FY2020 CMVOST Transcript.pdf

>> Nikki McDavid: Thank you Lori. Good afternoon or morning to you all. Thank you, for joining FMCSA’s Commercial Motor Vehicle Operator Safety Training Funding Conference for our fiscal year 2020, notice of funding opportunity. On the slide, you will see that the applications are due February 24, 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Again, I am Nikki McDavid, I am the

Chief of Commercial Driver’s License division. Today we have four presenters who are going to provide information on their respective topics. We have Wendy Cunningham, she is our CDL division’s grants program manager. We have Francisco Soto, he is a CDL intern and he has been responsible for overseeing the CMVOST grant program with the assistance of Wendy, of course.

We have James Ross from our grants management office he will talk to you about everything grants management related. We also have Lester Finkle, who is with us every year to talk about

Title VI program requirements that are listed in the notice of funding opportunity. After each of these speakers we will pause to allow you to ask questions. We are going to change it up a bit as

I mentioned after each presentation you will have the opportunity to ask questions.

On the agenda, we are going to give you a little bit of information about our 2019

CMVOST grant. It will let you know how many grants were awarded, how much money was awarded to our grantees. Then we will get into the CMVOST requirements for this fiscal year.

This is the information you want to hear about. We are going to present on that eligible projects that are allowed under the CMVOST grants program and as I mentioned Ross, is going to provide an overview about the grants management office and the requirement in the NOFO and also, we are going to talk about Appendix B, the CMVOST narrative samples and the SF-424A.

With that I am going to turn it over to Francisco to talk about the CMVOST grant update.

Francisco.

>> Francisco Soto: Thank you Nikki. Good morning and afternoon to everyone. Here is a quick update for fiscal year 2019 CMVOST grants fund program. We were authorized with $2 million last year and we anticipated 20 applications. We received $2.8 million -- $2.8 million were requested by 23 applicants. We awarded $2 million to 17 applicants. This year for fiscal year

2020 we have been authorized $3,335,561. We anticipate to give out 35 awards. This has been the highest award we have received so far for the CMVOST program.

What is the CMVOST program? The CMVOST grant program is a competitive program which provides financial assistance to expand the number of commercial driver’s license holder’s possessing enhanced operator safety training to help reduce the severity and number of crashes on U.S. roads involving CMVs. And assist current or former members of the U.S. Armed

Forces, including the National Guard and Reservists, obtain a CDL. The CMVOST grant is not available for individuals. FMCSA may only award CMV grant funds to eligible applicants.

Eligible applicants are educational institutions accredited by an accreditation agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Non-accredited institutions that are approved by the U.S.

Department of Labor's have eligible training provider and except Workforce Innovation and

Opportunity Act grants and are approved by the State Approving Agencies and Veteran

Administration to accept VA benefits.

The CMVOST grant has a cost-sharing and matching requirement. Applicants should pay close attention to matching requirements when completing their Grant proposals. 85% is reimbursement and 15% is match. Please ensure the match is not being used from another federal source such as the G.I. Bill. For the period of performance for this grant is the year award plus additional fiscal year. For this grant program, the period of performance will end on 09/30/2021.

The application structure must be completed all forms included in the notice of funding opportunity at www.grants.gov The application is limited to 25 pages. There is a template provided and is encouraged to be used but not required please see appendix B of the NOFO. For the project narrative and introduction, explain the project purpose including the specific grant priorities being addressed. The problem statement describes issues the projects we will be addressing including baseline data and targeted outcome. For the performance objectives describe the expected project outcome. For the project activity plan describe the quantifiable goals related to the problem statements. Must have four activity areas including recruiting qualified students, training for qualified students, providing qualified students with post-graduation job placement assistance, and waiving fees and expenses for qualified students. Under the Performance measurement plan explain how progress will be measured to include benchmarks like recruited, trained, graduated, licensing and placement jobs. Under the monitoring plan please explain how the project process will be assessed. Organizational capacity, explain how your organization have the expertise to successfully implement the stated strategies and achieve its stated goals. For example, existing training program description, existing recruitment and career placement, and the ability to successfully manage a federal financial assistance award.

For your budget narrative please ensure the budget narrative matches the SF-424A in your application package by budget category for total project cost, federal share and match.

Guidance is available under 2 CFR part 200 link will be provided under www.grants.gov. For the

CMVOST eligible cost this year we are only -- the only qualified cost is student tuition. The actual tuition expense, the published rate, that an unfunded qualify student would incur if not supported by grant funding. For those that receive grants before we are no longer funding http://www.grants.gov/ recruitment costs, personal expenses, fringe benefit expenses, and supplies. Those are no longer eligible costs. A couple of grant development tips. Please read the NOFO. Pay very close attention to the requirements. Follow all grant instructions to the letter. Ask questions of the

NOFO point of contact, which is Wendy and I. Tell the same story in the proposal and budget narrative. Be careful for those applying and copying from previous application since the program has changed. Leave plenty of time to prepare, submit early, and once again please make sure you read the NOFO, it has very important information. There is also – FMCSA has general grant training modules available under the link. Once again, the NOFO points of contacts is myself and there is my email and phone number. Wendy Cunningham, if you have any questions, her information is available. And James Ross, to assist any financial application concerns. Nikki back to you.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok, thank you Francisco. Let's pause to see if there are any questions so I know if you want to you could type questions in the Q&A pod as we go along. But Laurie, I will turn it over to see if anyone wants to speak up and ask a live question online.

>> AT&T Operator, Lori: Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question press one then zero on your telephone keypad and you will hear an acknowledgment tone. You may withdraw your question at any time by repeating the one zero command. If you are using a speakerphone pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. For any questions you have on the phone press one then zero on your phone keypad. One moment please, we are checking for questions. We have no one on the phone at this time. Please continue.

>> Nikki McDavid: We had two questions that came in from our participants. A few more.

Wow. [Laughter] The first one is saying what would the anticipated award date be? I think this would be more appropriately answered by our grants management office Ross.

>> James Ross: As it stands right now we are looking to award and I say this at the beginning part of the summer, if everything goes according to plan. Between program office, grant management office, TRP. More importantly upstairs, when the Secretary's office gets their hand on it, it’s usually when we try to gauge actual award dates. As it stands now it looks like we are looking at start of summer.

>> Nikki McDavid: Okay, start of summer. Thank you. Wendy, the next question -- why did the grant change to only tuition and fees and no longer include recruitment supplies, administrative, and indirect calls?

>> Wendy Cunningham: It does include indirect cost this is a clarification for whatever the base approval for your institution is. If it includes only personnel and friends, you would be correct it would not include IDC as an eligible cost. The tuition decision was made so we can maximize the number of students of personnel that we can help in order to get more drivers trained.

>> Nikki McDavid: Great. It's all about making sure as Wendy mentioned we maximize our funding so more drivers can be trained. We will make sure we provide that to our participants.

We are capturing these questions and answers and we will post them at www.grants.gov. I'm sure someone is going to cover that a little later. Sorry if I stole your thunder. Another question for you, Wendy. Hawkeye Community College is asking, calls such as the permit, physical and driver’s license are not eligible expenses? This is a great quest clarifying question that I would like for you to answer.

>> Wendy Cunningham: If it's part of your published tuition rate in your catalog, or expenses of what's included in the tuition, it would be included and you would provide an explanation in your budget narrative to explain what the published tuition is and what it includes. Depending upon what your institution has in the publication for the coursework and what's included it may or may not be considered eligible at that point.

>> Nikki McDavid: Great. If Hawkeye has any follow-up questions, please feel free to type them in or if you want to dial in Lori can give you instructions. We are going to continue to move on with our questions that have come in.

AT&T Operator, Lori: As a reminder if you do have a question on the phone you would press one then zero on your telephone keypad.

>> Nikki McDavid: Wendy, there is a question about the published tuition rate. Since you mention that in your answer, for the published tuition rate what documentation should be included with the proposal?

>> Wendy Cunningham: It can be a snippet from your catalog whether it is online or a hard copy. Something we can verify is the published tuition rates. Again it could be a copy of an attachment with a link in it with information available. We need to be able to verify that the tuition rate is the published rate so that anybody joining the program and seeking reimbursement is the same cost. I hope that answers the question. If not let us know and we will try again.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok, thank you. I am going to ask about the 15% match. Is a 15% match taken out of the total award, or does the tuition -- institution pay upfront or throughout the grant period?

>> Wendy Cunningham: I think I understand the question. When it comes to match, every invoice you are submitting is an invoice that occurs after the incurring of the cost that's actually been expended. At that point the 15% match for each total amount you are requesting. Let's just say that tuition is $5000. Let's go easier. $1000. You would seek $850 so that is 85% of the

$1000. The 150 would be the match. The cost has to be incurred and expended per se before you can seek reimbursement. It would be on the total cost incurred expended to date and then you take 85% of that and seek reimbursement and the remaining would be the amount of the match. I hope that clarifies it.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok Wendy, I am going to give you this last question. You are on a roll here and I might as well stick with what is tried is true. Is there a maximum amount that an organization can apply for?

>> Wendy Cunningham: We have not set a maximum in the NOFO. No, there is not a maximum just be aware of what the total amount of funding available is for us, and what we are saying basically in the beginning is we hope to make multiple awards and be able to distribute the funding too many across the nation.

>> Nikki McDavid: We got through our first group of questions. I am going to turn the presentation over to Lester, our national Title VI program manager to discuss with you our Title

VI program requirements work. Lester.

>> Lester Finkle: Thanks Nikki, I appreciate it. Good day, everyone. My name is Lester Finkle, I am the national Title VI program manager for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. I have had the pleasure of working with any number of you through the last three years. This is the fourth year for the plan requirement. It is amazing to me how time has moved so quickly at least in my mind, here we are up to year four of the requirements and it almost seems like yesterday when I started with the requirements. It is a pleasure to have a chance to coordinate with you again for FY 2020. I have a few slides in my presentation. The requirement for this fiscal year is the same as last year. There is a Title VI program compliance plan checklist. The checklist does not include any additional sections for this year. For those of you that worked with me last year on either developing a new plan, or updating a previously development plan. There is no new section to the plan. The update will be updating the different sections of the plan and I will go through those briefly in another slide. The main part of the requirement is to update the plan and have your chief executive officer sign and date the assurance and policy statement. With regards to the assurance, if you would like the word version I will be happy to provide it to you. If you have it set up so that it is simple enough to have your CEO re-sign and re-date it that's great. If you would like the word version of it let me know I will be happy to forward that to you.

For those that received money last year it will be updating the plan. Re-signing and re-dating the assurance policy statement. For those of you that applied last year and did not receive funding if you have a plan from the previous year we will be updating that plan. For those of you that have not applied for funding in the last four years let me know that and I will work with you to develop a Title VI program compliance plan. If you do not have one don't worry about it. Let me know as soon as possible and I will make sure you have a copy of the checklist. I will walk you through how to develop it and I will provide supporting documentation to develop the plan.

For those that did not receive funding last year you will be updating the plan if you have one, and if you don't then I'll guide you through how to update the plan.

The checklist hasn't changed from last year. The sections include policy statement. This is one of the two documents that your chief executive officer will sign and date. It is intended as a -- it's a statement regarding the Title VI program from your CEO to his or her personnel. The assurance is the other signed document by the CEO and it has the authorities that fall under the

Title VI program for FMCSA. It has a couple of requirements for contracting opportunities. If you were to put out a request for a proposal or solicitation for bid to offer a contracting opportunity there is a paragraph in the assurance that is to be inserted into the RFP or solicitation for bid. And if you were to enter into a contract or consultant agreement there are two appendices in the assurance that are to be asserted into that contract or consultant agreement. I will be happy to go through that with any of you who are interested in going through the document at another time. Just contact me and I will sit down with you. The description of federal-aid programs is to let me know which grants you are applying for and in this case the CMVOST grant and just a summary, a brief summary of the activities associated with your grant application. The notification of beneficiaries and participants is a section requirement to let the public know that there are Title VI program requirements. That you are required to make sure you implement and have contact information in case a member of the public wishes to have more information about the Title VI program, or possibly to file a complaint. Sub-recipient compliance reports, this section it will be filled out more fully if your institution intends or does sub awarding a portion of our funds. If your institution does not intend or has not sub awarded our funds, then it will have a simple statement to that effect under that heading. The training section has a requirement that each institution provide annual or every other year training to which personnel regarding

Title VI program requirements.

The access to the record’s section is a short section but it requires a commitment to provide any documentation to FMCSA upon request regarding the Title VI program. The plan is one of those requirements and so I do request that each year. Complaint disposition process. As an institution of higher education, I know you are very much involved in satisfying Title IX requirements. You also have to take into account employee related requirements of Title VII with regards to grievances or complaints. In this case this is the Title VI program and if – so the complaint disposition process would be generally for members of the public. A student filed complaint or grievance may just be or fall under the Title IX program. It may not or does not have to be included as a Title VI complaint. There are times where the Title IX complaint maybe a Title XI complaint. If you have any questions at any time regarding this, we will talk through the situation and I will offer my feedback regarding my thoughts on if it falls under the Title VI program or if it’s just under Title IX program.

Status of corrective actions is in case a federal agency has conducted a Title VI program compliance review of your Title VI program. If that hasn't occurred in the previous year than a statement to that effect will be included under the heading. If another federal agency has conducted a Title VI compliance review of your Title VI program then I am just asking for which federal agency, were any deficiencies identified, and if so which actions were taken to address those deficiencies. I’m happy to say the last section here, the community participant process section, while the heading remains in the plan it does not apply to our institutions of higher education. A statement to that effect is all I need under that section.

Because we are into year four of the plan requirements I am requesting from all of our grant applicants for FY 2020, two additional items. These are two items that are listed, actually the complaint log is listed under the complaint disposition process section. The other requirement, the training record is to let me know that you are providing Title VI training periodically to your personnel. I'll start with this one. The complaint log, again it is in the checklist and it is requested to be submitted to FMCSA upon our request. I am asking for a copy of the complaint log. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires a number of headings to be maintained in the complaint log. I have provided those headings on this slide. It's to include the name of the complainant’s identification by the person’s demography; so, race, color, national origin, any other protected groups under the program. A complainant and can use one or more of those protected groups depending on if they apply to the individual. The allegation or allegations the complainant is bringing forward, the date of the complaint, the date of report of investigation.

If your institution goes ahead and conducts an investigation of the complaint than the date of that report will be in the complaint log as well. Finally, the determination made and the date the determination was made so whether there was merit to the allegation or not merit to the allegation you can include any other relevant information you deem appropriate. These are the minimal members of headings required to be in the complaint log. If you would like I'd be happy to provide upon request your request an example of a complaint log already been filled in. I have a sample from another grantee that took these headings and pretty much just dropped them into a spreadsheet. If you haven't received a Title VI complaint in the last few years you are still required to maintain a complaint log. The complaint log will have headings in it and it won’t have any additional information in it. That's perfectly fine. If you let me know you haven't received any Title VI complaints in the last few years than that with the complaint log is all I need to have to satisfy this requirement.

The other item is a training record. Each of the institutions that have developed a plan for

FMCSA there is a requirement in there to either provide annual or every other year training regarding the Title VI program to your personnel, and I am just asking for a record of that. I have already gotten whether it's either a spreadsheet with names of the people who have taken the training, whether it's individual certificate that have been signed by individuals that have taken the training. Whether it’s lists that individuals have signed to show that they were in an in-person session. Again, it can be certificates that are electronically provided training course. However, your institution records how it’s personnel receives training, I am requesting that you provide that to me regarding the Title VI program training. If you provide training every other year regarding the Title VI program to your personnel then if 2019 wasn’t the year that you provided it but it is going to be in 2020, then please let me know that and we’ll just look forward to having you provide that to me later in the year. Are there any questions?

>> AT&T Operator, Lori: And, a reminder if you have any questions on the phone you can press one then zero on your keypad. Any questions on the phone you would press one then zero.

>> Nikki McDavid: Lester, while we wait to see if anyone wants to queue up to ask a live question we did have one come in that appeared in the question-and-answer log. What is the beginning date for the complaint log?

>> Lester Finkle: The complaint log should have been maintained all along. It's been one of the requirements in the checklists. If you haven't been maintaining it, then start maintaining it. If you haven't received any Title VI program complaints in the last -- in the years since the plan requirement, so in the last three years if you haven't received any Title VI program complaints then you won't have anything to put in the complaint log. I would say approximately three years, 2 to 3 years is where the U.S DOT. is requiring for having information in the complaint log.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok, great. Thank you, Lester. The other question that came in is a more general question. It's about getting a copy of the close caption so our participants can read over it again after the webinar. I am not sure if Wendy, if we did that last year? If you recall?

>> Wendy Cunningham: This year we are having this recorded. It will be posted on www.grants.gov after along with Q&As that have occurred as well.

>> Nikki McDavid: OK, thank you for clarifying that. It takes a while to get closed captions cleaned up and ready for prime time. Look out for that in the coming weeks. Thank you.

>> Lester Finkle: Francisco, could you advance to the next slide it'll have my contact information. Thank you, that's great.

>> Nikki McDavid: Thank you, so much. As Lester mentioned he is available. Please email him or call him if you have any questions about Title VI requirements and the NOFO. Lester, is a great resource. If I were you I would take him up on his offer to help. He is available to you.

With that let's keep it moving. If you want to continue to add questions into the Q&A pod we will get back to those at any time. The next person who is going to present is James Ross. He is a grants management specialist in our grants management office.

>> James Ross: Thank you Nikki. First, we are going to go over the initiating of the application process which takes place in www.grants.gov. It can take up to a full week to go through this process just a note of interest. The next step you want to ensure you are registered in SAM, which is the System for Award Management and that you have a valid DUNS number, which is that Data Universal Numbering System. This is the part that's very important in making sure you are active. SAM registration information is current at all times. This is during the time of active federal award and during the application process. In the past, we've had situations where we were ready to award an applicant, or approve current grant amendment and it expired. Please try to keep that up to date.

Next, you want to download and complete the application and submit the package with the required documents at www.grants.gov on or before February 24, 2020. Here is a list of the required documents. You see we have the SF-424A. Please on the 424 A you want to break it out by project. We have the lobbying forms, the key contact form which we will go into in a minute.

The budget and project narrative, and the IDC agreement if applicable. The 424. We use boxes

8f and 21, as the appropriate POC for all pre-award and awarding activities such as matters involving application and accepting NGAs. User roles and grant solutions which we call GS for box 8f is the PI/PD and for box 21 is the grantee of authorized representative, which is the ADO.

The 424 established the point of contact, the pre-award and award activities. It does not necessarily establish the point of contacts for all post-award activities throughout the grant’s lifecycle. Which kind of leads me into the point about the key contact forms. Here you are going to see the requests contact form, number 1 is the ADO, number 2 is the PI/PD. There are different forms, that talk about programs or project manager, depending on how it's written up.

Number 3, the financial official, which is not as important to the grant management office but it may be important in other areas but for us we mainly focus on 1 and 2. Focusing on those we want to urge everyone to please have a secondary ADO and PI/PD. Please use these titles. Not your internal titles. In case of emergency, in case of the first person out of the office, or if throughout the application process you have a new PI/PD. We want to at least try to have one or two options to choose from so we don't have any hiccups when we are trying to award.

We have indirect cost guidance here. Before we can pay reimbursement for indirect cost occurrence and approve indirect cost rate agreement must be enforced. If the budget includes indirect cost, attached a copy of the fully executed agreement with your application in www.grants.gov. If the rate will not be approved by the application due date attach a letter of renewal or request that you sent to your cognizant agency to your application. Mr. Finkle, went into great detail in reference to Title VI requirements. No need to go over that. If you missed his information it was right there. Okay. How do I know my application has been received in grants.gov? First off you want to confirm the application was received by grants.gov and the indication is you should get this within two business days via email. The application has either been successfully validated by Grants.gov prior to transmission to FMCSA or has been rejected due to some type of errors, which we are going to see in a minute. You want to make sure it's limited to the things you see on the screen. We don’t have to go into too much detail here. Use any other characters will cause the application to be rejected. Late submissions will not be accepted. If you haven't heard anything via email, contact grants.gov at the information you see on your screen. They are the first line of communication when you are submitting your application.

Here is a list of things you should expect after you submit your application, and it's been accepted. Intake review. Technical merit review. Budget and cost analysis, past performance, risk assessment and other considerations of program specific aspects. Before we go into the technical merit review I want to touch on the intake review portion. The intake review is done by the grant management team. The intake review process is done to ensure the proper documents have been received without error. It's also been done to make sure all the documents needing signatures have been signed and to make sure we don’t have any duplicates; for eligibility purposes. As it pertains to the TRP, the technical review panel, began to review by the evaluating of the project to make sure that it is going to meet the objects that was stated in the NOFO. If this is a project that was designed to improve CMV safety is the allocations of resources going to be enough to complete the project goals. The TRP will also review the applicant’s budget to determine consistency. Some examples of some inconsistencies, it's been pointed out in the past you have equipment on page 17 that says $5000 and the equipment is mentioned on the budget narrative on page 21 saying $7000. Make sure things are consistent because these are the types of things that you dinged and it may not get you approved for the project you want. The TRP will also ensure that the costs are allowable, allocable and necessary and reasonable per the MCSAP comprehensible policy. There is more information on 2 CFR part 200. TRP is also determining if the application is within scope. Weighing if the application is addressing CMV issues. The TRP also reviews the applicant’s current and past performance. The actual performance plan, milestone and outcome. Make sure all the cost is properly identified with details and not duplicated in the application.

Risk assessment. Debarment and suspension reviews, and capability questionnaires and the SAM, which I mentioned previously is not also just a part of the mission but we also check this when we are doing the risk assessment as well. We are going to be reviewing the single audit. In reference to the past performance we are going to review the TRP evaluative and monitoring plan and ensure the performance was within scope. When reviewing the budget narrative FMCSA examines the difference. The who, what, where, when, why, and how it's associated with project goals. Here you can see what we are looking for in the budget narrative.

Be specific, be clear. Provide details to justify the funds requested. As it relates to eligibility expense here is the guidance from 2 CFR part 200 which you can click on and get more details on that as well. For additional consideration FMCSA, may send out inquiries and clarification if needed. All reviews are complete. You can see the results of the reviews by the GMO, by program office and the field and make a determination to improve or not improve funding.

We received phone calls and emails in reference to the status. We can't give any recommendation information until after the award has been approved. We can give general information on what we can expect the time frames to be approved but that's about all. We are not able to award until we have the proper legislations, appropriation and apportionment. You've been approved, what's next? We issue the awards that come from grant management office in our grants management system, grant solutions. Once the applicant agrees and their ADO, which we spoke about before, to terms and conditions and accepts then the funds are awarded. Any questions?

>> Nikki McDavid: If we could go to the phone line and after you announce the instructions on how to get queued up we have one question. We can get to that after you provide the instructions.

>> AT&T Operator, Lori: Thank you. If you have a question on the phone lines please press one then zero at this time.

>> Nikki McDavid: Thank you, Lori. While we are getting queued up we did have a question.

Just to clarify we should include a primary and secondary PI/PD in our proposal?

>> James Ross: Please, please, please. It makes everyone's job so much easier. It makes the awarding process flow smoothly so there won’t be any hiccups. If we can't reach anyone person for whatever reason than we want to be able to have that backup.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok, thank you. Any questions from the phone line Lori?

>> AT&T Operator, Lori: No, questions from the phone lines. Please continue.

>> Nikki McDavid: Thank you, James, for the great information about submitting an application and what our grantees need to do to make that process work smoothly. Last but not least we are going to turn it over to, Wendy, to talk about appendix B requirements. Wendy.

>> Wendy Cunningham: Thank you Nikki. Appendix B has the project narrative as a template as discussed earlier. It's not required. It also has a budget narrative sample and tips. The different categories we are gonna go over quickly to make sure everybody is aware. The project plan will have a goal objective work plan. Your evaluation monitoring plan. Your Organizational capacity, and your budget narrative. We will go over each section from the template. These are just snippets from the actual template. You can download from grants.gov to use if you so choose to.

Remember it is not mandatory but it is a good guide. The template goal -- this is pre-typed in the template for you if you choose to use it. It goes back to the purpose of the CMVOST grant program examining the numbers of individuals receiving Commercial Motor Vehicle Operator

Safety Training. It talks about emphasizing our priority to recruit and train current and former members of the United States forces. It goes into detail. And their spouses which we refer to as qualified students throughout the process. That definition is in the NOFO as well.

In the next section is the objective. These things are prefilled out for you to be able to utilize and fill in the blanks as appropriate for your application. It covers the institution, publicly advertised tuition costs. Which we had a question earlier about and ensuring that that’s attached.

Your tuition costs, your proposed number of new qualified students you are going to recruit.

Your anticipated number of students you are going to enroll and that you think will graduate and obtains a CDL. These are expected numbers based on your experience with your institution’s courses and things like that. In order to just make estimates that's going to support your grant application. Also, the number of students employed. You are going to break down those objectives into workplan activities. The first one is about recruiting qualified students and there is a spot for you to utilize and explain your process of this activity. There is an example above that gives you a guide to consider when completing the section.

Training qualified students is activity 2. We ask you to describe those proposed activities and provide your training for those qualified students and provide a specific component to the training program discussed earlier. We want to know about those components. What is it? How do they qualify? Please include your endorsements. Are these only Class A's or Class B endorsements? Hazmat endorsements? Things like that in this section. Students who will graduate successfully complete the course. Describing that gives you guidance on what you can include in that section. I'm not going to read it all. Again, you will have this presentation as a resource and it's also in your NOFO already and hopefully you've already downloaded from grants.gov. Students who obtain a CDL. Of everyone that graduates how many actually receive their CDL. Information about those projections goes here and the guidance is there. Provide graduate students with job placement assistance. We want to know about your projected proposed activities on how you will assist those that have been trained by your institution to get into the industry after graduation.

There was a question early about providing qualified students with fees or expenses outside tuition costs. Remember tuition costs, depending on your publication, you need to include that information and describe it. The program evaluation monitoring is an important piece as well. We want to know how you plan to monitor your project plan of these projections and activities you describe. How are you going to monitor it? The section here gives you an opportunity to describe that to us. Provide a timeline to support the period of performance to indicate all classes, placement services, everything will be completed prior to the end of your period of performance. There is a chart for your evaluation and monitoring each quarter to be able to complete and provide if you are awarded funds. We will want a break down of the number of students recruited that quarter, the number of students enrolled, and a number of students who will graduate, anticipated numbers of students who will obtain and students placed in the transportation industry. This right now is projections, anticipated numbers. If you get the award you will be reporting out on some specific items every quarter through the life of the grant.

Organizational capacity. It gives you some information about what's expected to be there and for you to be able to describe the information that will include discussion on your match requirement, as well. Making sure it's an eligible expense, and how you plan -- how your successes in your organization is going to help you be successful in this project plan you are submitting in your application. Budget narratives. How to use the guidance. This is just the guidance of how to help you walk through -- again because of the tuition only the other costs budget narrative is going to be key for you. Because it’s a standard template, you need to acknowledge in each one of those that there are no expenses that are being claimed. Then this one, other is the key item. It gives you a template of how you can write it out. The number of qualified students. Cost per qualified student and then the total and the section below that will give you an opportunity to explain those numbers, and also show if you have indirect cost when you have an approved plan depending on what that base is. Again, you may have indirect cost in this section as well.

Explaining what is included in the tuition rate. The rationale of how those costs were derived was a 8 year published rate from the website. Other costs that don't fit within any of the other object class categories like the IDC it does fit into other budgets. We have had that question before. We have gone over this several times that we are reviewing costs to determine the consistency with you work plan, necessary to complete your plan. Whether it’s allowable and reasonable. We also, because it's only tuition now your indirect cost rate agreement, your cost allocation plan, the tuition, again we don't want duplication, or trying to claim the cost twice.

Your indirect cost agreement would be one of the reasons why we ask for that agreement is to see what the base is. Here is an example of what we would like to see for the indirect cost and what your rate is, what the period covered by that. What year base estimate would be and what the indirect costs expense would be. These are tips about IDC. It was reviewed by Ross, earlier.

Making sure that these are just checks for you to make sure you are providing what's needed. If you don't have an approved IDC rate you won't be reimbursed until you have that approved rate if you are seeking reimbursement for IDC. More information about IDC tips. Because of two

CFR changes a couple of years ago, if you don't have an IDC agreement meaning you've never had an IDC agreement there is a de minimis rate 10% in all the rules on that. Follow those restrictions. Be familiar with that. The link for 2 CFR in the presentation has a whole bunch of information about IDC if you're not familiar with it or you can go to your finance office to get more information as well. There is a section that talks about IDC. Nikki, back to you for questions.

>> Nikki McDavid: Thank you, so much Wendy. Wendy, we do have a few questions. I hope that information was very helpful to our grantees. We do have a few questions that came in in the question-and-answer pod. After we go through these questions we will see if we have any additional questions online. One of the questions Wendy says, children of members of the Armed

Forces are no longer considered qualified students?

>> Wendy Cunningham: I don’t think anywhere does it say that children of members of the armed forces are no longer qualified students. The NOFO just provided the examples of qualified students. I would have to go back and see what the wording is now. The NOFO wordings says includes the spouses and children of service members on the bottom of page 2 section A. Under paragraph 2 at the very bottom. The NOFO does indicate that children of armed force are qualified.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok, great. Now that goes into the second question and I believe this is probably why the question was asked but we’ll see. The question is, is there still an activity 4 in the workplan. It is not listed in the template in the NOFO. Wendy, I pulled up the 2019 NOFO and activity 4 was about providing qualified students with fees and expenses outside of tuition costs. This goes directly to the question that was asked and answered earlier.

>> Wendy Cunningham: The template is correct. The slide that talked about number four evidently was not updated I apologize for that.

>> Nikki McDavid: Wendy, real quick, I don't believe -- I was looking in the NOFO and I don't see an activity 4.

>> Wendy Cunningham: Correct because we changed the qualification to only being tuition. The expectation is that the tuition discussion will occur in the budget. There is no need to duplicate it in the template.

>> Nikki McDavid: Great. For clarification, there is no activity 4 that needs to be reported.

>> Wendy Cunningham: We will remove that slide so when it's posted to grants.gov it will be corrected.

>> Nikki McDavid: Oh, okay, thank you. Also, the other question, should the project narrative be uploaded as one document or should the different sections be uploaded as separate documents as they are listed in the document checklist in the NOFO? I think that’s probably a question more appropriate for James to answer from the Grants Management office.

>> James Ross: Can you repeat the question?

>> Nikki McDavid: Sure. Should the project narrative be uploaded as one document or should the different sections be uploaded as separate documents as they are listed in the document checklist in the NOFO?

>> James Ross: As one document.

>> Nikki McDavid: Ok It should be uploaded to grant solutions as one document.

>> James Ross: That's correct.

>> Nikki McDavid: Okay, thank you. I don't have any more questions that have come into the

Q&A pod. So, Lori, I will turn it over to you see if anyone wants to queue up for a live question.

>> AT&T Operator, Lori: If you would like to queue up on the phone please press one then zero on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speaker phone please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. One then zero. We have no one on the phone at this time. Please continue.

>> Nikki McDavid: No additional questions. Do we have one last slide? Okay. Thank you, all so much for participating in today's funding conference. We have listed everyone's contact information. If you have any questions of the program office for Wendy or Francisco of our Title

VI program managers. Lester, or James Ross, with our Grants Management office please feel free to reach out to them separately. As we mentioned earlier a copy of the presentation along with the closed captioning, and the questions and answers that have been asked today will be uploaded to www.grants.gov for your use. Please give us a week or so to get that uploaded. If you want -- if you want to have an idea when you can go in and download that information please give us a week or so to get that uploaded for your use. With that I want to thank you all for participating. Thank you to our presenters for all the great information you have provided to us and our participants. I wish you all luck in your pursuit of federal funding for the CMVOST grant funding. Have a great evening. We will talk to you later. Bye.