org which is our IT person where you can get technical help. All right, let's go to the next slide. And when you log into the system, you're gonna see something that looks like this. If you are a first time grant recipient, you'll see just your one project listed there as you see on the left hand where the arrow is pointing, it elits the FNC or project number for your proposal and the title. And it will have your project profile on the right hand side. If your address, phone number or anything changes, you can click on that project profile and make those changes there. When you make any changes to add address or email or whatever it is, then you'll scroll down and click on update in order to update the information there. And then it'll send us a message so we know you've updated that information. This also shows you other information about your project and we'll look at the next slide to show you how to continue. All right, so when you go into your, click on your project that you want to work on, you're gonna see this project overview. There's reporting instructions listed there. So if you need to review how to turn in a report, you can look at that there. You can also click on the proposal and see the original proposal that you turned in. But to actually work on the report, you'll click on working version and that's the version you can work in. And some of the information is already in there for you. But other things that you can do from this overview page, you can see where it says information products, information products. If you produce something that's a standalone piece like a book or a bulletin or some other education product as part of your project, you will add that as an information product. But if it's graphs or photos or tables, that's all considered part of your report. It's not considered an information product. So just those standalone pieces are considered information products. Also there's this section to fill in where you see the second arrow, there's benefits and impacts, commodities. And below that, there's practices. These are just checklists. And we ask you to fill these out because these provide us with some information and also provide search terms so people looking for your project can find it. So we just ask you to open each of those and you open it by clicking on edit. Go through the checklist and check whatever it is. So for instance, if this was a vegetable project, they would greens, they would check off vegetables and greens. And if the commodities are not involved, you would just say you can click on another option that says it doesn't involve commodities. And then click on update to save your information and you can go to the working version and start your report. Okay, Marie, let's go to the next slide. So once you click on the working version, you'll see something like this. So what this is is the titles of each section that we want you to fill out and next to each one of those sections there, it says edit and that edit button opens up a text box so you can add information. There was a question about that I'm gonna turn over to Marie here on standalone pieces. Are there guidelines and how to indicate their support or properly on outreach materials? Hi all, this is Marie. So yes, there are guidelines and logo files and wording and that's all put together for you. And that will be shared with you soon. I'll be emailing everybody with that information. We also have a link on our website that I can put in the chat as well, but not currently because I'm advancing the slides but I can do that. Okay, thanks Marie. All right, so some of the information from your proposal is automatically added to your report right at the start. So for instance, the summary is already filled in that's taken from your grant proposal, the objectives are filled in, the materials and methods section. So some of these areas are already gonna have information for you when you go to this, when you start your report. If any of those things have changed, you can update them by clicking on edit and then adding the new information and clicking on save. So you can start, if you want to, when you first go in you can just scroll down and see what all the different headings are like project information and see what all headings are in the report. So you know everything that you're going to have to address but we'll go through some more of that on this Zoom meeting. So the next section that you're going to see is the budget. At the top it says cooperators. This cooperators is where you can add people who are helping you with your project, who play a major role in either helping you with the research or education pieces. This is not where you put project coordinators or project leaders, it's where you put others who just have a major role in helping you with the project. If you don't have any cooperators, just go on to the budget. And again, there's an edit button where it will open it up and you can actually change things by showing what you've spent each year. This is a new budget form that we have just put in in the hopes that it's gonna make it easier for people. So if any of you have had a grant with us before, this is a new version of the budget form, it's changed a little bit. The basics are the same, but what you will see when you go in here is the budget very much like the budget that you turned in in your proposal. So there's a category that in the first column, which tells what kind of an expense it is, is it personnel, travel, materials and supplies, equipment, there's a description of it and this comes right over from your proposal. And then there's the approved budget. This is the budget that will be in your contract. And so that shows the amounts that were approved as part of your contract. When you go in, you're gonna add what you spent in year one and year two. In year one, for part of your progress report, you'll show what you spent in year one. Year two, you'll show what you spent in the second year of your project. And then if you have an extension, you'll show what you had in year three or four. This is a spreadsheet and it will show you the total grant funds spent. It'll show you the remaining balance. And it also has a reminder there that if there was a change of $1,500 or more, make sure and contact me first. But you can see in this example that on the first line, the approved budget was $300. In year one, they spent $250. So the total grant funds that have spent so far in that budget item are $250. The remaining balance is $50. If you look at the materials and supplies section where there's netting for berry plants, the approved budget was $700, but they spent $800 and that's okay because it's under $1,500. They can go ahead and put that change in. And the remaining balance is showing a negative 100. And then we'll go in and approve that change when we review your report. At the bottom, there's total. So you can see exactly how much of your grant funds you have left. So this budget is only visible to administrators. So if there is something that you want other farmers and ranchers to know about, make sure you add that information in your narrative. Like if you wanna talk in the notes section, if you're explaining why you had to change the netting and what happened, and maybe you're using a different type for a specific reason, make sure you conclude that information in the report narrative because the other farmers and ranchers who read this will not be able to see your budget. And we have a question, does the $1,500 change in budget include shifts between budget categories also? Yes, because if you increase an item by $1,500, you're gonna have to reduce it somewhere else. So yes, if you're making change between categories, you will need to contact me first. All right, then when you click on edit, this will open up so that you can actually work in it. And it looks quite a bit different. So let's go to the next slide and you'll see what it looks like. This is when you've clicked on edit and this is what you're gonna see. The project budget and what it does is it opens up with these boxes that you can type in and each item is arranged vertically and in alphabetical order. So this first item is a personnel item, labor planting experimental plots is the description and there's the approved budget amount which you don't change, only the administrators can change that but this one was approved for $300 and here's where you can enter that you spent $250 in year one. When you enter changes to the budget like this, then up at the top, you'll see that there's an arrow at the top left where there's a save button that you can click on be sure to save. And whenever you make changes to the narrative or to the budget, be sure to click on save or it will not save your information. So very important to always click on save. All right, let's go on to the next page. So if you like, this is the same if you're making a minor change. So here, this one was for seeds, the cost of the seeds increased and that was explained in this notes section in the bottom that the seed costs went up, how much they went up. And so then you're showing that your approved budget amount was $100 but where the first arrow is pointing you're putting in 113 and that's fine. And then be sure to click on save. There's a save button at the top and the bottom. If you decide you don't wanna save those changes there's also a cancel budget, a cancel button and it won't save your changes. Here you'll see it says add a row to the budget but only administrators can do that. So if you need to add a new item, just contact me. All right, let's go on to the next slide. Then when you're done with the budget and click on save, you're gonna be returned to the main report page and you can choose the next section to work on and I wanted to let you know that when you are entering information into these text boxes for the various sections there's two ways you can enter information. You can type it directly in to the box into the text box as you've seen done here. And especially if you're going to be adding tables or images that's the best way to do it is to type it directly into the text box because then it won't make any formatting changes. You can use a word processor and copy and paste text into these text boxes and that works too. At times there might be format changes so you formatting changes so you might just wanna check your work if you use the copy and paste version and wanna work in a word processing document first and then paste it into the report. The same as with the budget, always click on save after you've added information in some of these sections you're going to see it will ask you for numbers like in this one where it says how many farmers reported gaining knowledge attitude skills or awareness as a result of this project. If that's just you, that's fine just put one but if you had a field day and you had 15 people who attended and they learned about your project from there you could put 15 in here and then save or cancel if you decide you don't wanna make the changes that you've just made. Let's go on to the next slide. All right, after the budget the next heading you're gonna see is the research section and your materials and methods information from your proposal is already in here. You can click on next to research where it says edit and you can add more information, fill in the text box. Be sure to fill in this participation summary where you see the arrow at the bottom somehow people miss that a lot. It's asking you how many farmers participated in the research. So if you had a research project and you're the only one who participated put one but if you had others who participated and maybe you were working with two other farmers put three in there and click on save. And then there's a research, a results and discussion piece and you'll see that when you click on edit again it's gonna open a text box as you see on the right hand part of this slide it's asking you what results did you achieve? How were they measured? So you just answer these questions as you can if to the first year answer whatever you have information for if you don't have any results yet then you don't have to answer this section yet you'll wait and complete that in your final report. Click on save where you're done and you're gonna be returned to the main reporting page and let's go to the next slide and then you're gonna see more headings like education and outreach activities learning outcomes, project outcomes. There's some items that are optional like participants but anything that you fill in we appreciate and other farmers and ranchers appreciate for each one click on edit, fill in the text box and click on save. Gene has mentioned that I said you could change your summary section and your objectives that could possibly change the scope of your grant if you are having a change in scope you do need to run that past me first. So if say your objectives you have two objectives and now you're gonna add a third or you're gonna need to change one because something happened. If it's something that's big like that you should contact me first because we need to sometimes get approval if we determine that it's a scope change like you've completely changed the direction of your project and we do have to get approval for that first. Here again, you'll see the section on information products and that's where you can add information products if you have created any that's not required but if you have standalone items like books or bulletins or things that you've created as part of your project for instance, if you have an education project and that was your goal was to create a booklet about how to do a specific sustainable agriculture technique then you would add that as an information product here. All right, so let's go ahead and move on to the next slide. In some of the sections you're gonna see this add media button and that is how you can add photos, graphs or videos things like that. So if you want to add one of these items in the text box, put your cursor where you want this item to appear then click on the add media button and Marie go to the next slide and we'll show you what you will see. All right, so when you go to the add media you'll see this arrow on the left which says upload files. That's where you can click next and then the arrow in the middle where it says select files and that will allow you to select a file from your computer. Once you've selected a file and that could be a photo or it could be a graph or whatever it is you'll see this page in the back. And so this is showing a plot map is what we're using here in the example. So it says plot map two is the title you can change the title to be more descriptive if you want to. There's also an area on the right hand side there where you can enter a caption and please do enter captions. So it makes it clearer to people who are reading the reports what they're looking at. And then click on the insert into post button which is on the bottom right where you see the arrow. And when you do that you're going to see what appears on the next slide. So this plot map now appears in the text box along with whatever caption you put with it and then you can still continue to type around it below it if you want to add more information and always again click on save so that you save that information. When you've completed your report you'll see we'll show you what happens on the next page. And all of this is in if you go to the help section and click on how to complete a report you're going to see all of this information is explained and you can always ask us if you forget any of this. It's actually easier than it probably sounds the first time you're seeing it here. So when you're all done and all the sections are completed that either you can complete for your progress report then you on this bottom left hand you'll see it says go to submit report and then the system will tell you if you're missing something. So where you see this second arrow in the middle of the page it says for the progress report the following fields are missing required data. So it says, all right the part where you're supposed to describe your operation or your outreach activities are missing. So go ahead and complete those. And if you haven't been able to do any outreach activities yet just write that in and just say the outreach activities are going to occur in the second year of the project. And then the system will let you complete it. Below that it says for the final report the following fields are missing required data. And so those if you're it's a progress report don't worry about it. Those are just for the final report but if you're trying to complete your final report and it gives you a message and say you still need to complete these areas go ahead and complete those sections, click on save and then go to submit report but then again. Okay, let's go to the next page. When you click on go to submit report you'll see there's a comment box if you wanna send any comments to us you can you don't have to you can just click on submit report. And that sends us an email that says your report is ready to look at. If it's a final report click on this little box that says this is a final report. If it's just a progress report you don't need to click that just click submit report. Once you submit it you can't work on it anymore until we approve it. So if you happen to do this by mistake just email me and I'll go ahead and approve it so you can go back in and work on it again. So no worries. People can't see your reports until they're approved by an administrator. So don't worry about it. If you're thinking oh I wonder if I missed something we'll let you know if anything's missing. So it's really not a problem. Then when you click on that submit report like I said we will get an email telling us that your report's ready to look at we will send you an approval message back through this reporting system that says your reports are approved and then we'll either say it looks great or we'll say we need more information or maybe we have a question about the budget or something. When your report is finished and you've completed it and your final report is approved it's not required but if you would like to we are always glad to have you go back in and give updates after your project is finished because people love to hear about how these work out. Sometimes the actual results that you get the really important results don't happen until after the 23 months of your project. So we always like to hear back if you have additional information we'd like to add over time. And let's go to the final slide Marie. And then as I said always feel free to contact me by phone or email if you have questions. And I don't know if anybody has any more questions right now but you're glad to take those questions. You know it seems like a lot of information but it's easier when you're in the system and looking at it. But if you struggle with any parts of it don't waste a lot of time. There's always a possibility there's something on our end that needs to be adjusted. So if you're struggling trying to get something to work just contact us. We're glad to work with you and walk you through it or see if there's some issue that's preventing you from entering information the way you want to. I have a question. Yes. $1,500 for the budget override. I noticed when I think it was Jean when you sent me back I needed to correct some things with the budget that I was given closeout prices that some of the equipment I had planned on purchasing is summer equipment and this was due in December so those were closeout prices. So with that 1,500 is that I guess the question is is there wiggle room if I go over the lot of the amount for my budget? You can't spend more than your budget. So if you have $15,000 that's all you've got. We can't increase those. Yeah. But you can change budget items. So if you had laborer you can reduce your labor instead and use that money to buy the equipment if the equipment costs went up or reduce your field day expenses or something else but we cannot give more money than was originally awarded for your project. That's what I needed. Thank you. Okay. And if that causes you issues let me know. We can see, okay do you need to change your project in some way if something dramatic happens like the price is quadrupled and you can no longer do what you thought. Get in touch with me and we'll see, is there a way to change the project to still complete most of what you wanted to do as we understand the prices are volatile right now but we want you to be successful and we're glad to work with you. And I also wanted to go ahead. Well, I was just gonna say and I wanna add that just so the prices that you're giving me right now are for the purposes of the budget to get the contract through accounting. And I need the justification to equal the budget request exactly but we recognize that once the contract is in play there's usually a little bit of, you know Robin from Peter to pay Paul as there is for almost any budget and that's okay. The other thing I wanted to point out to you is don't worry if things don't go as planned that is kind of par for the course that's really one of the reasons we award these grants because things don't always go the way you plan but if you learn something from your project and you can share that information with other people we consider it a success. So don't get tied up with thinking oh no this didn't go the way I thought that's okay because you're learning this doesn't work but maybe this other system does work and as long as you can share that information with other people we're happy. I have a quick question and maybe this is answered in an email or maybe this is answered in information I didn't see but so our project is on an orchard and some of it needs to be done in dormant period. So really we need to do it in the next few weeks. Can we buy the stuff beforehand before we get a contract or do we have to wait until that happens? So your contract is March 1st. So anything you can start purchasing things March 1st and forward. And is there anything in particular we just need to save receipts and is there anything other particular we need to do? No, so we will finalize your budget and we'll get it set up in the system and then the receipts that you save are going to be for your purposes only and then to help you report the totals at the end of the first year. So when you submit your annual report you're also gonna be reporting on your budget. It might be easiest to just kind of add things as you go through the year just to help you keep track of things a little better but everybody's got their own style there. So what does that answer your questions, Zach? Yeah, it does. Thank you. And you cannot purchase anything before that contract start date with grant funds. So it has to be from March 1st on. There's a question. So say that a $600 item now costs $700. Can we as the grantee cover the $100 extra out of pocket to not have to take from another portion of the budget? Yes, you can do that. And then if you wanna clarify that by adding a note and saying, you know, this costs more but we're covering it, that's absolutely fine. I would also add that the numbers that you're putting in the budget are, so is the money that you have asked the, is the money that the grant that you're withdrawing from the grant for that item? So if in the example that Joan gave, you spent $700 but you're only using 600, you wanna enter the 600 and then note that you actually paid 700. Does that make sense? Yes. And as part of that budget, what we're wanting to see in the budget is what, how you spent the grant funds. So that, you know, so that the totals all match up with the grant funds that you were awarded. All right, so we have another question. Marie has added a link. So if you're planning a field day, there's a Farmer Field Day toolkit that can help you out with tips and tools on event planning and she provided a link there for you. Any other questions? Will this chat also be available? I don't think so. Okay, so I won't worry about trying to get this down. Thank you. And feel free to ask questions. You can email me, you can call. We'll, we're glad to answer any questions you have. And we know this is really new for a lot of you. So don't worry about asking questions. Well, I wish you all great success with your projects. All right. And another question on Sarah support. Oh, okay. Jean, so this is someone in the credits, when you're crediting Sarah, it says this material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture under agreement number, long string of Xs. Is that agreement number in their contract? The agreement number is in their contract. I just wanted to double check and make sure that I, that that is correct though. So give me one second. Okay. And if you can always ask us what's your agreement number and we'll send it to you. So don't worry about that. And then there's a question, if they should contact me or Jean first with questions. If it's a budget question, contact Jean. If it's a question about, you know, the reporting or how your project is operating or anything along those lines, contact me. So that big long XXX number is in your contract. It is in, oh, let's see, it's gonna be, it's gonna start with 2000 and 2022 dash. And then let me just modify that. So at this stage, contact Jean if you have budget questions, but later on when you're turning in your reports, if you are needing to change your budget, then contact me. And if you contact one of us and you need to contact the other, we'll just let the other person know. So no worries. Yeah, it's not like we never not talk to each other. And if you need to contact anyone about helping promote a plan, a field day event, some of their kind of workshop, any kind of publicity about a resource that you're developing, then you would contact me. Although again, if you contact Jean or John, put you in touch with me. So we'll try to make it easy for you. So, and just don't worry about contacting us. That's why we're here, it really is. Okay, well, thank you so much, everybody. Really appreciate all of you joining us today. And this will be posted and we'll send you the link and hope everything goes really well for you. Thank you. Thank you.