2024 CareCorps Pre-Application Teleconference Transcript 4-18-24.docx

2024 Community Care Corps NOFO (NOFO)

HHS-2024-ACL-AOA-CCDG-0032

Pre-Application Teleconference and Q&A

(This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability)

Moderator: GREG LINK

April 18, 2024

1:00 pm

Coordinator: Welcome, and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, if you'd like to ask a question, you may press Star 1 on your phone. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I'll now turn the call over to Greg Link. Thank you. You may begin.

Greg Link: Thank you, Ted. And welcome, everyone, to this pre-application information teleconference for the Administration for Community Living's Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) entitled Volunteer Community Care Corps, Expanding and Refining Models of Volunteer programs to Support Older Adults, People with Disabilities, and Their Family Caregivers.

This call will only be focusing on this NOFO. If is not the funding opportunity that you're interested in learning about, you may disconnect. Otherwise, what I'll be doing today is walking through some key elements of the NOFO that you should be particularly aware of. As you are beginning to think about your applications and beginning to do the work to pull an application together.

It would be ideal if you have the PDF of the NOFO open in front of you either a hard copy or on the screen as I will be referring to the page numbers in the PDF, as I walk you through the key elements of this particular NOFO.

After I've done my presentation, as Ted said, we will open it up for Q&A. There will be a printed transcript as well as a downloadable recording of this teleconference available on the Grants.gov Web site. In about five to seven days, depending on how quickly it takes us to get that information cleaned up and posted on Grants.gov.

This will be the only opportunity folks have to ask questions of me. In general, we cannot answer questions from potential applicants outside of this particular teleconference, which is open to the public, as that would provide an unfair advantage to individuals who are asking questions outside of this venue.

So with that, I will go ahead and begin walking folks through the NOFO. We are going to start on Page 2 of the PDF. I want folks to just note a couple of critical due dates. The due date for a letter of intent is April the 25th, 2024. The due date of the letters of intent are not mandatory, but they are a very, very helpful tool for me as the individual running this grant competition to know approximately how many applications we're going to get. That way it allows me to be able to set up the appropriate number of panels of the reviewers to review applications.

The letter of intent does not have to be anything formal. It can simply be an email to me saying something like, we intend to apply. I really just need that for planning purposes and nothing else. If you do submit a letter of intent, it does not lock you into or create any requirement to apply. And likewise, if you don't submit a letter of intent, you are still welcome to apply and no problem at all.

The due dates for your applications are at 11:59 pm Eastern on June the 8th, 2024. This date is set in stone. We will not accept any applications that are submitted after 11:59 pm on Eastern Time on June the 8th of 2024. So, please, my suggestion is to always plan the writing and preparation of your applications accordingly so that you are able to begin the uploading process in Grants.gov at least two or three days, if not longer. Before the due date, that way, if you run into technical problems, you can get them resolved and get your application submitted by the due date.

Scrolling down to Page 3 of the NOFO, you'll see our funding opportunity description. We provide just some basic background information. This program is being administered by the Administration for Community Living. In our Administration on Aging and in the office that I oversee, the Office of Supportive and Caregiver Services.

We do view this program as a form of a family caregiver support program that utilizes community-based volunteer models, and so it's very much in keeping with the spirit of family caregiver support. And so with the background section, we provide some contextual framing for the issues of family caregiving and the importance that volunteers can play in actually expanding the availability of community-based services and supports for family caregivers, older adults, and people with disabilities who need assistance.

We then go into a description on Page 4 of 44 of the current status of our implementation of the Community Care Corps program. For those of you who are familiar with this program, ACL first launched it in 2019 with a specific appropriation and direction from Congress.

And we awarded one competitive five-year cooperative agreement to the Oasis Institute and their partners, the Caregiver Action Network, U.S. Aging, and the Altarum Institute, to develop innovative and local volunteer programs to assist family caregivers.

In the five years since that program has been under, in implementation, we've made a lot of progress. The program has, since the program has started, it's served nearly 10,000 volunteers, have assisted more than 31,000 older adults, people with disabilities, and family caregivers, and has provided well over 100,000 hours of assistance to these individuals.

Towards the bottom of Page 4, we lay out what ACL's desired goals and areas of priority are for this new grant competition. ACL's primary objective for this particular funding opportunity is to continue the development of the Community Care Corps model and advance and make advancements in what has already been accomplished.

We wish to advance and continue expanding on two primary goals, which is increase the number of community-based volunteer programs that are available, as well as decrease the number of older adults, people with disabilities, and their family caregivers who need assistance in communities but are unable to obtain assistance currently.

We're really seeing this as an opportunity to both increase the availability of volunteer programs and volunteers, but also reduce the number of individuals who are currently living without any form of services and supports. This year - and with this particular project, ACL is looking to explore several new areas of focus as we look to expand and grow this project moving forward. And at the very bottom of Page 4, you'll see a listing of some of the priority and the areas of focus that we wish to really begin to delve into in this new project.

The first and foremost is that we're expecting applicants to leverage the opportunities and principles that are outlined in the 2022 National Strategy to support family caregivers wherever possible and wherever it's appropriate. The strategy was developed with the understanding that in order to adequately support family caregivers and those that they provide care to, it requires an all-of-society approach.

And so, that includes programs at many levels that are overseen and operated in many different ways, including through volunteer programs. We're also looking to expand volunteer opportunities to support grandparent kinship-led households.

We would like to see how we can expand and refine models for program implementation, including some off-the-shelf models that are already available. We also understand that there's a good opportunity to expand the use of college students as volunteers. We would like to continue growing the availability of volunteer models of transportation to medical appointments and other activities.

ACL's desired focus areas continues at the top of Page 5. Expanding remote, virtual, and low-tech models of caregiver support. We know that during the pandemic and then coming out of the pandemic, a lot of virtual and very low-tech and remote models of service delivery were developed and implemented as a way to continue providing supports to the people that need it, and we would like to continue having those options available.

We would love to also see expanding supports for working or employed family caregivers, bystander training models for volunteers and families, and training for community-based organizations to provide safe spaces where consumers, older adults, people with disabilities, and family caregivers nope they can go without fear of shame or judgment.

In addition to the focus areas that ACL is looking to expand upon, we are looking at two priority areas that applicants will be expected to address in their application. In priority area one, we're looking to improve the nation's overall capacity to support volunteer Community Care Corps programs.

We're expecting that applicants will propose to use no more than 30% of their total budget, meaning federal funds and the match that they bring to the table, to develop approaches, technical assistance and training for communities at large and for implementing volunteer Community Care Corp programs.

In Priority Area 2, we're looking for applicants to talk about how they are going to advance innovative local models to support Volunteer Care Corp programs providing non-medical services and supports. In Priority Area 2, this actually entails the expectation by ACL that the successful applicant, the grantee, will award no less than 70% of total project funds as subawards to community-based agencies to establish volunteer models of programming for caregiver support.

So, the expectation of ACL is really twofold across two priority areas. No more than 30% of your total budget for training, technical assistance, and the advancement of approaches for volunteer programs more broadly, and no less than 70% of your total budget for the issuing of subawards for the purposes of starting local models of volunteer programming.

And in the NOFO on Pages 5, 6, and 7, we talk about ACL's expectations for, coordinating and using examples from the Corporation for National and Community Services. We talk about the fact that in order to effectively speak to ACL's desires for this Funding Opportunity Announcement, you will be expected to set up a system whereby you can make subawards and manage subgrants as part of your project.

In your application, explain how you will run that competitive subaward process, manage those grants, and ensure that sub-awardees are adhering to all of the requirements in the Code of Federal Regulations, which is 45 CFR Part 75, which talks about grants and subgrants and all of the federal requirements that go along with that.

In addition to addressing the two priority areas that ACL has laid out in this Funding Opportunity Announcement, your application should also detail your organization's capacity and ability to actually meet ACL's desires and expectations for this grant.

Applicants must possess the direct in-house experience and expertise to carry out the desired activities in this NOFO, and applications will be reviewed and scored based in part on how well applicants demonstrate the subject matter expertise and the capacity to carry out the activities that are laid out in this funding announcement.

While the use of subgrants or subcontracts to carry out specific activities is expected in Priority Area 2 as a means of testing local volunteer Care Corp models, additional subgrants and contracts are permissible in priority area one for the purposes of enabling the grantee to successfully carry out the overall training, technical assistance, and support that ACL expects will go into this program.

At the top of Page 8, another one of the elements that you should be addressing in your application is sustainability. This project is funded for five years. We expect the grantee will have a plan in place for sustaining project activities that are started under this grant beyond the period of federal funding.

Performance measurement and project evaluation is also an expectation of ACL, and we lay out on Page 8, some of the areas and examples of which applicants should propose to be collecting and monitoring overall program performance, we will definitely be expecting applicants and ultimately the successful grantee to be able to report the numbers of volunteers and volunteer hours, you know, increased volunteer retention and reduced turnover, measures of demonstration of program efficiency and effectiveness.

At the top of Page 9, we talk about the importance of collaboration and partnerships. We don't expect a single entity to be able to do all of this alone. In fact, some of the strongest projects are those that are undertaken by a collaborative of two or more entities with both the national and local expertise to be able to carry this out.

While I'm on the topic of areas of focus and reach - this project is expected to operate at the national level. ACL will not fund a project that seeks only to undertake activities in a local jurisdiction, a single part of a state, or just one state. This must be a nationwide project and the grantee has to demonstrate the capacity to operate nationally on a nationwide basis. And that is going to be one of the responsiveness and screening criteria that we talk about in just a second. Near the middle of Page 9, we lay out the statutory authority for this project.

ACL is administering this project under Section 411 of Title IV of the Older Americans Act as amended. One award will be made off of this NOFO. The award type that we are awarding will be called a cooperative agreement.

A cooperative agreement is a grant, but it's a grant in which significant involvement by the funding agency, in this case ACL, is expected and will occur throughout the life course of the project, meaning that the grantee will work in close coordination with the ACL program officer on every phase of project implementation, program development, and ongoing administration of the program.

So, this is a cooperative agreement. We will be making one award to a single entity with an award ceiling of approximately $5,430,000 per budget period. And it's a five-year project with 5, 12 month budget periods.

On the top of Page 10, we lay out the terms and conditions for the cooperative agreement. Here I've spelled out what the duties and responsibilities that ACL will carry out in relation to the cooperative agreement and then below that, the terms and conditions and responsibilities that the grantee will adhere to as part of the cooperative agreement. The terms and conditions of the cooperative agreement will be incorporated by reference into the notice of award that is issued.

In the middle of Page 11, we talk about eligible entities. This is a full and open competition, meaning that it's open to domestic, public, or private non-profit entities including state and local governments, Indian tribes organizations, faith-based, community-based organizations, hospitals, and institutions of higher education.

At the bottom of Page 11, please note that there is cost sharing required 25% of the grantee must match 25% of the project with non-federal funds, and we lay out on Page 12, how to calculate your match. Please be sure that you follow the example and that you're not just matching 25% of the federal funds, but that you're actually computing your match on the total cost of the project.

Match can be met as either non-federal cash or non-federal in-kind sources, meaning those sources that are not cash-related but perhaps could be volunteer time, donated space, donated equipment, things of that nature, so. The grantee can come to the application with both in-kind and non-federal cash match, if they wish.

At the bottom of page 12, we lay out some important information about responsiveness and screening criteria. I want to point to the three bullets under application responsiveness criteria. Before your applications ever go to the third party merit reviewers, staff at ACL will be looking at each application and applying the three responsiveness criteria that you see here.

If the application fails to meet all three of these responsiveness criteria, it will be eliminated from the competition and will not receive any further consideration. The first responsiveness criteria as we will be looking for the commitment of at least a full-time project director with recognized experience in volunteer management.

That can be demonstrated through the resumes that are included as part of your application package, but that do not count towards the narrative limit. That's the first thing that we'll be looking for when applications come in. Is there a full-time project director at the grantee organization that will administer the project, and do they have recognized expertise in volunteer management.

The second responsiveness criteria is demonstrated experience and commitment to working at the national level, and I mentioned this a couple minutes ago. This project is meant to work nationally and to have national scope and coverage.

ACL will not fund an application or even consider an application that looks to only establish local programs for local purposes. This is a project of national scope and impact. We will be looking at the degree to which applications are proposing national approaches.

And then finally, we will be looking at whether or not applicant organizations have demonstrated expertise in working with entities that serve older adults, persons with disabilities, and their family caregivers. So, please pay attention to the responsiveness criteria and look at those critically before you put in all the effort to develop an application only to have it screened out for any one of these reasons.

At the very bottom of Page 12 - going over to Page 13, we lay out some additional screening that will happen of applications before they go to the review panel. And these are all very technical in nature. They have to first of all, the application has to be submitted in Grants.gov by 11:59 pm on the due date listed.

The project narrative, how you structure that is critically important and it must be double spaced on 8.5/11 paper with 1 inch margins and a font size of no less than 11 points, preferably in Times New Roman or Arial font. This is for ease of readability.

Double spacing is important. I can tell you that in a grant competition I ran last year, an applicant submitted a wonderful application that was single spaced. We screened it out because single spacing will give - can give you an unfair advantage in terms of being able to present your approach and your application in fewer pages. So, narratives must, must, must be double spaced.

And narratives must not exceed 30 pages. So, please note that. If the application does exceed 30 pages, we will remove the pages that are in excess of 30 and not provide those to the grant reviewers. Please note that the project work plan, the budget narrative, letters of commitment, or the VITA of key project personnel are not considered part of the 30-page limit, so you don't have to worry about that.

Beginning at the middle of Page 13, we provide a lot of technical information about accessing Grants.gov, where to get your application materials, registering to get your SAMs number. Please begin to do that now if you are unsure whether your SAMs number is active or current. Because it can oftentimes take several days to get those matters straightened out.

Additionally, if you have technical problems with Grants.gov, we provide the telephone number and the email address and the Web site information for Grants.gov. If you're having technical issues with Grants.gov, please do not call me. I cannot access Grants.gov, nor can I provide you with technical assistance in working through issues with Grants.gov. So, please use the contact information that we provide if you have problems with Grants.gov.

Beginning on Page 15, we again talk about the letters of intent, where you can send them. Again, the due date's April the 25th, you can just send me a quick email that you intend to apply and that's all I need to know. The bottom of Page 15 going on for several pages, we talk about how you should lay out and structure your project narrative. Please use this as a guide as you develop your project narrative.

We also provide you with some guidance and information about developing your budget narrative, budget justifications, and your work plans. When you're developing your budget narrative, please make sure that you do a budget narrative for each of the five years of the project and then a sixth budget narrative that presents the cumulative total budget for all five years of the project.

So, you will essentially be developing six budget narratives, one for each of the years of the project and then a cumulative one covering the entire project. Also, work plans, we provide templates for both the budget narrative and a work plan. You're welcome to use these templates if you wish or come up with your own.

Again, when you provide a work plan, please make sure that you provide a detailed work plan for each year of the project. And make sure that it's clear to readers and the merit review panelists how your work plan is structured. Be sure that it's clear what your goals, outcomes, and tasks are and who you've assigned certain tasks to.

You're welcome to submit letters of commitment from participating organizations. Those are always helpful. I would suggest that if you do have letters of commitment from participating or partner organizations, that those letters be specific to what that organization is going to do, will be doing in support of the grant and not just, you know, a series of letters from different organizations that are all exactly the same.

Believe it or not, grant reviewers and application reviewers actually do take into consideration what letters of commitment say and what the partners say they will do in looking at the overall viability of the application.

On Page 19, we talk a little bit more about SAMs and DUNS numbers. At the bottom of Page 20, going over on to Page 21, we talk about submitting your applications and then on Page 22, item number 6, funding restrictions, please note that we will not fund construction or the major rehabilitation of buildings.

We will not fund projects proposing basic research, and we will not fund projects that simply continue existing projects without expanding or proposing new or innovative approaches. And then we also include important information about the applicability and allowability of meals with grant funds. And generally, a grantee may not provide meals or food with their grant funds except in the situations that we lay out on Page 22.

At the bottom of Page 23, continuing on for several pages, we lay out the exact criteria by which your applications will be reviewed by the third party merit reviewers. I encourage you to read these and be familiar with each of the factors that the reviewers will be looking at as they score your applications.

Each is posed as a single yes or no question. My advice is that once you have your application completed that you use these review criteria. If you can answer yes to every single question that it's in your application, chances are you have a fairly competitive and complete application. Doesn't guarantee that you'll be the winner. But it is a good tool to use to make sure that you have addressed all of the elements that ACL is looking for in your applications.

Remember also that merit reviewers only have the information that's in your application with which to gauge the viability and the strength of your application. They are not going to reach out to you for additional information. They won't be doing background research of their own.

So, the only way that you have to tell your story to lay out what you plan to do is through well-crafted project narratives, work plans, and budget narratives, and all of the other components that go into the application. So, please take a moment as you're preparing to begin your application writing process. And look at the review criteria.

At the bottom of Page 26, we talk about the review and selection process. We will be establishing third-party independent merit review panels of outside experts that are not affiliated with ACL to review and score your application and make funding recommendations. Ultimate final award decisions are made by the administrator of ACL.

We anticipate the project start date to be September 1st of this year, so after the applications are submitted, there'll be a couple of months of review process before announcements are made and before a notice of award is sent out to a single individual organization.

The rest of the NOFA lays out reporting requirements, agency contacts, template information, and other things that you need to be aware of as you begin to - begin your application writing process and thinking through how you wish to structure your projects.

So, that concludes my overview of the NOFO. Ted, if we want to open the lines for questions, we can do that.

Coordinator: The phone lines are now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press Star 1 and record your name. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press Star 2. Thank you. And again, if you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press Star 1. There is a question in the queue from (Lisa). Your line is open.

Q: Thank you. I wanted to know if we're currently receiving funding from Volunteer Community Care Corporation. Are we still eligible to apply for this Grant?

Greg Link: So, your organization is receiving funding from whom?

Q: From Community Care Corporation.

Greg Link: Is that Oasis Institute?

Q: Yes. There is, yes.

Greg Link: Okay. So, you're a sub-grantee of the Oasis Institute under their current project. Is that correct?

Q: Well, it's through Volunteer Community Care Corporation is who we've received the grant from.

Greg Link: Is that the Oasis Institute?

Q: Well, the Oasis Institute provides all of the technical support and things like that with a grant from Community Care Corporation.

Greg Link: Okay. If you're interested in applying for this grant.

Q: Mm-hm.

Greg Link: You know, it sounds like you could be eligible to do so. Keep in mind that you would be - that you know, this is a project of a national scope. So, you would have to have the capacity to administer a program at the national level.

Q: Okay. Thank you.

Coordinator: And there is another question in the queue from S.P. Your line is open.

Q: Hi, Greg. I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more information about the requirement for including off-the-shelf material.

Greg Link: We understand, in the areas of home and community-based services that there may be existing models of program service and delivery, whether it's volunteer-based or, you know, perhaps, I'm thinking of also like caregiver assessments, there are off-the-shelf models and tools that folks can use.

Those are not necessarily bad things. Applicants should be, you know, looking at what's currently available in terms of, you know, implementation ready models of volunteer programming that you would like to implement more broadly across the country.

That's kind of what I mean by off the shelf. So, there may be models of programs and service delivery in, you know, one area of the country that you as the grantee think have potential for replication more broadly.

Q: Perfect. Thank you.

Q: All right. Yes. Thank you. When you say national, is just like a couple neighboring states acceptable or does it have to be countrywide?

Greg Link: Countrywide.

Q: Countrywide. Okay. Thank you so much.

Greg Link: If there are no further questions, I want to thank you all for your time. As I said at the start of the call, a printed transcript and a downloadable recording will be available in association with this grant announcement on Grants.gov. Sometime probably the middle of next week, as soon as we have all of the materials together.

So, I want to thank you all very much. Please do remember if you're going to - if you intend to apply, if you could send a letter of intent just so that I can begin planning the grant review process, that would be most helpful, but of course it's not required. So, with that, we'll conclude today's call with my gratitude and best of luck to everyone. Thank you.

Coordinator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this time.

END