June 14, 2017
Administrative Staff Reports
June 12, 2017
Grants Officer
- Major projects completed –
COMPETITIVE GRANT AWARD:
CNCS announced the Competitive Award winners and provided feedback and a list of clarifications needed for each program: LearningWorks, USM-MCC and MCC. The Grants Officer worked with each program on the long list of clarifications required by CNCS.
The LearningWorks clarifications required additional work reevaluating the Performance Measures for the program.
USM-MCC also received many questions from CNCS for further clarification on the Narrative, Performance Measures and Budget sections. USM-MCC is a first-time applicant and there is a strong need from CNCS to fully understand the program application in more detail. After the first round of clarifications was submitted, CNCS contacted MCCS again for further clarifications and the need for more improvements to the budget narrative and performance measures.
All three programs were also contacted by the CNCS Financial Officer for further clarification/detailed information on the Budget Items. The new program USM-MCC required additional help with the budget clarifications as well as the process was completely new to them.
FORMULA COMPETITION:
*Formula Rural Competition:
Two applications were received.
- Maine Youth Alliance –
- United Way of Tri-Valley Area –
The Grants Officer compiled and posted all the application materials to the Hub for the Grants Task Force members, prepared detailed Grant Assessment Reports for each program and responded to the task force questions.
She also scheduled and hosted the Grant Task Force Consensus Calls for each program.
Following the Consensus meeting a summary for the Commissioners that combined Peer Reviewer and Grant Task Force Comments for each program was prepared.
*Formula Continuation Grant Applications –
The Grants Officer worked with RSU 14 on improving their Application Narrative based on the feedback provided by the Grants Officer and approved by the Grants Task Force including Slot Configuration changes, Narrative Changes and Performance Measurement updates.
The Grants Officer is also working with Goodwill MLC RSU 14 and Goodwill MLC on the Supplemental Funds offered to each program.
CONFERENCE:
The Grants Officer attended the 2017 Regional National Service Conference between June 5-7, in Baltimore, MD.
2. Ongoing Program Audits:
On Wednesdays, the Grants Officer visits the programs to check the member files.
LearningWorks: Over 110 member files with access to vulnerable populations have been checked. The Grants Officer will be working on the compliance report as soon as the strict and extremely tight external and internal deadlines for CNCS clarifications for Competitive Grant Applications and Formula and Rural Grant Applications and Commissioner meetings are met.
Goodwill Take 2: A meeting was held with the Program explaining the procedure and gathering information about the program. 80% of all current and previous Grant year’s member files have been checked.
The Grants Officer has been working on a possible 7-month no-cost extension for Goodwill Take2 to improve recruitment rates. There were a lot of questions on how this can be done with the existing funds. The program design and budget modification plan along with the recruitment rates have been carefully monitored over the period since the extension conversation started and based on the feedback from the Grants Officer it was decided that 7-month extension would not be feasible. Grants Officer has been doing research on what needs to be done next for the struggling program. She plans to have a recruitment status update for the Summer Program followed by a Budget Modification request to cut down the staff time charged to the Grant to be in alignment with the number of members that they have. She will also be meeting with the Finance team to go over the program expenses and complete the fiscal compliance report.
Similar to the LearningWorks audit, the Grants Officer will start putting together the compliance reports as soon as the strict deadlines are met and LearningWorks audit has been completed.
Goodwill MLC: The Grants Officer has also contacted Goodwill MLC to request documentation to audit the Consulting expenses on the submitted PERs.
- New Commissioner Training Meeting
The Grants Officer worked with GTF Chair to plan and schedule a training session for the new GTF members on how to evaluate Grants so they could participate in the Rural Grant Competition Application Review process. However, the training was postponed to a later date (TBD) due to unavailability of the new members and a quick turnaround requirement for the Rural Applications. Training and reading materials were gathered and posted on the Hub for the reference of the new members.
- Routine Tasks
The Grants Officer continues to process all financial and accounting reports, program reimbursements, grant contracts, budget modifications, slot changes, supplemental grant award amendments, etc.. in OnCorps and eGrants (State and Federal Accounting and Grant Management Online Systems).
The Grants Officer hosts monthly regular Grants Task Force calls and prepares Meeting Minutes after each call to be posted to the MCCS website.
The Grants Officer helps the programs with numerous questions on AmeriCorps procedures and regulations which require time demanding research.
The Grants Officer is having regular phone calls with her Federal contact, giving her status updates on the programs. The Federal officer is particularly interested in LearningWorks and USM-MCC and needs follow-up information on these two programs.
The Grants Officer is also in contact with the Federal Finance Officer responding to her financial program requests. A summary of unexpended funds was required for all Formula programs.
- Plans for the new month (June 16-July 15)
The Grants Officer will take a vacation, complete the audit reports, will work on the Grant Progress Reports and start the process of preparing contracts for the new Grant year.