CGPS NOFO Transcript June 10 2024.docx

Advancing Aging Network Capacity to Support Family, Kinship and Tribal Family Caregivers: Understanding, Testing and Evaluating Caregiver Navigator Services

Funding Opportunity Number: HHS-2024-ACL-AOA-CGPS-0039

Pre-Application Teleconference Transcript & Recording

June 10, 2024

Moderator: Greg Link

This transcript has been edited for readability and clarity

Click here for recording.

Coordinator: Thank you for standing by. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session at today's conference. At that time, you may press *1 on your phone to ask a question. I would like to inform all parties that today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to Greg Link. Thank you. You may begin.

Greg Link: Thank you everyone for dialing in to today's teleconference to discuss this new funding opportunity announcement published by the Administration for Community Living a little over a week ago. The title of the funding opportunity announcement is called Advancing Aging Network Capacity to Support Family, Kinship and Tribal Family Caregivers: Understanding, Testing and Evaluating Caregiver Navigator Services.

This informational teleconference will only cover that particular funding opportunity announcement. My plan for today is to go through some key sections of the funding opportunity announcement to call your attention to particular things that I believe you should be paying attention to as you consider whether or not to apply to this opportunity and then as you're preparing your applications for submission to ACL.

So, this is the information call for that particular notice of funding opportunity. This - for those of you who are tuned in, I'm so glad that you are here because this really is your one and only opportunity to ask questions about the Funding Opportunity Announcement.

Following today, it will be very limited as to the questions that we are able to answer as you're preparing your applications, because doing so could provide or afford an unfair opportunity or an unfair advantage to a single interested applicant. So, please be mindful of that as you're considering whether or not to apply and actually begin to work on your applications that this is really your best chance for asking questions.

A transcript of this call, including the Q&A at the end, will be posted on the Grants.gov page associated with this particular funding announcement, as will a downloadable recording of this call. So, if you want to refer back to anything that was discussed or questions that were asked, you're welcome to do that.

So, hopefully you have your Notice of Funding Opportunity document at least open on your computers so that you can follow along. I'm using the PDF, so I'll be referring to the PDF page numbers as we do that. And I want to start on Page 3 of the PDF where we have the executive summary and just an overview of some of the general content.

This indicates that ACL intends to award one cooperative agreement to a single entity to undertake activities of a national scope and reach. This project is going to be funded to last for a period of 36 months or three years with three 12-month budgets, and the amount of Federal funds that are available will be up to approximately $882,000 per year for the life of the project, and that is pending the availability of Federal funds.

The intended audiences for the activities are those entities that are typically involved with implementing and operating programs funded by the Older Americans Act, including state units on aging, area agencies on aging, local service providers, family caregiver support programs, the Kinship and Grandfamilies services providers, tribes, and tribal entities, and any other entities that may be part of the Aging and Tribal Services Network.

And additionally, given that the National Family Caregiver Support Program, which is the funding source for this particular opportunity, includes family caregivers of individuals with early-onset dementia and older caregivers supporting adults with disability, ACL desires that the proposals identify how these populations will be included in your work.

So, when you're considering whether or not to apply to this Funding Opportunity Announcement, in the executive summary, I lay out three key considerations that you should make before determining whether or not you will apply, or you should apply.

First, the activities that you propose must be of a national scope. In other words, project proposals for local projects or initiatives or projects limited to a single geographic area, to a state, or a community will not be considered. In fact, if we receive an application that is intending to serve just a local project or a local community, it will be screened out and not given further consideration.

The second factor that you should consider is how ACL is defining caregiver navigator services. And we're defining them as those that provide caregivers with assistance in gaining access to home and community-based services as defined in Section 373 (b)(2) of the Older Americans Act of 1965 as amended. And so that is the part of the Older Americans Act that created the National Family Caregiver Support Program.

And then finally, this project is going to become part of ACL's larger National Caregiver Support Collaborative, which is focusing on strengthening and improving the range of services delivered under Titles III-E and Titles VI-C of the Older Americans Act.

So, please keep in mind that the scope of activity that we are looking for is national and not local or confined to a single state or geographic area, first and foremost. As we go over to Page 4, we lay out the funding opportunity description. For those of you who may not be terribly familiar with the National Family Caregiver Support Program, we provide some background on that.

We also provide some background on the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage Family Caregivers Act, as well as the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, which really served as the framework and the genesis for this demonstration program, because we have an opportunity, through our work to develop and disseminate the national strategy, to really focus on taking proactive, concrete steps to strengthen the programs and services that are out there for family caregivers.

So, the goal of this NOFO is that ACL wishes to emphasize the themes in the RAISE Act of recognizing, assisting, and supporting family caregivers. And the project is, we anticipate and envision that it will undertake approaches for building capacity to offer caregiver navigator services in the OAA-funded Title III-E and VI-C programs. We go on, on Page 5, to give just some general contextual information and some background on family, kinship, and tribal caregiving, the numbers, and some of the current state of the research.

We also lay out a justification and a real reason at the bottom of Page 5 for why ACL thinks this work is so important, why we believe it's so important. According to ACL's 2022 National Survey of Older Americans Act participants, we found that nearly a quarter of family caregivers are assisting two or more people, and that's significant.

More importantly, they report that their caregiving tasks are growing in number and complexity, making navigating complex systems of information, assistance, and training even more of an imperative. In fact, of the caregivers served by the National Family Caregiver Support Program, when asked if they knew where to go to ask for respite services, approximately 44% of family caregivers indicated that they did not.

And in the previous year, 41% of the caregivers served by the Caregiver Support Program reported needing assistance in applying for or accessing other services and supports for themselves or their care recipient. And so, we feel we have an opportunity here to really look at how Family Caregiver Navigator services can be better infused throughout the National Family Caregiver Support Program.

And then based on the outcome of the work in Priority Area 1 and Priority Area 2, we're looking for the applicant and the successful grantee to design, develop, and test approaches to building capacity in the OAA-funded caregiver support programs to really promote and use caregiver and care navigator services.

And then finally, in Priority Area 3, we're looking for the grantee and their partners to evaluate and determine models and approaches that are most successful and package them for later replication and scaling throughout the Aging Services Network.

At the bottom of Page 9, we lay out an important fact for applicants to consider. Given the specificity of this topic, we anticipate that the applicant will have an understanding of the issues already associated with caregiving and care navigation services.

Secondly, organizational capacity at a national scope. We expect the entity that's funded, who becomes the grantee, to be able to work at the national level, have the experience and the capacity to do so, and demonstrate that you can ensure an expeditious startup of the project activities, work effectively with other grantees in the National Caregiver Support Collaborative, and ensure sustainability of the project activities once Federal funding ends three years later.

We do make provisions for the prime grantee to be able to award subgrants or subcontracts for the parts of the project. We understand that oftentimes subawards, subcontracts, and subgrants are necessary in order to ensure that you have all of the right partners at the table.

We also talk about the products and materials that are produced under this particular project that will be housed on ACL's main website for the National Caregiver Support Collaborative, which is currently under development. And in that regard, all materials and information developed by the grantees and partners for dissemination. Whatever method you use must be fully accessible or in other words Section 508 compliant and meet the cultural and linguistic needs of the intended audience.

At the bottom of Page 12 to the top of Page 13, we provide some discussion about developing sound outcomes, a project evaluation, and project sustainability. At the bottom of Page 13 begins the award information section. As I stated earlier, we expect to award one cooperative agreement up to $882,000 per year for three years.

The award floor, we don't expect to be anything less than $600,000. Applicants proposing projects that are below the award floor are likely not thinking of the project comprehensively enough and robustly enough. And so, we really do expect projects to utilize the full amount of resources that we are making available to this work.

This is a full and open competition. So, it's open to domestic, public, or nonprofit entities. But we will be giving priority to national organizations that demonstrate the capacity to work at the national level. So, please keep that in mind. There is a cost sharing or matching requirement. We lay that out at the bottom of Page 16 and on Page 17, there is a 25% match requirement. That can be met through either cash, non-federal cash, or non-federal in-kind resources.

And then we provide an example of how to compute your match. And please be sure that you're following the example when you're computing your match and developing your proposed match based on the total budget and not just on the amount of federal funds that you're requesting.

On Page 17, there are two critical areas of responsiveness and screening criteria that you all must be aware of and adhere to. The first is application responsiveness criteria, and this is something that our program staff here at ACL will be looking at very closely prior to the grant review - to the review getting underway.

Your application will also go through some initial screening criteria for basic formatting and layout. We're giving you a 30-page limit for your project narrative. Your project narrative should not exceed 30 pages in length, and they must be formatted correctly. So, 8.5x11 paper, double-spaced, and 1-inch margins on both sides, and a font size of no less than 11 points. I can't stress this enough.

The last time I ran a grant competition, we had a couple of proposals that were submitted that were really great. Their narratives were single-spaced. We rejected the application without any further consideration. So, please, please pay attention to page limits and formatting and make sure that you get that correct.

On Page 18 at the top, we talk about how you're going to submit your applications. All applications have to be submitted electronically to Grants.gov. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. E.T. on August 5, 2024. The due date and the time that applications are due are non-negotiable. And so, my advice to folks is always to please begin actually submitting your application and aim to have your application fully submitted in Grants.gov several days before the closing date. And if you run into technical glitches or technical issues with Grants.gov, there's a toll-free number and an email for Grants.gov.

Please reach out if you're having technical problems with Grants.gov. Do not reach out to me or to the contact person in the NOFO. Please contact Grants.gov because Grants.gov is not an ACL system, and we cannot assist you with it.

So, please pay careful attention to make sure that you have your requisite SAM number, your DUNS number. If you're unsure, or you don't know if the SAM number is current, please begin checking on that. Make sure that you have a current SAM number and a DUNS number, because without those, you will not be able to submit your application. And if you wait until the last minute to apply for those, they can oftentimes take several days to a couple of weeks to get.

So, please start that process early to make sure that you have the appropriate SAM and DUNS registration. At the bottom of Page 19, we provide the name of the Aging Services Program Specialist who will be the program officer for this funding announcement.

His name is Jonathan Westin. His phone number and his email are listed at the bottom of Page 19. And he can be reached with certain questions. We may not be able to answer every question that you might have, but he's certainly there to answer technical questions. Jonathan is new on my team, and he will be the program officer of record for this particular funding opportunity announcement.

The letter of intent also does not have to be anything formal. It can simply be an email to Jonathan saying, hey, we intend to apply, and the name of the organization. It could be as simple as that. Some organizations require that they do it on letterhead and all of that, and that's absolutely fine as well, but it's certainly not required.

At the bottom, starting on Page 20, we lay out some instructions for how to prepare your project narrative. The project narrative can be no more than 30 pages in length, and it must include all of the sections that are laid out in the description here of what is needed.

Remember that the project narrative is your only opportunity to tell the grant review panel what your project is about, how you're going to approach it, what you're going to be doing, and any of your details that you want to provide. The review panel will not be reaching out to applicants to get clarification on anything. They will not be doing their own research to learn more about your organization.

So, a budget narrative or a budget justification is absolutely critical. You need to do one budget narrative or one budget justification for each year of the project. And then you do one cumulative budget narrative and justification for the entirety of the three-year project. So, you're essentially going to be submitting four budget narratives, one for each project year, and then one that covers the totality of the project that we can look at in total.

Keep in mind that the best letters of commitment are those that are not canned or not simply sign-on letters, but those that really reflect the commitment of each partner to the project. So, please, if you're going to include letters of commitment and support, make sure that they're meaningful.

From Page 24 over to about Page 25, we lay out some additional SAM - System for Award Management, or SAM number information for what you need to do to make sure that your SAM number is current. As I said, at the bottom of 25, we talk about the due date and give details for this informational call and then on Page 27, we talk about funding restrictions. There are certain activities that ACL will not fund. That's construction or major rehabilitation of buildings, basic research, and continuing of existing projects or expansion, without expansion, or new and innovative approaches.

So, you know, you may have a project in this area that you're already working on, and you can't use these funds to just supplement that project. You have to demonstrate how the funding that you're applying for will break new ground and will help advance the field. So, we're not just funding continuations of projects. So, please pay attention to the funding limitations.

At the top of Page 28 is also another very important section for you to be aware of. And that is the review criteria. We lay out here the exact criteria by which each application will be reviewed and scored. And so, I want you to - as you're developing your applications, I want you to pay really close attention to each of the scoring criteria.

We score on how you've stated the project relevance and identified the current need. We score on your overall approach. We score based on your budget and how it's constructed and how closely it ties to the project itself. We score on project impact and on organizational capacity.

And then within each of those broad areas, we lay out certain factors that the reviewers will be looking for in your application. And I usually tell applicants that if you can answer yes to every single one of the questions, once your application is complete, you likely have a viable application. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to be funded or be the successful one, but if you can answer yes to these questions, you likely have addressed everything that we're looking for in this funding opportunity announcement.

At the bottom of Page 34, we talk about the anticipated announcement of the award. We're pretty late in our funding year, so this one's going to be pushing pretty close to our funding cutoff in September. We anticipate a project start date of about September 1. So, you should, the successful applicant will receive their notice of award sometime prior to September 1.

However, keep in mind, it could go all the way until September 29. As I've said, we are at the end of our funding cycle, and so we're processing a lot of grant actions. The successful applicant will receive an electronic notice of award that has all of the terms and conditions laid out, and so you'll be reviewing that. There is required semiannual reporting for your project, and we lay out all of the terms and conditions for that.

At the bottom of Page 32 is our agency contact, should you have questions that we aren’t able to answer about the application process. And then the remainder of the Funding Opportunity Announcement lays out some additional required information that applicants need to know as well as appendices for some of the templates that I talked about for the budget and the budget narrative and the work plan. So, that concludes my overview of the Funding Opportunity Announcement. If we want to open the lines for questions we can do that.

Coordinator: Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press *1, unmute your phone and record your name clearly. Your name is required to introduce your question. If you need to withdraw your question, press *2. Again, to ask a question, please press *1. It'll take a few moments for the questions to come through. Please stand by. We have our first question. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Q: Hello. My question is, I work for a public hospital as part of a university. And my question is, we do not have a tribal population, however, we have a large underserved population, and I wondered if the tribal portion was a requirement for funding?

Greg Link: So, keep in mind a couple of things, because I'm hearing that you're with a hospital organization. So, keep in mind that we're expecting projects that can focus on the national level. So, not just what's in your community or the populations that you serve in your immediate catchment area. So, that's number one. Because the National Family Caregiver Support Program has a component for Federally recognized tribes, which is Title VI-C of the Older Americans Act, we do anticipate and expect that the applicant will be speaking to the tribal needs and concerns related to this what we're trying to fund here. So, yes, there would be the expectation for serving and addressing tribal needs in this regard as well as the other targeting criteria that are in the Older Americans Act for limited English speaking, rural minority populations, lower income, things of populations like that.

Coordinator: Our next question is ready. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Q: All right. Thank you, Greg. On Page 3, you mentioned this, that the recipient of this cooperative agreement would work closely with ACL's National Caregiver Support Collaborative. Are existing members of the NCSC eligible to apply for this notice as well?

Greg Link: Yes. We did not limit this with competitions full and open.

Q: Okay. Thank you.

Coordinator: Next question. Go ahead. Your line's open.

Q: Hi, I apologize if you already addressed this. I'm wondering if the primary grantee could be a for-profit organization subcontracting with multiple non-profit organizations?

Greg Link: No. This is open to non-profits.

Q: Okay. Thank you.

Coordinator: Next question. Go ahead. Your line is open.

Q: Thank you.

Coordinator: I'm showing no further questions at this time. Again, as a reminder, please press *1 on your phone and record your name if you have a question. One moment, please. And Greg, at this time, I show no more questions coming in.

Greg Link: All right. Well, thank you so much. I want to thank everyone for dialing in today and your interest in this particular funding opportunity announcement. I know ACL is very excited about this opportunity to further infuse the principles and ideas that are in the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers and to bolster and strengthen the aging tribal and kinship support networks that work with our family caregivers day in and day out.

Like I said at the start of the call, there will be a transcript of this call, a written transcript posted to Grants.gov probably by the end of this week or hopefully by Monday or Tuesday of next week if you want to refer back to it. We will also attach a downloadable link so that you can actually hear my lovely voice again if you all wanted to do that. Anyway, with that, are there any last-minute questions? Okay. Well then...

Coordinator: No further questions.

Greg Link: Okay. Great. Thank you. Please remember that if you are thinking about applying, please submit your letter of intent, your e-mail of intent, whatever you want to call it, to Jonathan Westin at ACL, so that we can begin the planning process for the grant reviews. And with that, I will conclude this call. And again, thank you and best of luck to all of you who apply. Thank you.

Coordinator: That concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.

END