PRESENT: Ed Barrett, Rob Meinders, Matt L’Italien, Maryalice Crofton for Jamie McFaul
DISCUSSION ITEMS:
Peer reviewers for Planning Grants. When the agenda was sent, there were no reviewers. Three people did volunteer yesterday so this is taken care of.
Schedule for planning grant review. The submission deadline is April 19 and peer reviewers will do their part between April 21 and April 29. The Task Force technical review will begin May 2 and end on May 13. The executive session and public meetings will be on the same day (May 13) which happens to be the usual meeting date for the task force.
Schedule for continuations. The submission deadline is also April 19. The task force members decided to form two panels because there are 8 continuation grants. One panel will handle fixed amount grants while the other will take the cost reimbursement grants. These reviews will be done at the same time as new planning grants. Thus, the final assessment discussions can be done in the May 13 executive session and recommendations finalized in the public meeting on May 13.
Update on AC competitives submitted in January. Both the KVCAP and Goodwill Northern New England submissions received clarification requests from CNCS. The set for KVCAP were quite minor while GINNE had substantive explanations needed. The next step is for the federal agency to make its decisions and announcements should be coming before the May Commission meeting.
Overview of AmeriCorps Public Health. The full list of awards announced this week was shared with the task force. Of note across the nation, many national nonprofits are proposing to operate in multiple states so they are listed repeatedly. In Maine, the organizations expected to place members are American Heart Association, Epilepsy Foundation of New England, FoodCorps, Goodwill Northern New England (NH + ME), and National Network of Public Health Institutes. Commission staff will call each grantee next week to find out where members will be placed and how many will serve in Maine.
Grantee Performance issues. At the request of the chair, a status report on enrollment was compiled and sent to the task force members last night. It is current as of April 8.
Of note is the fact only three programs have significant low enrollment: USM which is now closing out; KVCAP which places members in schools and was impacted by intermittent school closures; and Maine Development Foundation. The latter needs to submit a corrective action plan to address low recruitment. A probable factor in that grantee’s situation is the fact they did not raised the living allowance to the same level as other programs so they are not competitive among their peers. There are ongoing meetings because the program director resigned last week.
The “difficult” recruiting seems to be something of a myth although the rural grants with smaller corps have always had high enrollment.
As a result of the program closures, there will be about $167,000 available for grant activity. Commission staff is clarifying what timeframe the funds are available to use and how the match waiver fits with the funds. It may be that the Commission and task force will find itself in immediately in another round of grant making starting June.
DEI and grant-making. Commission staff recommend this project be tabled until work with the consultant (SISGI Group) progresses. One thing they will do is a review of Commission policies and report towards the end of the summer. Task force members accepted the recommendation.
Adding public members to task force. All Commission task forces can add public members to assist with work and inform the work. There is a public facing application but it needs to be reviewed as it hasn’t been used in a couple of years. The suggestion is to recruit people and either have them provide a resume or complete the application. The goal is to be able to draw on the full experience of new people and that might not be evident from their current roles. A question was raised about criteria for recruitment. Grant making is not the sole experience – bank people with business development backgrounds as well as people with expertise in our funding priorities are good candidates. The task force currently has 5 commission members and could use 3-4 more people. Each member is asked to recruit one more person before the May board meeting so people can be appointed and join in June.
There were no more discussion topics so the members dispersed at 9:34 am.