 Well, good afternoon and welcome to this webinar on the north central region sustainable agriculture research and education partnership grant program. I'm Rob Myers I serve as the regional coordinator for the professional development program and with north central I'll be providing this presentation in combination with my partner and administering these grant programs Dr Beth Nelson from the University of Minnesota. Beth is our overall regional coordinator for Sarah and also manages both our research and education programs and our graduate student programs while I work more with our extension focus programs such as the professional development grants. And Beth and I jointly administer this particular program the partnership grant program. So we're going to go through some slides of course today I wanted to indicate if you have questions as we're going along feel free to be typing those in chat we'll hold those to the end. What we're going to do is go through kind of a few slides that talk about the overall purposes of the north central Sarah program then we'll get into some specifics with the partnership grant. And after Beth does the specifics on the grant program will take some questions and then for anyone who really is a kind of a first time applicant on our online Sarah grant system. Beth will walk you through some of the details of how to do the online application but we'll do that after the initial question answer session in case there are some of you that are quite comfortable with applying for Sarah grants you can sign off after the initial question answer session. So, just to kind of provide a little general context the partnership grant program is is Beth and I usually say it's one of our newer programs but we've had it for several years now but it is our newest of our grant programs. We had just recently increased the dollar amount. It's been a very popular program and so we wanted to tell you about it. This is a program. We really enjoy the projects coming in because they're very applied and aimed at helping farmers like many of our other grant programs as well. This program is intended to foster cooperation between ag professionals and small groups of farmers we like to see three or more farmers involved or ranchers and these can be on farm research, but they can also be demonstration oriented projects or an education project. And occasionally we've even done some marketing projects in this partnership grant program. Next slide. So just a few general slides about Sarah in terms of what is Sarah we do grants and outreach to advance sustainable innovations to the whole of American agriculture so I want to emphasize we don't just focus on small farmers or large farmers we do all sizes of farmers. We do all types of agricultural enterprises and not just grain crops and larger livestock systems we do you know anything from beekeeping to aquaculture to small scale horticulture production it's really wide range and in terms of the topics. Next slide. This is a different type of a grant program speaking of Sarah as a whole. We've been around for a while started in 1988 in terms of congressional authorization it's really a decentralized program we administer through four regions you'll see more about that. Obviously we're talking about the north central region today which is a 12 state area. It is science based but it's also a grassroots program we really emphasize kind of a bottom up involvement we have committees at both the state and regional level that provide input on the direction of our programs. Of course our reviews are done by adverse mix of people including farmers and ranchers academics, people working in agencies agribusiness and so on. But it's certainly a competitive grant making program the partnership grant program like all of our programs is competitive programs so after we go through the review process the committees will pick the best proposals in that year to fun. Next slide. Our overall model is we talk about a three legged stool we talk about profit over the long term stewardship of our nation's land and water resources or you might think about that as the environmental angle. And then quality of life for farmers ranchers in their communities, and we like to see projects to integrate these three factors we know in a smaller project like these $50,000 partnership grants it may be difficult to fully integrate all three parts but to the extent that you can talk about that in your proposal, you know maybe it's an environmentally focused project or maybe it's one focused on quality of life considerations but talk about those other components to you know is is it going to have an impact on profit or if it's an environmentally oriented one. How's it going to impact quality of life. Next slide. So we go into the social sustainability or quality of life part a little bit more. And we find this is the one that are applicants struggle the most to kind of know how to think about or approach. And so we went through a process with Sarah of identifying some things to think about I'm not going to bother reading all these bullet points to you but you can see there's kind of a variety of things we're thinking about certainly the looking at the farmer ranch is a situation where they're safe working conditions opportunities for learning development. Good communication in terms of the, the household. You know this is something that leads to good health for the family, including mental health. The community network is an important part of it. So a lot of different angles of social sustainability in terms of our portfolio. There's a number of different types of projects we fund. Most of our projects have a specific topic you see a bunch of them listed here but there are many others. So we certainly in the partnership program we've seen quite a few products on cover crops but also livestock. Some that are pursuing more biodiversity and pollinators water quality. So just a variety of topics in this partnership grant program. Next slide. I mentioned earlier we are a regionally focused program so the north central region is the 12 states and gold there from the Dakotas down to Kansas and over to Ohio and Michigan. So we're looking for applications for projects in this region now you could have a project let's say you're working in the Dakotas and you wanted to work with somebody in Wyoming or Montana you can do that you can you can have a partner outside the region. But if the applications coming to our region it should be one where the majority of the work will be in the region. We do have six different grant programs we offer through north central as Sarah each of these is available once a year. And each of them has different deadlines so we'll talk more about the partnership deadline in a second but these programs vary in dollar amount they're similar to what's available through the other regions or some slight differences. And we offer this diversity of programs to kind of better try to meet the needs within the region. By the way you can go to our website and download the call for proposals I would encourage you to do that soon if you haven't already to look at some of the detailed guidelines on the partnership program. Next. I also wanted to mention, besides our grants that we offer we do have wealth of publications and video resources, these are under our Sarah outreach arm. We have about 20 books that are available for very modest cost or they can be read for free online we also have a similar number of bulletins that go in depth on different topics that are free both print and online. And as I said we're increasingly having a lot of videos as well as topic rooms that go into more detail so that's kind of a unique part of Sarah as we have this very active outreach arm as well as the grant component of the program. Next. So with this I'm going to turn it over to Beth to get into the specifics of the program. Thanks Rob so I hope that's been a good overview I know we've had people kind of coming in later so I do want to tell you to that these the same slide set that we are using today is available as a PDF with our notes on the North Central Sarah website so we are kind of racing through this information today we kind of want to give you a chance to ask questions, but that information is all at the North Central Sarah website. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the specifics of the grant program so Rob already mentioned that we just increased the amount is 50,000 now and that's for a total of up to two years. We also especially during the pandemic we have had many situations where plans have changed. We do have some flexibility to offer you a no cost extension. So it may be something that could be extended a little bit beyond that two years but the proposal must be written for the two year time that's the, that's the time plan that you're supposed to be giving. These part these grants can be for research or demonstration or education projects or marketing. As Rob already mentioned they need to involve a team of three or more farmers or ranchers and that's what that partnership aspect refers to it refers to the partnership between the ag professional. And those three or more farmers or ranchers who want to work on a common problem. It is led by an ag professional as Rob already mentioned we define that very broadly. It can be a certified crop advisor an extension educator and RCS technical service. It can be a farmer who often does educational programming on his farm or personnel from a nonprofit organization that works in sustainable agriculture. I will say many times during this if you have questions about what qualifies, please contact us the other and our contact information will be on the last slide. I also wanted to mention when we say three or more farmers or ranchers we are talking about farm, three or more separate farm enterprises so if there are two or three farmers who are partners on one farm doing one project that would not qualify. Very importantly the deadline for these projects is October 20, and they need to be in by four o'clock central time or online grant system what doesn't have technical support after that and we want you to get it in by that deadline so be aware of that. You can go to the next slide Marie. So again, I just mentioned some of these but each the ag professional can be the extension educator or other university educators nonprofits agency staff, or other ag and natural resource consultants or a farmer who does programming on their farm. If you are the farmer acting as a professional, you do have to have an additional three farms working with you to qualify for this partners program. And, and I, I also want to add, this is another thing you can call to ask us if you have questions. So we say that you need to be working with three or more farmers or ranchers but we recognize that sometimes there are situations with practice or an innovative idea that there aren't people close to you that you can collaborate with like maybe we found this sometimes for aquaculture prep prep aquaculture projects or for, say you're growing pecans you may not have three pecan growers in close proximity but call us if you're in that situation, because in general we are looking to have those three farms or those three farms involved. You can go to the next slide Marie. So Rob already mentioned that you can download the call for proposals so this our Sarah website and I think the website is actually three has put it in the chat but it's also on the next few slides. On the central Sarah website, you'll see this was before we loaded it up but it now has not only the call for proposals that is current but it also has this slide deck, and it has some other supporting information that you can use. So the number one thing you should do in applying for any grant but is, but for this one to is to read through that call for proposals. In the online system, a lot of the background information is there, but you need to read through the call for proposals. And that's also where you'll find the link to apply in the online system. So make sure you download that as one of the first things you do. You can go ahead and move to the next one Marie. We have other resources for helping you to write a grant proposal, especially if you haven't done something like that before. And that is also on our north central Sarah website under that section apply for grants so make use of that. We'll go to the next slide. So the second most important thing after downloading that call for proposal is for you to check in with your state Sarah coordinator so we have. We have state coordinators we have a they who spend a small part of their time helping with Sarah grant proposals in each state. Sometimes we have more than one, and they are very helpful in looking over your proposals. And I are happy to answer general questions we don't read drafts of proposals we just would not be able to handle that. But your state coordinator, state coordinator often will do that so one thing we strongly suggest is that you contact them early in the process. You can talk about your idea. You'll be able to find you farmers to partner with you may have one or two farmers that you know you can work with but you don't know of a third farmer who's working in this area, they might be able to help you out with that as well. So there is a section for looking for your state coordinators there under state programs on our north central Sarah website, and be sure you do that as well. Next slide. The thing that we highly recommend you do is to look up past ser projects that have been funded. So we have been in existence over 30 years now, and all of the reports from ser projects are online in the ser reporting system. And that's projects that ser.org. And if you go to search projects it will pull up this page and you can. I recommend if you're just looking for a topic to put it under project reports. And then you could type in something like cover crops you can choose whether you want to just look in your state, if you want to look in the north central region. In the partnership grant you want to look at our any grants, and you can move to the next slide Murray, you will pull up a whole list of projects that are being done. So this was looking up cover crops in the north central region in on farm projects since 2017 so you can put all those parameters on your search. And I will say that reviewers find this very beneficial for you to have looked this up, and to then reflect on how your project is different from that maybe your region has less rainfall and you didn't see projects that have worked on that, or how you plan to build on some of this information that has recently happened. So you can. So we recommend that you do that as part of your background in the proposal and I'll come to the sections of the proposal and one of the next slides. Go ahead, Murray. So these are kind of the major guidelines again it's due on Thursday, October 20 by four o'clock in our online system. You do need to involve three or more farmers, and each farmer has to be from a separate enterprise. Again, it is an online application. And the funding can cover part of the ag professional salary it can, it can also use for honorarium for your farmers, who are collaborating with you on farm research expenses educational or outreach programming, travel to travel to the farms to check stuff out. Again, if you have questions about what can be covered. We can't cover large equipment over 5000. And we don't cover like infrastructure. So, like you couldn't put in a well with this money or that type of thing but again if you have questions about what the funding can cover, please contact Rob for me to to ask. So when you go into that online system, you'll see these different sections that you need to. You need to complete. And these are also listed in the call for proposals so obviously the summary talks about your whole overall project the problem you want to solve what you plan to do and and how that will impact the north central region of sustainable ag objectives or are those things the major things you hope to accomplish during the project relevance to sustainable ag and regional concerns so that's a good place. You know to talk, why, why this is important how does this matter to those three legs of the sustainability stool. Why is it important for the economics, the environmental and the social concerns. Your proposed activities including an outreach plan and one thing that Sarah does we said we're kind of practical problem solving work and so the best research does no good if it sits on the shelf so even for research projects Sarah insists on you sharing that information so you do need to have an outreach plan, even if you're doing mostly a research project. We want to know what the role of the ag professionals will be in this and are that professional or professionals, and then the farmers and you know what will they be doing so kind of spell that out what their, what they understand their needs to be as a part of the project. Previous research on the topic again that can be outside of Sarah research but reviewers especially like, like you to know that we just funded something that's similar to that topic and so they want you to at least refer to that and say how you're building on it outcomes and impact so that's a little different from your objectives that's your objectives are what you want to do, and your outcomes and impacts are what you hope will happen as a result of you doing that work. So, you know, what will people learn if you're doing a project on no till will farmers learn the barriers and the opportunities of using no till. And maybe will some of them plan to adopt it and so that those are the kind of things that you put their budget and budget justification always and then this next section attached resumes signature page and letters from participating farmers. So we put that in red because that got missed a little bit last year and it's one of those things you have to do pretty much ahead of the deadline. Another page is your financial officer signing off that this budget is okay for your institution to apply. And for those of you who are at a small organization and just have to walk down the hall to get your financial officer to sign that's great. If you are at larger universities, you know that if it has to go through your grants office they'll have to see your budget, at least a week and sometimes longer ahead of the deadline in order to sign off on it. And then you will upload that signed page to your application. And we ask you to upload your application or letters from the participating farmers verifying that they will participate in the project and kind of at least saying what they expect to do as a part of the project. Another point I'll make about those letters reviewers understand that you are going to have like a block a paragraph that is might be the same for all three farmers. If you're just having a set template that they just sign, it's good for them to have at least a paragraph that's about their own or a few sentences about their own farm. It says why specifically they're interested in this project and then it can have that standard paragraph that you've maybe helped them with this tells what they plan to do. If you're working with animals you do need to include an animal welfare statement or if you're doing human subject research in terms of interviewing or focus groups. You might need to get a waiver for that as well but you do not need to have that when you apply that's something that's not required before the deadline, if you're funded, we'll ask you to take care of it at that point. I know that was a long slide Marie I think you can move on to the next one. And this is our last slide for kind of our general information about the program. The proposals are due at four o'clock we've set it multiple times during this presentation we hope nobody misses that deadline that's heartbreaking on both sides, when you get a proposal in late and we can accept it so please pay attention to that deadline. You'll be notified in early February, whether you've been approved or not, and then you would hear from our, our finance person who looks over the budget make sure it's ready to go and get you set up. Your start date can't be before April 1 2023 that's when we plan to have the contracts in place. And then the reporting, you don't know where report until the following year in March for it. And then you owe a final report 60 days after the project and date so that's all a little bit of a head of where we are right now but that is the overall timeline. And at the end of our general information our plan is now to Oh, very important our contact information, and we try to be a high contact grant program, let you know how to get in touch with us. Email us, you can arrange to set a time to talk with us about your idea. I'm happy to answer those kind of general questions we might point you to your state coordinator if you have more specific things, or, and we don't read through drafts of proposals but again your state coordinator might do that for you. So I think now we're going to have Marie look at the chat and ask us questions and then for those of you who have applied in the online system before you are welcome to stay on after we've answered the questions you don't have to obviously. We'll have Marie open up the online system so those of you have haven't used it before can see it so. It's just a couple questions in the chat that I'll read to you. The first one is from Lorana asking, can you apply to more than one grant, like if I wanted to apply to the partnership grant and the farmer rancher grant, they would be different proposals. That's an easy one day answer yes. You can. And in fact so we yeah we don't have a limit you could apply. I often encourage people who are playing to apply for a research and education grant program to also look at the partnership grant program and consider applying to that because it's less competitive. Okay, the next question is from Ariel. Does the egg professional working for a nonprofit have to specifically be a farmer on staff, or can they be the executive director or program manager. Yeah, I'll take that one so it definitely can be any of those people. We try to make it as broad as possible who that agriculture advisor could be. We have a consultant as well as a nonprofit staff member it could be somebody from a state or federal agency. It can't even be a farmer who has some expertise relevant to the project and is willing to take responsibility for leading the project but typically these are extension or nonprofit staff would be the most common things maybe some soil water district staff, but there's a wide variety of people that can fit under that egg professional. And the final question in the chat is from Ned, and it's Ken our agriculture advisory council and I our community, you're basically you're starting by seeing our sorry about that. Can our agriculture advisory council and IRS community service organization be the applicant. So read really get or do you get that Rob so I need to. Well, so there's there's kind of two thoughts here. One is, who is the organization applying and we are pretty open on that as well. I mean typically again, a lot of our applications do come from either nonprofits, or some aspect of the university but we can we allow state agencies local organizations so I think generally the entity applying should have some sort of legal status and again it could be an individual. If it's not a nonprofit could be a for profit business we don't tend to fund too many things by for profits but we allow that. The advisory council. I would say, you know, do they have a legal status. If not, who are they representing that kind of the way I look at it and then the other side of that goes back to the agriculture advisor. We really want to see a specific individual named is that agriculture advisor or a couple people can be more than one person but we probably wouldn't say that the agriculture advisor is a whole advisory council necessarily Beth you want to add anything to that. I think that's right yeah that it gets set up with the organ the contract gets set up with the organization and we, we name a lead coordinator and that's our main contact so you would need to have a person identified, or or you could have to but not a whole group. A couple more questions have come in, Robin, but Lorana asks, do the farmers you are working with need to be located at different addresses. I manage a collaborative farm so we're all located at the same site. So it probably qualifies I would say call us so no they don't have to have a different address just we say it as being different enterprises so why don't you either contact Rob or I to tell us specifically what you are doing so we can make sure we get that answer right. John asks, would collaboration with a large egg industry business be perceived as positive or negative for the proposal. That's fine. You know, I think we're open to having all the relevant partners and make sense so we have seen projects that involve agriculture companies in some capacity. The one thing I would say is we are reviewers tend not to want to fund projects that are just like testing a product for a company, regardless of the size of the company. We've occasionally gotten a proposal like that and let's say somebody's got a new soil microbial product. And they just want to get some data so that they can more easily market it I mean that's valid work to have done but that's not what the intent of this program is. Now on the other hand, if there's a group of farmers that say, you know, we're having this particular problem with pests and we want to try three or four different products that are on the market and compare them from different companies then that would be very relevant and certainly the companies that are selling those products could provide input so you know it comes back to doing projects they're helping farmers rather than being aimed at specifically helping one company. And then I would add on the back end of that to that one thing I always say if it's a private group coming in is that you do report on this and it is public information so you want to make sure you don't have anything that would be proprietary. I had a couple questions in the chat about the slide deck and the call for proposals I posted the link a few times in the chat everything the slide deck from this presentation the call for proposals and recording of this webinar will all be posted on that partnership application page, which I posted in the chat area. Yeah, asked, can farmers participate if they are currently serving as proposal reviewers. No, wait, sorry, let me back up. It depends on the grant program. So you cannot participate. If you're a reviewer on the partnership grant program if you're a farmer rancher program reviewer. Yes, you can participate in a partnership grant. And he asks, are there details on developing the project budget. I have a support document from jungle general USDA budget guidelines. Is that the best guidelines to use to develop the budget. Oh, I'm going to let you answer that one Rob. I was hoping you're going to take that one back. Well I would say a general USDA template would give you probably some useful tips but our grant form is probably a little simpler than some of the bigger USDA grants. And so I think Beth you're going to talk through some details of that aren't you with the way you're going to get into that. I wasn't going to go all the way through but we could we could open up the budget one. But that might be something that you could talk to your state coordinator and they could give you a sample we. I don't think we post any samples in the online system but we could check with some of our funded applicants and see if they'd be willing to show an example of the budget. I would say for the most part we have a much simpler budget and you'll see on the USDA form so I mean I can tell you that typically what we see on these partnership grant budgets are some salary funds. It could be that the agriculture advisor whoever they are is taking a modest amount of salary funds that could be $1,000 could be $10,000 out of $10,000. It's very common, especially for successful grant applications to provide some funding to the farmers and I want to emphasize that because I don't think Beth or I mentioned that yet. It's not enough to just say oh we've got three farmers and you know they're going to each do an on farm trial. You really need to show that they are intimately involved in the project so you know what are they uniquely contributing how are they helping with the planning process and they should be part of the budget so typically that means you're providing some sort of honorarium or stipend to those farmers to compensate them for their time our reviewers really like to see that and it could be $1,000 per year per farmer it could be more than that depending on the time commitment they have. It's also fairly common to pay for at least part of the farmers expenses so if they are doing a field crop trial or cover crop trial you may be paying for the cost of the seed for that specific trial now not necessarily 100 acre field obviously but you know the cost of that trial or you know there might might be some specific component of the expenses. As far as other expenses as best said we don't fund equipment in the sense of, you know, buying a tractor or a new tillage instrument, we can pay for smaller things that might be needed for the trial like some soil testing equipment or something. So as Beth said it's just best to check with us if you have questions about that. You could have some land rental charges I mean there's a variety of things that could fit in there but most commonly it's for labor and supplies in general I would say it's not it's certainly appropriate to have some field day type of expenses because we do like to see that outreach component so if you're having a field day and wanted to print some signs or have some refreshments you could include those in the budget. Beth what else would you add just on general tips of the budget. Yeah I think you've hit almost everything so possibly travel, you know if your farmers are traveling to get together to share information or to go over the first years results or something or for the egg professional to go out and visit the field certain amount of times that's often included as well. Otherwise I think you covered most of what we usually see in these budgets. All right Brigette asks, do I have to own the land. No, you don't. Yeah that's an easy one. So I get the easy ones now it's Rob's turn again. This is the last question in the chat unless more come in while Rob is answering. This question is from Ned. Can a community college which has an ag program be the grant applicant if an ag professional is the lead person. Community colleges are very eligible for this program and it could be one of their faculty or staff that is the ag professional that's leading it or they could have a contractor that they're working with a consultant to leave the project but the community college is handling the funding but you know typically I would say if the community colleges receiving funding it would be one of their employees that would be the ag advisor on the project. Another question came in from Mitchell. Can we lease equipment through the grant. Yes, and in fact that's how we get around that part of you can't buy equipment but you can lease it if you would put in something and say we need to you know, we'd like to purchase this tillage equipment we would come back to you and say you can't purchase it, but you can lease it and we understand that sometimes that's more expensive to do that. But that's what we have to do under our USDA rules. Any other questions. Okay, nothing else is up. One more came in from Margaret. Okay, historically have social studies oriented and or economics oriented applications been successful, or do successful applications tend to be more agronomic in nature. I would say, just based on what we have received that the greatest thing number of things we have funded have been applied field projects whether they were crops or livestock and whether those crops were field crops or horticultural crops. However, we welcome those other types of applications so we've had a number of projects that have been with crops or livestock that have focused heavily on the economics. They may have still had you know a demonstration component or a trial in the field, but there's no reason we can't fund a project that is, you know, let's say you wanted to work with 10 farmers and do some case studies on their economics for a particular type of management they're doing maybe management intensive daring. I think that could be a viable project, we just haven't seen many of those. And as far as the social projects about this particularly concentrated on this I want to get her input on this but we would like to see more projects that look at that because we don't feel like we get projects and in the partnership program. That's one of our grants that particularly has not had very many that were focused necessarily on quality of life we see those a little bit more in our professional development program and our research and education but there's no reason that we can have a successful application so Beth what would you add on that social component. I'd say the same thing and I would say that we have increasingly seen more and funded more of those and part of that is our emphasis you saw Rob put up the, the new social sustainability I want to point out there was a link on that slide that shows a new application on social sustainability that is intended for applicants and for reviewers as well to talk about what you know so how what are the social, what are the metrics so what can you measure to see a quality of life is increasing. How do we think about that because we do realize that's a place where we've been a little weaker as of late as well. In the last year's group we had two or three that were I would say were community development or had a very large aspect of social sustainability in them so as Rob said they are welcome. And again, please call us if you're unsure about the idea, call us or talk to your state coordinator about it. And I will put a link to the social sustainability guide in the chat, just as soon as I get a chance to do that. Another question came in from Cindy. Can projects be a continuation of a previous project, or is it desirable to have a unique project. I would say there, there should be something new in the in the continuing of the project you should have at least found something from before, and be moving on to a new stage of it. So it can be for your project so it can be related, but you would need to have new objectives, not just be continuing. Rob, you anything totally agree. Well said. Okay. Well, again, I thank you for making the time to attend and please contact Rob or I if you have questions or want to talk over specifically an idea so I'm around quite a bit this last this next week and then I have a very amount of travel over the next three weeks after that, but we'll be checking into email and things like that I don't know Rob if you have certain availability times. Pretty good for the next week and then I have a week of travel but I'll be around at the end of September and early October. Okay. So for those of you who have been in projects there.org or and or have applied recently. You're welcome to stay on you don't need to what we're going to do is just open up the system so that you can see what it looks like and maybe talk about a few basics of it and maybe a few tips for for what to watch for just in the application itself. So, thank you again for those of you who are taking off so we appreciate your interest. Okay, I will open up the system. See what it looks like. Yeah okay so now Marie has already, if you go in and you're brand new to this the first thing you're going to see is a screen that says login or create an account so you will have to create your own account. And you have to just fill in some basic information as you see Marie's profile over here. You know those are the kind of things that you have to fill in and I think you have to answer some demographic questions as well. And then you'll have an account and then it will shoot it shoot you to this page where you can either start a new grant so Marie has obviously done grants before because she's got to manage my grant proposals. So go into this for the first time you'll just have start a new grant proposal so you open that up. And I don't know if we told you can see it on her screen so it's projects.sare.org is the is the link to get into our program and that is in the call for proposals so you see that written large several places. As Rob said we're decentralized so you want to make sure you pick the right region where the north central region so you can open that one up. And you'll see that we have four grant programs open right now so again make sure you you choose the right one so this one is the partnership grant program so you're going to click begin a new proposal. And this is what you'll see when you go in so you're going to start and you're going to have a you're going to put in your project title. Your information you're the project coordinator your project description those things get filled out right away and you can see those red asterisks. That means that's required information. So, as I said so here are the different sections that you have there's a cover page that has your institution, you know what, what you're applying for the amount has a bunch of different information. And you'll, you'll complete that information. And do you want to go ahead and open it up Marie that's not that. That's the kind of things that you're going to be filling out you can kind of just scroll down so as you answer those questions that read asterisk will be replaced with a check mark. And, and once that's checked. Once you've completed all of those so you have green checks on all of those you can go back to your proposal overview. And you would then by that section have a green check also by that cover section. I want to give you so the way I know some programs as you type in it will save what you typed in whether you save it or not. This does not. So, if you, we recommend you save often. So if you're typing in or you're editing something and you've got it just perfect and you get a telephone call. You're on the phone and your system turns off and you come back in and you see you're not quite as perfect project that you had just spent half an hour editing is lost so save often. I think that's especially true in the budget section where you can go through and enter without savings, one after the other, but then if you get cut off somehow. So save as you go is one of my major tips for using the system and Beth I know something you and I agree on for the main part of the proposal it's a good idea maybe to type it up in word and then you'll have it save there as well and then you can cut and paste some of those main sections on the other page is she was just showing a short so you don't need to pre type that but it's just a helpful to have it in a word document and then if you do lose something you still got your sections typed up. Exactly. So Marie why don't you open up the proposal section just to kind of show them what that looks like so for most of these sections. You can just be typing in text so the summary is that way. A lot of these sections are like that and and then you will come to some sections where you actually can include and I think we list those in the call for proposals, you can embed an image if you wish. We allow you to do that we ask you to be a little careful with it so our reviewers don't want to read 40 page 40 page proposals that are full of tables and pictures but you do have the ability to embed those in in some of these questions and and you'll see that when you open up one of them. Why don't you scroll down to one that has attachments just so they see. Let's see go, it will be down to. Oh, maybe we have that Oh, we've got a separate section on attachments I forgot which grant program we're in so proposal so just head back to proposal overview. I think there's a special section for the attachments. Yeah, other attachments. So you'll go in here and it will allow you to upload a resume so you can have it on your desktop and you can follow the instructions Oh I know another thing I forgot to mention is that you know the slide deck is posted on the website, but in addition, that slide deck also has screenshots of each step along the way and applying so it actually guide you through uploading an attachment, which you can do, you know just the way you normally upload attachments by browsing pulling it up from your desktop, you put it in the library and then you upload it to the to the program. So go down to the signature page. So I often get asked well where do you find the signature page so it's actually that highlighted section application sign off sheet so that's actually a PDF that you will print off and hand to your documents when you hand them your, your proposal, or sometimes they just ask for the budget. What they really want to sign off is on is that budget so that's where you find that application sign off sheet you can open that up Marie so they can see, or open up that the link yeah. Let's just see what that PDF looks like. And it actually auto auto fills in some of your information so right now it's blank but that will auto fill actually from your application and then this is the part that needs to be filled out by your grants office or your financial officer at your organization. I think you can go back to the proposal overview and I think the last thing that we said I said save as you go. So when you've completed all these sections and you have green checks, you will see in that section under where it says delete proposal. There's a green box that says submit. So it's not there now because it doesn't show up unless you have green check marks by all those required sections. So once that's done the submit button will show up and you click that and you get a confirmation that says you've submitted. You can unsubmit and make changes if you read over it and you see you have issues you can unsubmit. If you resubmit before the deadline. It has to be back in before the deadline. And then let's see the other thing. I, you can only one person can make edits into this system so the person who comes in and is applying is the person who has to edit in the program but you can share it. Marie if you go to the top to that draft section. Let's see. Yeah, if you draft. So that will will give you a link to share so you can share that with your collaborators, so they can see. And they'll see then the draft of the proposal. Anything I'm forgetting Rob. Well, just a couple things one is you're not forgetting it but just to reemphasize so with the resumes I just wanted to be clear that the only resume or resumes we need or for the ag professional so we do not need resumes for the farmers. But we do want those letters and the and that letter can be an email from the farmer as long as you're showing that it came from the farmer. Or it can be, you know, a typed letter that they have signed and taken a photo with their phone and sent you a PDF or image file that letter we try to make it as easy for the farmer as possible but we do want it to be customized to that farmer and have their picture either in the form of having emailed it or preferably having printed out and signed it so. And then the other thing is I guess Marie if we have a couple minutes maybe just open up that budget section real briefly. So, when you go into this it'll kind of guide you through it provides some some of the guidance on what the restrictions are and you just get the opportunity to add a budget item so Marie can click there, and you'll see, you can pick a category. Personnel or travel other costs, and then it'll just kind of guide you through filling that in and you provide some justification for each of those items that justification is important might only be a sentence or two depending on what it is. But just be sure to provide that justification as you're going through it. So other questions on what Beth covered there. I'll just say so you can contact Rob or me or the ncr serr office Jean Andreas and if you're having problems with the system. In terms of maybe not finding something but if there seems to be something glitchy with the system. And I think it says when you go into it, you can also email projects at serr.org. Back people are just really great. They look into those problems right away fixed if there are glitches or it's not loading quickly or something like that. They get back to you really quickly so that's another backup for you. What about does the budget need to be exactly 50,000. No, it just can't exceed 50,000 so it would be typical that a lot of the proposals are 48 or 49,000. It's certainly fine if you have a smaller request you can put in a $15,000 request 20,000 but just cannot exceed 50, and that's the total budget over two years. Now best said the projects cannot be proposed for longer than two years on occasion will have a project proposed just for 12 or 18 months for some reason and that's, that's fine you can you can spend the 50,000 in a year if that's what makes sense for the project but typically they are to your projects. Okay, and then I see one I received a USDA grant is payment made through Sam.gov. It's not through none of the above it's not made through this system, it comes from the University of Minnesota so when you're funded. We will send you a linked information or actually it's on our website about managing your grant and you'll see just submit an invoice. Our central SEAR program is hosted the University of Minnesota so reimbursement and all the accounting goes through the University of Minnesota. So you invoice University of Minnesota through us, and then the check comes from University of Minnesota, and it is on a reimbursement basis so you send in invoices and then you're reimbursed. The question about is this an annual grant program yes we offer once a year every year we plan to do that as long as we keep getting funded by Congress and we've been funded for over 30 years so fingers crossed we continue for the foreseeable future so we would expect that if you for some reason decide not to apply this October it would be a similar time period next year deadline in October with an announcement of the competition in August. And that asked Windows seven so I'll have to check on that I think so I think we've tried to make it broadly available but net if you could email me, I will, or you can you can email projects at sarer.org and ask if you can use Windows seven to apply in the system and again Marie can maybe put that in the chat so almost the same as the thing it's projects at sarer.org and then our tech person will will let you know whether you can use Windows seven anything else. Anything to add Rob. No just appreciate everybody being on and definitely let us know as you have questions working on the proposals this is a great if you even if you're not real familiar with writing grants this is a great grant program to get started these are not super long proposals I mean yes it takes a while especially if you're new to grant writing but it's not like the 20 page usd proposals that some of the bigger grants have I don't know how many pages would be if you printed it out maybe six or seven pages but not including the budget and resumes but these are these are designed to be kind of, you know, starter grants to try a smaller project and sometimes people get these grants and then go on and do one of our bigger $250,000 research and education grants See we had one last question about whether someone could review our proposal prior to submission and give feedback and that that would be your state coordinator if you give them sufficient time most of them will do that will look over your proposal so we would recommend you do that. Thanks everybody we look forward to getting proposals from all of you. Thank you.