 Hi, everyone. We're going to go ahead and get started in about a minute or so. I just want to see if any more stragglers come in. Okay. Well, I think we're going to go ahead and get started. Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining the Fiscal Year 23, Listos, California Youth Development Grant Program, Request for Proposal Overview Training. Before I start, I want to explain that the presentation will be in two parts. The first part explains the components of Youth Development Grant Program RFP or Request for Proposal. In the second part, I'll go over how to complete the application forms. But before I start, I want to go over a couple of housekeeping items. Number one, the presentation is being recorded and will be available for on-demand viewing later. Anyone who is joined should be on listen mode. And 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 proposals. And then 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're only able to respond to technical questions about the RFP during the time between the publication date and the completion of the RFP process. Okay, so with that said, we'll go ahead with the presentation. Okay, so here's the agenda. We're going to go over the Listos Grants Unit and contact information, program overview, purpose of the grant, purpose of the program, eligibility criteria, funding for the program, programmatic components, reporting requirements, proposal rating sheet, and the checklist of required Cal OES forms. The Listos Grants Unit is responsible for the overall grant management of the Listos California statewide grant program, the Listos California target grant program, Listos California tribal grant program, the Listos California support grant program, and the Listos California youth development grant programs. Questions regarding the RFP, the process, or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing by email to listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. Cal OES cannot assist the applicant with the actual preparation of their proposal and we can only respond to technical questions about the RFP during the period of time between the publication date and completion of the RFP process. The fiscal year 23-24 budget act included a 25 million ongoing general fund appropriation to the governor's office of emergency services. One million of that is for the Listos California youth developmental grant program via a competitive process. Applicants can apply for up to $200,000. The grant sub-award performance period is June 1st, 2024 through December 31st, 2025, and the submission deadline for your application is Monday, March 4th, 2024, by 5 o'clock p.m. via email at listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. Again, that's a really important date, so please, you might want to write that down, but the deadline is Monday, March 4th, by 5 p.m. The purpose of the program is to support new and existing projects developing or enhancing youth programs that introduce and educate about emergency preparedness. The primary goal is to develop and grow life-saving skills for youth that can be used at home, school, and in their communities, assist in the discovery of career options in fire and emergency management, as well as promote engagement in community service outreach events. For a proposal to be eligible to compete for funding, meaning red and rated, all of the following conditions must be met. Applicants must be a non-profit organization with 501c3 status or registered through the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA website as an existing CERT program, or a new CERT program approved by the California State CERT Administrator, or a CERT program sponsoring agency, or a fiscal agent representing a CERT program. For new CERT programs and approval letter, if you're a new CERT program and you're not listed on the FEMA website, then an approval letter from the California State CERT Administrator must be included in the grant submission packet. And once again, the proposals must be emailed to listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov by 5 p.m. on Monday, March 4th, 2024. Proposals must be attached as a single document for example, a PDF. Emails should identify the name of the RFP in the subject line, and for example, is LYRFP-MyBrothersHouseOrganization. Okay, so as I said, there's one million is available for the LY program that's been allocated. And applicants may apply for up to 200,000 for the 19-month grant subaward performance period to enhance existing or establish new youth development programs. And there's no match required for the LC program. Oh, I'm sorry, the LY program, this program. So now we're going to go over the programmatic components of the RFP, which are managing subgranted funds, listos California grant program materials, communication requirement, meetings, establishing and implementing a youth program approach, and capturing stories of impact. The first one is managing subgranted funds. Funds may be subgranted to local CBOs or a cert program that will provide disaster training and resources to youth populations and have the ability to serve as a fiscal sponsor for the subrecipient. Program materials and communication, the requirement is that listos California branded material is required and will be provided by Cal OES. If the subrecipient chooses to produce their own materials with listos California grant program funds, they must receive prior approval from Cal OES, including the listos California logo. The subrecipient also must respond within five business days to all Cal OES required programmatic requests. The subrecipient is also expected to participate in meetings, such as monthly meetings offered by Cal OES through the grants of award performance period. Subrecipients also must incorporate the materials and resources developed or and provided by the listos California grant program in an emergency preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation training conducted with grant funding. Youth programs must be organized to establish a tailored approach to include the following. One, for non-profit organizations that are applying, they need to address which cert programs you plan to collaborate with or identify potential cert programs you plan to work with. Two, knowledge about what to do during a disaster and consider engaging partners, such as a faith-based organization, schools, community centers, etc. Three, have emergency preparedness materials and access to information before a disaster occurs. Four, it's clear on the steps to take to increase their community's disaster preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation capabilities and keep themselves, their families and communities safe. And five, report youth program updates and results with the Cal OES listos California team. The subrecipient must capture stories of impact highlighting outcomes and results of the youth program and content connections made as part of this effort that illustrate the purpose and intent of the program. These stories which could be comprised of written articles, videos and photos should be included in the reports submitted to the Cal OES team. But please be sure or please make sure that formal permission is granted for all stories. So there are some reporting requirements. The first one is a program curriculum. Within the first 90 days of notification of being awarded, subrecipients are required to submit a detailed narrative program curriculum. And then we also have three progress reports that are required for the program. The chart below explains and shows the due dates and the time periods. So this is a competitive grant process, meaning that your applications will be ranked in comparison to all other applications received. Each of the above categories contain questions assigned a point value. The point scale is divided into five columns labeled one, two, three, four and five. The applicant's response to each question is evaluated on the following criteria. Absent, the response does not address the specific question. Unsatisfactory, the response does not completely address the question. Satisfactory would be a response that addresses the question and provides a good understanding of the applicant's intent. An above average response would be an above average, a response that's above average and provides a clear and detailed understanding of the applicant's intent. And of course, excellent is what we look for. The response is outstanding with clear, detailed and relevant information. So at the end of your RFP for the Youth Development Grant Program, there is a checklist here and it's provided to ensure that a complete proposal is submitted to Cal OES. Here is your checklist to make sure that these are all the forms that you need to complete and submit for your application. And then at the bottom is some possibly they're not necessarily required, but in case there's additional things that you want to add in your application. For example, if you have the indirect cost rate agreement or operational agreements. So once we have scored and rated your applications, we go into a recommendation for award. So the final funding decisions are made by the Director of Cal OES. Funding decisions are based on the following, the ranked score of the proposal, consideration of priorities 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 and those not selected will receive a denial letter and information on the appeal process. So once again, the proposal package must be received electronically no later than 5 p.m. on Monday, March 4th, 2024 and it must be submitted to Listos Grants at Cal OES.ca.gov. So reminders, questions concerning the RFP, the process or programmatic issues must be submitted in writing to Cal OES at Listos Grants Cal OES.ca.gov and Cal OES 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. All right, that was my alarm. Okay, so this concludes the first presentation here that kind of went over the an overview of the request for proposal. The next one I have that's going to be coming up is, it's coming, oh my grant. So this is about the forms and how to complete them. So today we're going to provide guidance on the components that are required for a proposal and what we are going to review and that we are going to review the forms on the RFP checklist that I just referred to a moment ago and familiarize view with some tools that are available. Okay, so the process of submitting a proposal begins with a request for proposal being released. This is our competitive process. Within the request for proposal, we will find source information, the background of the program, requirements and expected deliverables and instructions on how to apply. So where do you find a request for proposal? It can be found on the Cal OES website at calos.ca.gov and on the upper right corner you will click on initiatives and from the drop down menu select search for grants. Once you are on the search for grants landing page, there are a couple of ways to search. You can find the Listos California RFP by scrolling down on this page or you can use the search box. I like to use the search box when I know which request for proposal I'm looking for. You can type the name of the program in the box or if you know the two letter program acronym you can type that instead. Although we are talking about a request for proposal, I would also like to draw your attention to the mailing list. When Cal OES releases a request for proposal, our competitive process for funding, we send an email notification to anyone who has signed up for our mailing list. Please know the only time we 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 it so you can receive these important notices. Okay, so Cal OES released the Listos California youth development grant program request for proposal on February on January 8th and applicants have approximately eight weeks to put the proposal package together from that date. Once complete, applicants will need to email a copy of the proposal package to the Listos Grants Unit at Listosgrants at Cal OES.ca.gov. 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, grant subaward performance period, funding, and programmatic requirements. Part two refers to the policies or administrative requirements and includes references to the subrecipient handbook, components that are required with your proposal, policies concerning the budget, administrative requirements, and required or additional forms that may apply towards your proposal. Part three is a checklist that includes a list of the documents that are required with your proposal and links to the most current forms. This is an example of what the checklist looks like. It includes all of 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 an out-of-state travel, you will not need to include this form with your proposal. For those of you who have 501C3 status, once we receive your proposal, there is some status verifications that your program specialist will do right away. If you do not have 501C3 status, this doesn't apply to you. In the next few slides, I will go over what exactly we are looking for on this site. The purpose of this is because the state of California accounting system requires information on the site to be consistent and current in order to pay you when you submit your report of 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 accounting 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 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 your our ability to process your proposal or make payments to you if you are selected to receive an award. There are eight forms that are required with every request for proposal regardless of program type. Please note that most programs will require additional forms so read your request for proposal thoroughly. In these next slides, we're going to tell you about some of the more common mistakes that we find with these nine forms so that you know what we are looking for when we review your proposal. You can find these forms at the very end of the RFP in the checklist section with a hyperlink to each form. But first, here are a few helpful reminders. Read the entire request for proposal to understand what is required for the program. Please know that all forms have instructions so if you have questions about a form, look at the instructions first and then email your program specialist for help. 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 and you'll be asked to redo the form which may delay the processing of your award if selected. Okay so let's start with the 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 look at the two red arrows on the right. The last four digits of the zip code are often missing. Please be sure to go to the US Postal Service website to look up your your plus four and include that on your face sheet. The arrow on the left is pointing to line five of the face sheet. Disaster program title needs to match the name of the program you are applying for. This can be found on the request for proposal. For example, if you are applying to the Leistos California youth development grant program then right Leistos California youth development grant LI program on line five. The arrow pointing to line seven indirect cost rate and federally approved ICR. This is where you will indicate whether you are using the 10% de minimis rate or your agency's federally approved indirect cost rate agreement. A copy of the approved ICR negotiating agreement must be enclosed in your application if you are using a federally approved ICR. If you will not be claiming indirect costs under this award type NA. Okay, so this is the table that appears on the face sheet. We've zoomed in so 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 2024 and the source fund list LIST are now in the drop down boxes and column A can be typed in and column G 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 the sub award line area on the forms requesting it. The sub award number is given only or given once an applicant has been awarded grant funds. This is the grant sub award contact information form. The instructions here are 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 and all lines need to be filled out with complete information. Do not use wide out to fix corrections. Leave the grant sub award number section blank. This will be filled in for you after you are awarded and on lines one and two one one and two make sure the grant one the grant sub award director and two financial officer are different. They cannot be the same person. On lines two and five make sure the financial officer and five executive director are different. They cannot be the same person. The number seven chairperson also cannot be listed again in any of the other positions. Numbers one through six. Line six and seven cannot be the same person. 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 sheet. This here 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 contact information form to ensure that the grant sub award director and financial officer are the same authorized personnel. You can list alternate individuals that have the authority to sign on the grant sub award director and financial officers we have. Just like the grant sub award director and financial officer I'm sorry just like the grant sub award director and financial officer cannot be the same person you cannot have one person to be authorized signer in both sides of this form. It is best to have at least one authorized signer for each position. If someone is unavailable and you need to request funds or make a modification it is easy to do so when you have a different authorized signer for each position. If you don't have an authorized signer or an additional one then there's nothing you can do until they return. 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 important to make a modification request immediately when the change 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 is tied to the fund source for your program. The checklist in part three of the request for proposal will tell you exactly which one is needed. Another mistake in using an old version of a document. 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 that 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. There you are. Subrecipient number one subrecipient is the name of your agency. Please have this match what is written on the face sheet. Number two pointing at line one. The applicant should complete the Cal OES program name in the grant sub award performance period. The grant sub award number should be left link. Your program specialist will fill this in for you. Number three. Ensure appropriate signer have signed the document. This would be the official designee by the governing board. And number four. For cert programs it must be the governing board chair that signs this section. Okay so I love this this little page here. This little dog is so cute. Okay so now we're going to go into the budget. It's normally the next document in your proposal. This is the form 2-106B grant sub award budget pages single fund source. The subrecipient should be the name as listed on the face sheet. The form 2-106B has three budget categories. Category A is personnel costs. Category B is operating costs. And Category C is equipment costs. All three categories must be submitted with your application whether or not you have items in that category. For example if you do not have equipment you can write none requested in that category. All three categories must be included in your application packet. The budget spreadsheet template will automatically add the columns on each tab. Please show the equation on each line item as to how you got the total. Properly space the line items to include all information. Okay so the personnel category is where you'll want to put all salaries, benefits, and overtime for people you employ at your agency. This is also where you will you will put your volunteer hours. The operating category is the meat and potatoes of your program. This is where you'll want to put just about everything else including rent, travel, training, office supplies, etc. The equipment category is where you'll put non expendable property having a useful life of more than one year and a cost of $5,000 or more per unit. So just to be clear if you're buying six laptops at a cost of $1,000 each for a total of $6,000 you put those laptops in the operating expense category not the equipment as the laptops per unit price is less than $5,000. So now let's talk about the information we need to see on our budget pages. The gold bubbles you'll see on the next few slides contains the elements that need to be included in each calculation for each line item. In this example we have a program advocate position that is making $4,000 per month. Notice the equation is written out. Please note that the salary costs can be shown as an hourly rate, a monthly rate, 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. For this example the program advocate will work 50% of the time on this program. Then finally you want to include a brief description of the line items and explain how it furthers the goals and objectives of the program. For the benefit calculation you will need to include the benefit rate. In this example the rate is 22% multiplied by the total salaries of all employees in the budget that receive benefits. In this example it's $200,000 and finally you'll want to include a brief description of what benefits are included. Unless you're paying the volunteer a salary you should have it in the operating section. Volunteers are also captured in budget category A. Excuse me. The first element needed is the rate that you have valued your volunteers at. Please note that this rate cannot exceed what it costs your agency to have a staff person doing the same job. Excuse me. And that you can include both salary and benefits when calculating the volunteer rate. In this example the value of volunteers is $12 per hour multiplied by the number of hours to be charged to the grant. 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 examples. Operating volunteers that are being charged for the following per DM gas and mileage should be titled as shown in the slide. Title the volunteer title of what they are being charged for. In this example they are charged charging to per DM and the name number of training they are attending. Again the elements in the gold bubbles need to be included in each calculation for each line item. For this example we have postage. The amount for postage is $250 a month multiplied by the duration in this example. It's 12 months which probably matches the length of the performance period multiplied by how much of the postage will be charged to the grant. Yet the purpose of this grant it would be 19 months. RENT is another common operating expense. For RENT you will 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 is allowed as per the sub-recipient handbook and then multiply that by the amount you pay for RENT per square foot. Please note that $2 is the up to amount and you should use your actual rate in your calculation. If your landlord charges you 65 cents per square foot that's the rate you need to use. Finally you will multiply by the duration. In this example it's 12 months. If you are claiming indirect costs under this award please make sure you are calculating the total correctly. A common mistake is multiplying the total awarded amount by the indirect cost rate. That is not how you calculate the indirect cost. You will first need to calculate your total direct cost. To do this add up any personnel salaries, wages, benefits, operational costs and up to $25,000 of your second tier subawards but do not include any distorting costs such as equipment, RENT, capital expenditures and second tier subawards beyond the first $25,000. In this example, after doing the calculation they got $233,215. Once you've figured out your direct costs you simply multiply the total by the ICR or federally approved ICR. In this case it's 10%. Please make sure the ICR matches what you entered in section 7 of the face sheet and that if you are claiming a federally approved ICR you must include a copy of your approved ICR negotiating agreement in your application. Some final reminders about your budget. Please be sure to 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 our budget is off by a dollar it's due to rounding errors so please be sure you are checking the amounts entered in your program columns. Please include expenses in the category, 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 sub recipient to provide detail about their budget. The budget narrative typically includes how the budget supports objectives and activities, the need for administrative costs and the necessity for subcontractors or contracts, sorry subcontracts. The most common mistake 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 unit and during the review your specialist determines that several corrections are needed to your budget pages. You make those changes for your specialist but now your budget narrative doesn't match so please remember every time your budget pages are updated your budget narrative must be updated as well. They must match. Next is the programmatic narrative where you provide details about how you will meet the objectives of the program. Please be sure you are reading your RFP and that your narrative addresses each of the questions from the RFP. We have often seen applicants used by the same narrative or used the same narrative that have been used the previous year even perhaps for another grant that we do not address any or all of the questions that do not address any or all of the questions from the RFP. This narrative also needs to speak to how many people you intend to reach. Next is the grants management assessment form. 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 the applicant for the award referenced above. The questions are related to your organization's experience in the management and federal grants awards. This questionnaire must be completed and returned with your grant proposal materials. For purpose of completing this questionnaire, grant manager is the individual who has primary responsibility for day-to-day administration of the grant. Bookkeeper accounting staff means the individual who has responsibility for reviewing and determining expenditures to be charged to the grant award and organization refers to the applicant applying for the award and or governmental implementing agency as applicable. We just spent a significant amount of time talking about the nine required forms for every request for proposal we released but sometimes additional forms may apply. Be sure to check part five of your request for proposal to find out if additional forms may apply for your organization. Some final things to remember, all forms have instructions. Use the forms on the website. Those will be the most current version. The checklist that comes with the request for proposal will tell you which forms are required. Email listosgrants at listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov if you have questions. We're here to help and use the checklist in part five of the request for proposal. Okay, so this concludes the grants of award proposal training. We do have a little bit of time left over. Is there any questions in the chat? I might be able to get to some of those today. Let's see. Katie, are you there? Okay, so I will just go ahead and read some up here. Will the slides be available after the presentation? Yes, we will have the slides and the recording available after the presentation. It does take some time for those this to load up. We have to work with some other partners here at Caloedas to get the video out so it might not be until next week before we get that out. If you email listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov and ask us for those slides or the video, then we can go ahead and get that to you once it's available. Is it okay to include multiple counties in a youth development grant application? Yes, it's okay to include multiple counties. Cindy, did you want me to read off the question? I'm sorry. Oh, it's okay. That's all right. I got them now. Is the funding fully sent to the grantee? So this is a reimbursement grant. So you can ask for a 25% advance in the very beginning and whatever your award is and then anything after that it's a reimbursement. Will 501c3 nonprofits need to provide an operational agreement with the CERT programs they include as partners in this proposal? Matt, if you could email that one directly to the listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. We'll have to research that one for you. Okay, thank you. I guess my question really was more on the summary form. The OASummary form is part of the proposal where we list the OAs we have, but in addition to that will we also be required to provide the written OA with the application? No, no. You don't have to provide it with your application, but you do need to keep it on hand for audit purposes. Okay, thank you. Was that the answer? I mean like that's what you're looking for? Yep, that was the answer. Okay, very good. All right, so the next one is is there a page limit for the budget narrative? Page 12 does not provide this information. The budget scoring section on page 23 says that we are allowed a maximum of two pages for the budget section, but this doesn't seem possible since the Excel form itself is three pages. There is on the budget narrative, there is a page requirement. Please refer to RFP. I believe it is two pages, but that's not including your budget Excel spreadsheet. And then let's see what else here. Just an observation. I noticed budget pages was missing from the list of eight items on the forms required slide of this presentation. When I saw that, I initially thought, but thanks for clarifying that we do need budget forms. Okay, you're welcome. Are electronic digital signatures allowed on the forms? Yes, they are. For NGOs, what kind of agreement has to be in place with the CERT program? That one I would have to research too. That's a good question. So if you want to go ahead and send that one into the email box, that would be great. Let's see here. Please check page 12 with RFP. The section for the budget narrative doesn't provide the page number. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and go back and look at that RFP because I've gotten quite a few comments about that. I'll go back and look at the RFP and if there's any changes that need to be made, we'll fix that. And that's all I see here. All right, so that concludes the training. And I look forward to seeing all of your applications. And once again, if you have any more questions, maybe that you thought of after the fact, then please email listosgrants at caloes.ca.gov. And we are here to help you. There's someone in that inbox five days a week all day. So I look forward to seeing your applications, everyone. And thanks again. Goodbye.