March 1, 2018
(Reporting on January and February 2018)
Report submitted by: Laurel Bernier, Grants Officer
Major projects completed:
- Continued education on federal grants management, including a 2-day online course on Uniform Administrative Requirements for Federal Grants: 2CFR 200, CNCS webinar on preparing the mid-year Grantee Progress Report (GPR), and several OnCorps webinars.
- Reviewed and approved GPRs due in January, and assisted Program Directors with this process.
- Completed site visits for Goodwill, RSU14, United Way of Tri-Valley Area, ME Campus Compact, and LearningWorks. Visits included member and site supervisor interviews, and informal meetings with Program Directors.
- Planned and facilitated Grant Selection & Performance Task Force meeting and in-person Technical Assistance meeting for Program Directors with assistance from Maryalice and Michael.
Issues to be aware of:
- AmeriCorps State & National (ASN) recently discovered a backlog of member eligibility verifications in their computer systems. If a member’s Social Security Number or Citizenship Status have not been verified (going back to 2012) their education award and loan interest payments have been put on hold. If their eligibility to serve is not verified, subgrantees will be responsible for paying these funds back. At the end of February, emails were sent to Program Directors but not state commissions, and the emails included conflicting information. I spent a significant amount of time assisting programs with resolving this issue, and communicating with ASN and other commissions.
- ME Campus Compact discovered a few issues with the National Service Criminal History Checks, for which there will likely be disallowances. They have been very responsive with me as we resolve this issue and prevent future disallowances
- Eastern Maine Development Corps is working largely with Michael on their program’s start-up, for which they have begun recruiting members.
Major focus of effort for the next month:
- Continuing to work on eligibility verifications, for which we set a due date of April 14.
- Completing site visits for Conservation Corps, and distributing reports to Program Directors.
- Updating our member record monitoring tool, and beginning those visits.
- Promoting AmeriCorps week (3/11-17) and AmeriCorps Member Conference (3/28) including designing and facilitating a workshop on how to talk about their work to community members and state/federal staff.
- Preparing mid-year GPR
- Continuing education, particularly regarding program financials so that Maryalice can phase out from supervising that component.