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American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
(Start of Call) Thom Campbell: Welcome everyone to the pre-application teleconference for the Strengthening Communities Fund or SCF. This call is intended to be guidance for potential applicants to the Strengthening Communities Fund’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. As we go through the call, I’ll ask everybody to follow along with the PowerPoint slides. We will try to announce the slides as we go so that will make it easier for you. Now, before we get into some of the specifics, let’s look at an outline of today’s call and some of the background on the Strengthening Communities Fund program. Now, on Slide #2 our call outline, the purpose of this call is to discuss sort of the context of the Strengthening Communities Fund to give you a bit of a program overview, talk a little bit about the eligibility, to talk about some of the key components and restrictions on the funding, and talk a little bit more specifically about how your applications will be evaluated, and then some of the submission information that you’re going to need. Now, due to the high volume of callers that we anticipant on this call there will not be a question and answer session at the end. You may of course send your questions through the SCF email address that we’ll show you at the end of the call; and also there is a phone number that we will give you. Keep in mind that everything you need to know to apply for this program can you can find in the program announcement that has been published and that exists on the ACF Funding Opportunities page. It is important to understand what the context for the Strengthening Communities Fund program is. On Slide #3 you’ll see that the Strengthening Communities Fund was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Now, this piece of legislation is a nationwide effort to sustain and create jobs and transform our economy to compete in the 21st Century. Now, with the signing of this Recovery Act, President Obama has authorized $50 million to build the capacity of nonprofit organizations to address, specifically to address economic issues present in their communities. So the Strengthening Communities Fund is rooted in the fundamental principles behind the Recovery Act. Now, I’m going to turn it over to Renee to talk more about the purpose of the Strengthening Communities Fund. Renee Bergen: Thanks Thom. We’re on Slide 4. And as Thom just reviewed some of the background on the genesis of this program and the Recovery Act, you understand that the SCF program is intended to provide critical capacity-building assistance to help nonprofits better serve individuals and families dealing with current economic challenges and hardships. Specifically, the purpose of the program is designed to help low-income individuals secure and retain employment, earn higher wages, obtain better-quality jobs, and gain greater access to state and Federal benefits and tax credits, including ARRA benefits. Moving on to Slide 5. Now, there are two separate programs that make up the Strengthening Communities Fund. The first one, the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program, is the focus of our call today. This program will make one-time awards up to $1 million to experienced lead organizations who will provide nonprofit organizations with capacity building training, technical assistance, and competitive financial assistance. The second program that makes up the Strengthening Communities Fund is the State, Local, and Tribal Capacity Building Program. This is not the focus of today’s call. This program will make one-time awards up to $250,000 to State, city, county, and Indian/Native American Tribal government offices or their designees to build the capacity of grass roots organizations. Now, specifically government entities will do this through outreach, training, and technical assistance to nonprofit organizations. Now, both of these SCF grant programs are one-time awards, there will be no continuation awards offered, and both of them have a 24-month project and budget period. Okay. We are on Slide 6. I want to emphasize at the outset that SCF funds must be used for capacity building, capacity building rather than for direct services. And we’re going to get into this in much greater detail as we talk today and go over specific examples of allowable and unallowable activities. So, what is capacity building? Capacity building is the process of implementing activities critical to the long-term viability of organizations, to increase the effectiveness of programmatic activities and organizational operations. So, a good way to think about it is “What will the organizations served through the grant look like at the conclusion of the process?” Their programs will be stronger, more effective and more sustainable. In a little bit, we will be discussing, as I mentioned, some specific examples of capacity building activities. So now I’m going to turn it over to Thom to get into some of the specifics of the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. Thom Campbell: Thank you, Renee. Hmm, on Slide #7 we’re, we’re looking at some of the very specific things, umm, some of the statistics if you will, of the program—the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program. You’ll see here that the, the total estimated program funding is $34 million, so the $50 million of the appropriation that came through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, $34 million of that will be given out in Nonprofit Capacity Building Program grants. Each grant cannot be any more than $1 million as Renee said earlier. The, and so then we anticipate the number of awards to be about 34; it could a little bit more if not everyone comes in at $1,000,000. The budget period is 24 months and that means to to to clarify again what Renee had said that means that grants will be awarded one time. You get one pot of money at the beginning of the grant period and you have 24 months to spend it. You will not get a continuation award. You will not get any other financial assistance other than that one time grant. There is a non-Federal match requirement, umm, that we’ll talk about in the next couple of slides; but before we do that I want to point out that on this PowerPoint slide and on others throughout the rest of the of the umm presentation, there are references to the pages numbers in the Program Announcement. In the upper right hand corner you’ll see umm where it says “PA Pages 15 and 16” that means that the information on this slide exists in the Program in the Program Announcement on pages 15 and 16. And hopefully that will help you read the Program Announcement. You, you, you should not of course rely on the slides to give you all the details. The Program Announcement is the main thing that has all the information in it that you will need. Now, on Slide #8 we have some discussion about the non-Federal match. The non-Federal match is 20% of the total approved cost of the project. Now, this match can be met by cash or in-kind contributions. Now we do encourage grantees to meet their match requirements with cash contributions, but whether or not its cash or in-kind will not matter on how your application is scored. Now, the match is 20% of the total project cost, not 20% of the Federal request. Now, this is this is an important piece that that may be a little confusing. So let’s look at the next slide, Slide #9, which gives a couple of examples of of of Federal requests and a match. Let’s say that you are going to request the maximum, the 1 million. That means that your 20% cost share would be $250,000. Because the $1 million represents 80% of your total approved project cost. The $250,000 represents 20% of the total approved project’s cost. The total approved project cost in this example is $1,250,000. Another example is if you are, your total approved project cost is going to be $250,000, 20% of that, which is what your non-Federal match must be—which is what you must bring to the table, is $50,000. The Federal request in that case can be $200,000. Now all this and more information about the match is on slide is on page number 20 in the Program Announcement. Now I’m going to turn it back over to Renee to talk more about the eligibility of the program. Renee Bergen: Okay. We are on Slide 10. We have the eligibility listing here for the Nonprofit Capacity Building program. This is Page 19 of your Program Announcement or Section III. You’ll notice that the eligibility is quite broad. You should note however that foreign entities are not eligible to apply for this grant program. Now I want to mention here that under this grant program preference will be given to applicant organizations that are nonprofit (are nonprofit). This is in keeping with the focus of the Strengthening Communities Fund initiative to umm build the capacity of nonprofit organizations. Now Thom, do you want to say something here about how that would work? Thom Campbell: Yes, I want I want to clarify what, what we mean by preference. The preference in this Program Announcement is for nonprofit organizations, but all of the organizations you see on this slide are eligible. What that what the preference means is if there for example two organizations that score relatively close to each other and we cannot fund but only one of them and one of them is a nonprofit and one of them is a for profit let’s say for example, most likely we will fund the nonprofit. That does not mean however that we will fund all nonprofits that apply before we fund anybody else or that we will fund only nonprofits. That’s not, that’s not it at all. If two organizations score relatively close to each other and one of them is nonprofit, they will receive the preference. That is, that is what that means. So I don’t want to discourage anybody who is not a nonprofit from applying. That’s all. Renee Bergen: Okay. Great. Moving on to Slide 11. We are going to get into the three core components of your grant project. What we are asking lead organizations to do is to assist participating nonprofits is to provide training, technical assistance, and competitive financial assistance. Now these three key project areas are described in full detail on Pages 5 and 7. That’s a, that’s a definitions section; and in particular on Pages 9 through 15. And I highly recommend that you review Pages 9 through 15 to look at some of the detail on what’s required in each of these three areas. Now we will go over some of the requirements in the next few slides. I want to also mention here that the framework for this Nonprofit Capacity Building Program is an intermediary type or intermediary style grant program. There’s going to be a lead organization or the applicant organization providing assistance to participating nonprofit organizations known as project partners. So keep that framework in mind as we continue this call and as you review the Program Announcement. Alright, let’s go over these three areas in a little more detail. Moving on to Slide 12. So, you’ll see here some definitions for the first two project components, training and technical assistance. Again, as I mentioned, there is a very helpful definitions section early on in the Program Announcement on Pages 5 through 7. You’ll see that a requirement of this program is that 50% of the training and technical assistance strategy must be direct and individualized technical assistance. Also, and this is very important, under this grant program all training and technical assistance must be offered free of charge to interested faith-based or community organizations. Okay, we’re on Slide 13. We’re looking at the third project component of this grant program, the financial assistance piece. We have highlighted some of the most important requirements of the financial assistance strategy but I want to note that the full requirements are on Pages 12 through 15. The first and most important is that the financial assistance that the lead or applicant organization will manage is it’s a competitive process. At least 55% of the Federal amount requested must be given to participating nonprofits through a through a competitive process. Now sometimes you you hear this as a required pass through. So for this grant it’s 55%. Now, bonus points will be awarded to applications who demonstrate that they are going to provide 60% or more in competitive, competitive financial assistance. Some of the other core features is that the financial assistance umm must be to nonprofit organizations and those who are working to address economic recovery issues in particular. Finally, the financial assistance must be for capacity building. Now, as a whole your project, including the training and technical assistance and financial assistance piece, must address all critical areas of capacity (and we’re going to outline those on the next slide). Slide 14. So here you see the critical areas listed. They are defined in more detail with examples on Pages 10 and 11 in the Program Announcement. A requirement of the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program is that at a minimum the lead organization will address three of these identified critical areas of need for each nonprofit organization served. Lead organizations must demonstrate their ability to correctly assess the greatest capacity building needs of the organizations they will be serving. And you’ll notice that as a part of your application, you’ll be asked to describe your assessment process. And this assessment process will help you determine the organizations you’re serving’s needs as well as help you measure the impact of your project. And we’ll get over, we’ll get into this in a little more detail when we move to the Evaluation Criteria. Thom Campbell: Let me step in for a minute Renee, on this these five critical areas of capacity building are important to understand that what we’re talking about and keep in mind we’re talking about capacity building and not direct service—and what we’re talking about here is how in areas in which you as the grantee would be able to spend your money areas in which as the grantee would be able to provide training and technical assistance to your project partners, but also areas in which your the organizations you’re helping—were they to get a financial assistance award competitively through the process they could also use those awards in these areas of capacity building. Now it would be very important to recognize that whether you’re spending the money or they are spending the money, that it must be capacity building in nature under these five areas and ultimately it is the grantee it is you that is responsible for how the how the Federal funds and how the project’s funds are spent. Renee Bergen: That’s absolutely right. Really everything in this particular project ties back to these five areas of capacity—use of funds in particular for the umm project partners. So, let’s break these out a little bit and look at some examples of allowable activities. Slide 15. We’re going to look at the first one, Organizational Development. You see some examples here. Now, umm, as Thom just mentioned, these are examples of how the lead organization can spend training dollars and also how project partners can spend some of their financial assistance. Everything goes back to these five critical areas of capacity. So let’s just look at strengthening board governance, for example. You, as the lead, could provide board training on strategic planning or board function and roles. Umm, the project partners may want to spend funds on hiring a consultant to come in and lead a board retreat. Umm, looking at the second one, developing systems; you as the lead could provide training on systems and the project partners may want to spend funds on buying organizational development systems. Again, the list of allowable activities in all five areas of capacity is on Page 10 and 11 in your Program Announcement. Let’s look at a second area of capacity on Slide 16, Program Development. Again we have four or five examples here on use of funds. Some of the organizations that would come to you for assistance may need help in this area. You could help them create a curriculum related to job training, you could help them learn more about social entrepreneurship. As a part of training and technical assistance, you might be able to help the nonprofits you are serving streamline existing programs or research and develop new programs. A project partner might choose to spend financial assistance they receive from you, the lead organization, on hiring a program development consultant. Okay, so just to recap, we just went over two of the five critical areas of capacity. Now remember as as you’re umm thinking about your grant project, as a whole it should address all five areas. And remember this is all about capacity building and not about direct service. And I’m going to turn it back over to Thom to kind of flush out some more differences between capacity building and direct service. Thom Campbell: Thank you, Renee. This, this, this is a key point to keep in mind. And, and looking at the five critical areas of capacity building there are hundreds of activities that are possible under these five areas if if not thousands of activities. And so the list that you have in the Program Announcement are are just illustrative. They should not be considered exhaustive; they should not be considered anything other than examples of where you can spend your money. And so since we’ve just talked about where and how you can spend your money in what directions let’s talk a little about how, how you cannot spend your money. We’ve made the point several times that this project is all about capacity building as opposed to direct service. What really are we talking about here? Look on Slide #17. Capacity building is essentially spending money to improve the effectiveness to improve the sustainability to improve the the reach of a nonprofit organization or a nonprofit program. A good way to think about capacity building is if I spend if I give $5000 to a food bank, the food bank could spend that $5000 on food; after the food is gone that organization the program is no better off than it was before. If they spend the $5000 however on a freezer, a walk in freezer, then the food bank can store more food, it can have umm have different kinds of food, it can have food for longer periods of time, it is a stronger more sustainable organization. That is that is a very cut and dry very simplistic view of capacity building but but it’s illustrative in the sense that, that it gives a good umm a good umm overview. Now, more specifically on Slide #17 let’s take a couple of other examples. You can spend your money on capacity building, on for example research in developing new job training programs; you cannot spend the money implementing those programs. You can spend the money on training or or one of your partners could spend money on training their partners to run a job bank or a benefits bank. You cannot spend the money paying the staff to man the benefits bank or the job bank. You, or to provide services directly to clients. That would be considered direct service. You cannot spend the money also paying for training stipends for clients or for program participants. There’s, this is this is a subtle distinction but it’s one that you’re going to need to think through very carefully as you put your project together, ready for your application. Now let’s think about a couple of other more broad funding restrictions that umm you need to think about in terms of this program. On Slide #18, and and also on the Program Announcement on pages number 41 and 42. These are a list of funding restrictions. These things are not allowable with the Federal funds, with any of the project’s funds that you will be spending. Fundraising. Fundraising is never allowed with Federal funds. Fundraising, what we’re talking about here, is spending money so that you can make money. Umm, an allowable capacity building activity could be for example paying for a grants specialist to come in and give training to the staff to learn how to write better grants. That would be allowable. That is capacity building. What is not capacity building is hiring a grant writer to write a grant to apply for funds. That would be direct fund raising. It’s also not allowable to print and mail out solicitation letters or flyers or hold fundraising events. You can you can hire a consultant to develop a fundraising strategy, for example. These are these are these are revenue development strategies rather than direct fundraising activities. Again a subtle distinction but one that’s very important umm because it is it is illegal to spend Federal funds on direct fundraising. The next one there is reimbursement of pre-award costs. We cannot be paying umm the grantees back of any expenses they incurred before they got their grant application, got their grant award. We also can’t pay for construction. We can’t pay for purchase of real property. And what we mean there is buying real estate—a building or land. We also don’t, umm, we cannot pay for direct social service provisions. We talked about that. But that includes the provision of medical care. We cannot pay for capacity building of medical services. And and that’s another key point you need to keep in mind. And also we cannot pay for inherently religious activity, including proselytization, worship, and religious education. Nor can we pay for any organization or any program to develop their capacity that discriminates against program beneficiaries based on their religion or their religious beliefs. These, these aren’t likely to come up but they’re important enough for me to to illuminate here. Also, we cannot and grantees cannot spend any of the funds to provide contracts under the grant to organizations that are providing the grantees with a cost share match, with portion or even all of their cost share match. This is a very important piece to keep in mind because the because the the match in this could be substantial depending on how much you’re you are requesting Federally. Now let’s umm, we’re going to move on to the Evaluation Criteria now and I will pass it back over to Renee. Renee Bergen: Okay, umm, before I jump umm into the Evaluation Criteria I just want to mention umm on the funding restrictions umm all of the list that Thom just went over not only applies to you as the potential funded grantee but also to the project partners. Lead organizations are responsible and accountable for their project partners’ adherence to program requirements and all Federal rules and regulations including these very important funding restrictions. Thom Campbell: Thank you, Renee. That’s an excellent point. Renee Bergen: Okay. Let’s get into how your application will be reviewed and scored. Slide 19. I want to start out by just briefly talking about the required Project Summary or Abstract. It’s three quick and easy points if you follow exactly what the Evaluation Criteria asks for in this section. The other point I want to make here under Objectives and Need for Assistance, you will be asked to document that your project will be implemented in a distressed community. Now, what do we mean by a distressed community? This term is included in the key definitions section early on in the Program Announcement on Pages 5 through 7. Umm, I will also mention it here. A distressed community is a neighborhood or other well-defined geographic community with an unemployment rate and/or poverty rate greater than the state or national rate. Again, you will be asked to provide documentation that your project is being implemented in a distressed community. If you are providing statistics please make sure you provide a citation for those statistics. Okay. Moving on to Slide 20. The Approach, 35 points. Here is the heart, the meat of your project. We’ve hopefully made it a little easier for you in terms of describing your approach. We’ve umm we’ve identified two key sections: Training and Technical Assistance Strategy and the Financial Assistance Strategy. Now if you thought umm the requirement in the Evaluation Criteria were specific for just the Abstract, wait until you spend some time reading the Approach section. I’m just going to highlight an example of what I’m talking about that I’m going to pull from the Financial Assistance Strategy section. Here we’re going to ask you for very specific things about you financial assistance strategy. For example, we’re going to ask you for a timeline for at least two separate, complete financial assistance competitions. We’re going to ask you to describe your outreach or marketing strategy; we’re going to ask you to provide the types and number of organizations you expect to apply; we’re going to ask you to describe your independent reviewing and scoring process and so on. All of this information can be found on Pages 45 and 46 of your Program Announcement. Thom Campbell: Thanks Renee. I just want to jump in again here and and and make the point to everybody on the call that while while the Evaluation Criteria section is important, and it is very important, it is not the only important part of the Program Announcement. And it is it is vital that everybody reads the entire Program Announcement. For example, in the Approach section, there are two cross-references to earlier sections in the Announcement that if you don’t pay attention to those you will not do well on this section. This is, this is umm this is vital to understand. Now I think that in past Announcements from the Offices of Community Services you may not have you may not have had so many cross references. But in this particular Announcement there are multiple cross references and there are multiple references to other sections of the of the Program Announcement that are that are necessary to understand in order to respond under the Evaluation Criteria section. So I just want to make that clear to everybody on the call. Renee Bergen: Okay. The Organizational Profiles section. Another key area here, 27 points. I think umm, you if you’ve been hearing us as we describe the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program that it’s an award for experienced lead organizations. Well, here is where you’re going to document your experience. We’re looking for specific prior trainings that you’ve given; maybe you’ve, you’ve also ran some financial assistance competitions. If you’ve done so please talk about that experience in this section. When you talk about, when we umm, I’m sorry, when we’re looking for umm project management structure and staffing, what resources are you bringing to the project? With respect to staffing, we umm are encouraging resumes umm as a as a way of documenting that your staff are qualified. You will see that resumes are included in the checklist of what to include with your application. Okay. Moving on to Slide 21, Evaluation. What we’re looking for here generally is how are you going to measure and document your project. Is it on tract? Is it on track? Is it having its intended effect or results? For those of you who umm know a little bit about the Recovery Act and and some of the focus of this umm administration, evaluation and documenting what works is very, very important. Thom Campbell: I, I, I, do want to say here umm, do you mind if I take this? Renee Campbell: No, no, go ahead. Thom Campbell: The Evaluation section is is vital. The Evaluation section is how are you going to document it, what’s your process, how are you how are you going to document where people are before they get help from you, where how are you going to document how they wind up after they’ve gotten the help? Umm, so I do want to, to umm, to to put a bug in to paying attention to this section. Umm, again, you know it is less, it’s 15 points, it’s not as much as the Organizational Profiles or the Approach but it is very, very important—especially in a very competitive application process like we anticipate this one will be. Renee Bergen: And the only other thing I want to bring up about the Evaluation, umm, there is another one of these cross references here. You’re going to be pointed to an earlier section that has a little title Thom Campbell: Sure. Renee Bergen: Umm, first and foremost, I want to say that if you look on letter “B,” the last two fiscal year’s operating budgets, this is the way that the government is going to see if you have sufficient capacity to run this project. Remember, this particular grant program is about building your participating nonprofits’ capacity, not you not your capacity as the lead. So you’re going to document for us that you have capacity to run this project by providing copies of your last two year’s operating budgets. And the amount that you ask for in your application must be reasonable and manageable. Now, what would be an example? Well, if you’re asking for the full amount of 1 million it would, it really wouldn’t be reasonable if your last year’s operating budget was say in the $200,000 range. So, that’s what I’ll say on that. Umm, overall budget reminders: the budget should be for the full project period (24 months). You should detail how much you’re going to provide to your project partners—whether it be 55% or more. Remember to include a break-out of your non-Federal match. That’s very important. Umm, finally we ask that you include under Travel in your budget, amount for two people to attend an SCF orientation workshop in Washington, D.C. Thom Campbell: Renee Bergen: Unn hun. Thom Campbell: Umm, the Budget and Budget Justification are again, here, you’ve only got 10 points out of the total, but the Budget and Budget Justification are vital. The Budget, it is, it tells the story in a way that your narrative, your your your project narrative can’t tell. You should, you should be able to look at your Budget, anybody should be able to look at the Budget in your application and figure out what it is you’re trying to do—figure out where your money is going, look how it’s being spent. The Budget, as a reminder, is a spreadsheet. The Budget Justification is a narrative explanation of that spreadsheet. Taken together they really tell the story of your overall project. If they do not tell the story in the same way that your project narrative tells it, if they is an inconsistency between the two, the reviewers will find it. And the reviewers will take off points. So you have to make sure that your Budget and your Budget Justification match the rest of your project narrative. A lot of times, umm, applicants will have different people in their organizations write the Budget than write the narrative. You’ve got to build in time to your process though to make sure the two of them reconcile. It it it is it is very important that that happens. So I just want to I just want to put a plug in for for the importance of the Budget and the Budget Justification as well. Renee, will you talk just quickly about the bonus points before we move on? Renee Bergen: Sure. Sure. And we’re on we’re on the home stretch here. We’re just going to quickly go over the two bonus points. You’ll see you’ll have the opportunity for up to five additional points. The first two points will be awarded to those applicants that can document that they will utilize AmeriCorps Vista volunteers in their project. Umm, the Nonprofit Capacity Building Program really values participation by AmeriCorps Vista volunteers. And you’ll find some specific examples about how you might want to incorporate them into your project on Pages 4 and 5 and Pages 27 and 28 of the Program Announcement. Now we’ve talked a little bit about this required pass through (the 55%). If you choose to provide 60% or more and you can document this, and this is very important, you document this in your Budget and in your Approach, you will be eligible for the three bonus points. Umm, on final thing I don’t know if I mentioned this about the required pass through; this 55% or 60% or more, whatever you choose, is not calculated on the match. I don’t think I said this before. I need to emphasize this. It is only calculated on the Federal amount that you are requesting, not the match. Okay, I’m going to turn it over to Thom to finish up the call. Thom Campbell: Alright. We are almost there. Umm, before we before we wrap up though I do want to point umm some things you know we see a lot of applications every year in this office and we see a lot of people making the same mistakes. And so we want to give you some tips to avoid some of the common mistakes that we see. The first is, read the entire Program Announcement. It is very important, as I said before, there are cross references, there are there are big picture things that you don’t get if you only read one section of the Announcement. Every section of the Announcement is important. Read the entire Announcement. Also, read the correct Program Announcement. There are two SCF programs out there. If you’re intending to apply to one and you read the other Program Announcement that will not suit you well. Umm, you will not do well if you read the wrong and you respond to the wrong program announcement. It seems a silly thing, but we’ve seen it more than a few times. Umm, check your eligibility requirement. For example, if you’re a nonprofit you are required to send in proof of your nonprofit status. Umm, follow the format guidelines that exist in the Program Announcement. For example, your narrative can’t be any longer than 25 pages. You have to have one inch margins on all sides of your paper. You should be using 12 point font. Again, these things seem very silly. They are very important. Umm, if you use 10 point font umm reviewers get really really cranky. They’re going to have to read a lot of applications and if they have to read 10 point font they will not be happy and you do not want a cranky reviewer reviewing your application. Umm, use the application checklist. Make sure that all your documents are included. The application checklist is in the Program Announcement. I believe it’s in Section 8. If you intent to use the government’s electronic grants portal, called grants.gov, please set your account up well in advance of the due date. If, it can take a while to register and to get authorized to use grants.gov. It can take up to a week. Do not login the day before and expect to be able to apply through grants.gov. It won’t happen. Umm, please try not to send in multiple versions of your application. Do not send us two copies. Do not sent us a copy in grants.gov and then another in hardcopy. Umm, if you must, if you have forgotten a section, if you submit it and and the next day as long as it is still before the deadline, you realize you’ve forgotten an entire section, umm, you can send us another version but please make sure we know which version you want us to review. Don't make us guess because we’re likely to guess wrong. And, and our decision on which one to to umm review is final. There is no appeal to that. So please make it clear which one you want us to review. Do not ask for more than $1,000,000. Do not request more than $1,000,000 in Federal funds. If you do it is an automatic disqualification. Your application will not be reviewed. It will not be read. It will not be scored. So do not ask for more than the ceiling, the $1,000,000 ceiling. (End of Call) |
