FY22-LSR-Webinar-Captions-Transcript.docx

Captions Transcript for Landscape Scale Restoration Competitive Grant RFA Webinar August 18, 2021 Welcome to Landscape Scale Restoration Competitive Grant RFA webinar. I am the lead for this program. I want to let you know we are recording this session today so we can provide it for reference and for those who may have missed it. I also want to thank Sheela Johnson for her help with the webinar today.

I am in New Hampshire, presenting from N’dakkinna, which is the homeland of Abenaki, Pennacook, and Wabanaki people. I just wanted to acknowledge and honor with gratitude the land, the water, and the alnobak (people) who have stewarded N’dakkinna throughout the generations.

I'll provide a program overview. We will cover eligibility, requirements, and scoring criteria you. I'll briefly touch on application forms and processes for applying and provide tips for how to pull together a competitive application. Go ahead and type questions into the chat as you think of them. I will be watching for those and Sheela, will help me watch for them. We will have plenty of time to take all of your questions today. There are a few folks participating today that have served as reviewers for this program in the past and also our program specialists with the Forest Service. For those of you that are on feel free to type in the chat if you know an answer to a question. Or if you have something to add feel free to chime in and engage.

The overall goal is to encourage collaborative, science-based restoration of priority rural forest land. It's a national program authorized through the Cooperative Forestry Assistance Act and is administered through three regional processes. The one I'm covering today is for the Northeast and Midwest; the 20 states that you see on the map. There is also a process for the Western states and for the Southern states. Regardless of where your organization is located, if you are looking to do a project that's not within the Northeast and Midwest states click the link West or South to learn about their processes. There are a few differences, so it's probably best use of your time to learn about those processes for your project. If you are looking to do something multistate that includes this and other regions, stay right here. On the national LSR website, there is a directive in the Forest Service manual for LSR. If you want to learn about requirements and where requirements come from, but you don't have to read that to apply. We put all requirements and information in the regional instructions document.

(0:3:49) Here is a little bit of an overview. Folks are curious. The last two years we received around $4 million for LSR projects for the Northeast and Midwest. Last year we received 49 applications that met the requirements. We were able to fund 15. Most awards are processed quickly in the spring when we get our funding because a lot of your grant forms are in the grants.gov package and the application form you fill out serves as a grant narrative. Our LSR website has additional information including past applications if you want to look at projects submitted last year as well as the ranked list from last year and the reviewer comments for applications we received last year.

(0:4:44) The eligible applicants for this program are state forestry, or other appropriate state agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, local units of government, and Federally recognized Tribes. For all of those applicants except for tribes a state forest sponsor letter is required. It's really important you get sponsorship for your application. For tribes, we welcome you to collaborate with the state forest agency; they can give you support and a support letter, but it's not required. It also won't count against the number they are allowed to sponsor. Thank you, Sheela for popping instructions in the chat.

(0:5:40) The focus of this program is outcomes on rural forest land. Directly from the Forest Service manual, high-impact projects that lead to measurable outcomes on the landscape, leverage public and private resources, and further priorities identified in each state forest action plan or equivalent restoration strategy. There is a focus on outcome on rural nonindustrial private, tribal, state, and or local government forest land. Projects can include outreach and training. That's part of the criteria, but you also need to include on the ground pieces.

For this program, rural is defined as area of population of 50,000 or less. If you have any questions about that I encourage you to go to the LSR project planning web map and look on the eligibility tab. In there you can zoom and pan or type in the name of the city or town right into that search bar at the top. All the areas in this map that are kind of a pink color are defined as urban according to the census definition. Over 50,000 population. If an area you are looking to do a project is not highlighted in pink or red on this map then you are good to go. This is the map I used to verify the rural definition of applications coming in.

(0:7:19) Maximums and minimums. The minimum application amount for federal funding is $25,000 with a one-to-one match so total cost of all projects are at a minimum $50,000. Each state forester can submit and/or sponsor a maximum of five applications. There are two exceptions. Applications submitted by tribes don't count against the five. Multistate applications that are sponsored by 11 or more state foresters also don't count. For example a state forester can sponsor five projects individual within the state, and also sponsor another project that has a total of 11 state forester sponsors. Reminder: Type questions in the chat as you think of them. The maximum total funding awarded to anyone state or tribe through this process is 15% of the total available. We don't know the exact amount we will get funded for fiscal year 22. Before it's been around $4 million annually, so at that funding level, any one state or tribe cannot receive more than $6000,000 in LSR federal funding for projects. So, I recommend not submitting projects larger than that. For multistate projects there is a maximum cap of $600,000 for federal funding. For any multistate project.

(0:9:07) As far as match, 1:1 matching fund is required from nonfederal sources. Funding or in-kind contributions can include funding from your agency or organization (grantee applicant) and non-federal partners. Volunteer time to implement the project. Donation of equipment, supplies, meeting space. Services provided at a reduced cost. Cost savings can count towards the match. For tribes the 638 BIA contracting funds can also be used as match. There is a document with more information called the matching funds document. There is a link here and on our website. I recommend you look at that. Reach out if you have any questions regarding what can be included.

(0:10:05) As far as State and Private Forestry program authorities that are used for this program: This includes the Forest Stewardship Program, Rural Forestry Assistance, Urban and Community Forestry (for work in communities with 50,000 or less population), Forest Health Protection, and State Fire Assistance. You are allowed to do some blending of authority in a single project so you can draw on multiple authorities.

(0:10:50) Here are some example project types. Forest management treatment to improve water quality and/or wildlife habitat. Survey, prioritization, and treatment to control invasive plants in a high priority landscape. Tree planting projects in communities with a population of 50,000 or less. If you are looking to do some tree planting, there is another document you want to look for guidance for tree planting. Take a look at that. Demonstration projects that are achieving on the ground accomplishments to improve the health of the forest and also provide training. Treatments to reduce or mitigate fire fuels in rural priority forest land.

(0:12:01)These are some activities not allowed under funding. The federal funding and match have to meet the same requirements. 1:1 match can’t be used for any of these. Not eligible include: cost share, reimbursement, or other payments going directly to private landowners. You can’t fund that. You can pay or contract the work to be done on private land. You cannot give reimbursements are payments directly to the private land owners. Construction and capital improvements. Research is basic research where you are looking for knowledge or understanding of certain facts; with specific application processes or products in mind. That's not allowable under this. You can apply research. You can do tech transfer, education, and demonstrations that applies research. Research entities can be part of the project and contribute to it. If there are doing some basic research as part of a project that can be non-matched leverage as long as it's not funded using federal funds and one-to-one match. Small business start up funding is not allowed. Projects on federal land, but we encourage you to look at the broader landscape. Projects in cities and towns with population over 50,000. You can use the map viewer I showed earlier to help make sure you are working in rural areas. Forest legacy program authorities are not allowed—no land purchase or purchase of conservation easments. Lymantria dispar Slow the Spread projects are not allow; that is a specific other funding process.

Looking at question: If riparian forest restoration is paired with increasing connectivity and a stream by removing undersize culverts, and restoring the channel in stream. Yeah, for that one I would say let's connect you up with a program specialist to get into details on that. Ask the relevant Field Office to check on that. In general, work in the stream is not allowed, but work in the forests adjacent to the stream is. I want to make sure I'm not steering you wrong. Another question: funds to purchase a conservation easements or paying for transaction costs is not allowed for this program. But if that is part of the broader part of the project, it can be contributed as non-match leverage, e.g., if a partner is contributing that piece. It'll help your application score greater. The Forest Legacy Program is a program for land purchase and conservation (not eligible authority for this grant program). I have some slides on outcomes we will get to soon. Hold tight.

(0:16:19) Now let’s dig into scoring criteria. The points add up to 100. I'm going to step through each one of these. In the top right corner of the slide there is a little page with a number and it. If you have the instructions printed out or pulled up on another screen, I organized this presentation how the instructions are. You can use page numbers to help you flip through. There is a little more detail in the instructions. The first criteria is priority issues and landscapes in the State Forest Action Plans (SFAP) or equivalent restoration strategy. This is worth 25 points, sot it a big one. Make sure you are demonstrating how this product is going to contribute to an issue, priority area, strategy, our goal in the relevant state forest action plan. The more detailed you are, the better you will do in this particular criteria. All states have a 2020 SFAP, except Vermont for which 2017 is their current plan. Those have been approved recently. Some of them aren't posted online yet. There is a link where you can find them. Some have an old plan there. If you can’t find the SFAP for the state you are looking for let me know. I'll get it to you.

(0:17:58) Criteria 2 is measurable outcomes. 35 points. This includes outcomes on the landscape as well as other outcomes. Describe how the project outcomes are going to restore that landscape. There are two lists you need to look at. How this project contributes to the national LSR objectives and how it accomplishes at least one national quantitative measure which I'll also show to you. They are in the instructions as well. The national objectives is right in the act and national directive. You might be working on some projects that contribute more than one of these. It's important you are able to check the box that your project is doing at least one of these things to meet the requirements and score well. These are the national quantitative measures for LSR. This is a new list. We didn't have this last year. This is in the instructions document too. These also serve as the list of what is consider as on the ground. This year with applications coming in reviewing the requirements I'll check to make sure all projects are going to achieve at least one of these. It can be more than one. You can add additional outcomes in addition to these. Most of these are self-explanatory. There are two that I want to focus on. Towards the bottom of the list acres under new forest management plans. That can include new Forest Stewardship Plans, CAP 106 plans, Tree Farm plans, Tax abatement plans, other forest management plans, and also landscape scale plans. The next one under that: private landowners reach through technical assistance. For that one, it is not just a one-time call, or they listened in on a webinar. It needs to be that the private forest land owners are known to have benefited from a significant way of more than one interaction, e.g., multiple visits on their land. For the purposes of this program, that “counts” as on-the-ground. These on the ground outcomes are in the reporting system for LSR. When you start your annual reporting you will need to be able to select that you are accomplishing one of these.

(0:21:19) I saw a couple of questions.

Would you like me to read through some of those?

Sure.

I think we may have addressed the question about measurable outcomes. Feel free to type that in. The next one is from Michael: would community tree removal would it be allowable in disadvantaged communities?

I believe that is allowable. You would want to couple it with something that's restoring the landscape. In communities with 50,000 or less population. For that specific one we can check in with the Field Office regarding the specific project you have in mind and see if they have concerns about it. For a lot of the specific questions, it's better to have program specialists help out with those questions.

There was a question about who to reach out to with these questions. I did type in the contacts are all in the instructions which you have on the website. Anything else you would like to add?

Typically we’ll connect you up with one of the field offices--we have three field offices. We typically connect you up with that field office rep. I think it's on page 11 of the instructions. They might forward you to forest health specialists if it’s a forest health focused project. They are really helpful if you want to have them review a draft application--they can provide suggestions for you. It can help you improve your application too. For questions and for that as well.

Another question: The quantitative accomplishment measures listed doesn't seem to align with typical ways of measuring urban and community forest projects. Unless private land owners can include residents within a community. Is this allowable?

For that particular one, the assistance to private landowners is so those individuals can manage their land. If it's to reach a general population for awareness and that sort of thing it probably won't count for that measure. If they are not homeowners. They were homeowners learning to manage -- helping to support trees on the street in the community that might be allowable. I think we have some questions around that last year. One that was submitted. Of course there are other measures -- if you are doing tree planting in rural communities then that is of course an on the ground measure.

The second question looks similar. Tree planting -- the authorities for tree planting comes from the urban forestry program. Those are the authorities from Urban and Community Forestry that commonly get used in LSR. For LSR it's focused on rural communities not urban core.

There is a question about a watershed landscape stewardship plans -- would it be appropriate to include the entire watershed or targeted acres in the application?

If you are implementing a plan (already developed), then focus on the acres for the specific project areas. If you are developing the landscape plan as part of the project being funded to develop the plan, provide the whole watershed. If it includes both, then include both in your application. You can include maps as separate attachments to show the watershed and project areas or describe the watershed in your narrative form.

If you don't know the exact area on the ground, but the general region that's okay at the time of application. It's common for projects. For folks to say we are going to implement this project for a particular state or watershed and in the first phase of the project you will collaborate with partners to prioritize the areas for implementing treatments, which might take place in year 2 and 3 of the project. You don't have to know the exact area on the ground; just describe what you are planning to do.

We have another question, from Haley regarding technical assistance that results forest management plan and whether that could count for the outcome measure.

It would be good to run that one by a program specialist. If it's being done within the life of the grant, and you're providing technical assistance to develop a plan maybe it's not really indirect and would count. Let's run that one by a Field Office specialist. If any of the program specialists are on and have an answer, feel free to type into the chat. Just say who you are responding to in your question.

Another question: Is effectiveness monitoring an acceptable type of applied science?

Yes, you could be monitoring to achieve forest health improvement. Things like that. That by itself would not count as on the ground outcome. If you are doing effective monitoring as part of a project, also make sure to have some acres you are treating as well. Something to fit the on-the-ground outcome as part of the project.

Another question: Is work allowed to manage conserved land (land under a conservation easement)? Or is that considered a Forest Legacy Program?

Yes, you are allowed to do work across pretty much any nonfederal land. It can be private land, state land, local government, land trust land. Any of those ones I covered earlier for sure. If it's conserved land and has been prioritized explain that; it might help you score better if it's been prioritized.

(0:29:37) The next scoring criteria is Collaboration and Integrated Delivery. Identify partners contributing and supporting the project. Show how contributions add value to the project. That can be funds or coordinating and helping with some of that. You also want to seek to improve delivery across the landscape and boundaries. If your project is complementary to other state or federal programs likes shared stewardship projects or good neighbor authority. Work being done in the forest looking at private land. Make sure you think about that. Make sure to describe it. Be clear to describe the land ownership for the project area and the goal you are looking to achieve across the landscape. It can include a combination of tribal, state, local government, and private land. That collaboration can include with Federal lands, but the LSR funding and one-to-one match cannot be used on Federal lands. It could be part of the broader effort. It's important to demonstrate the results you are going to get from that collaboration. You are going to achieve more through that then you would have just working on your own.

(0:31:19) The next Criteria is Leverage. This is worth 10 points. Maximize funding by using it to leverage contributions from partners: Federal and nonfederal entities. The types of things you can include in the narrative include match and other non-match contributions. You can have some contributions from national parks, or national forests, or partners that do not count towards that 1:1 match. That would count toward this leverage criteria. Make sure to describe contributions in the narrative in this section and also in the budget spreadsheet. Partners are contributing funds, or match. Include that and describe it in the spreadsheet. In the budget spreadsheet there is a spot at the bottom to put non-match leverage with additional values that aren't included in the 1:1 match.

I will get to that next question in a second.

(0:32:30) The last Scoring Criteria is Knowledge and Tech Transfer. This is worth 10 points. Tech transfer is defined as sharing knowledge, tools, and innovations. Practical applications. We want you to think about how you are going to share about the project. How will others learn from that work? Potentially to inform—beyond the reach of your particular project area. Others can learn from. It can include training, lessons learned type documents, webinars, things like that.

(0:33:11) Here is a Scoring Rubric. This is a new tool for the review team, but we want you to see it as well. This is new to the instructions document new this year, so make sure to look at it. This includes the main bullet points for each scoring criteria. The more of that you do, the higher your project will score. If it's a weak description, the lower the score will be.

(0:33:50) Another thing new this year is from Executive Order 13985. Advancing racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government. We are asked in everything we do; all of our programs, service, everything, to advance equity for all including people of color and others historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by poverty and inequity. This definition on the screen and I also put it in the frequently asked questions document. I wanted to point out for the definition it includes quite a lot of different groups. Of course black, Latino, Native American, Asian, and so on. Also persons with a disability. Also people in rural areas, particularly if they are affected by persistent poverty. Take a look at that. This isn't a requirement. We encourage it. If your application project does show a clear benefit to underserved or historically marginalized people, and/or communities or forest areas they value, then describe that in the narrative form. It would be helpful if you can briefly mention that in the project overview on page 1 and describe it in more detail in the description. There are a couple resources if you don't know where to start with that to identify underserved. One is the CDC Social Vulnerability Index. This is an index for every census tract where they use 15 different social factors such as unemployment, minority status, disability, income, it all gets put into an index and you can check that out. See where a project is you are looking to do falls in that index. Another resource is opportunity zones. These are areas identified in each state as economically distressed communities and are certified by U.S. Secretary treasury. Another thing you can do is check and see if your state has an office of environmental equity or justice. They may be able to help identify areas within the state population and areas that fall in this underserved category.

(0:37:08) Let me go on to a couple of questions I haven't covered yet. Regarding the application, or calculation of match--if it's volunteer time contributing to the project, you are going to do that hourly calculation. It depends on what they are doing. I recommend you take a peek at the match guidelines document. It's in the grants.gov opportunity and website as well. See if that helps at all. We can run your specific question by a Forest Service specialist. It'll help make sure whatever you are thinking about if there's any questions around that.

Are there any questions I skipped?

We missed one from, Shawna: If you are a partner on a current LSR grant are you eligible to apply for funding for a different project?

Thank you. Sure. You are welcome to do that for sure.

There is a question about if there are scoring criteria for the equity and underserved projects. This year there is no criteria scoring extra points if your project is serving underserved communities, or historically marginalized people. That executive order is new. We do encourage it.

(0:39:25) Applications and forms. I'm not going into these in details. If you have any questions about how to fill out one of the forms are which ones to submit, feel free to drop me an email, or call. We will help you with that. If you are newer to doing these applications I am happy to go into more detail. For the project narrative form this is one of the two basics providing information about your project. Make sure you have a nice compelling overview in this section on page 1. It has basic information about the project in the context of the project whether multistate and that sort of thing. Those questions about multistate don't affect your score. It helps us process applications as they come in. There is a section in this PDF for each scoring criteria. Do your best to provide information for every single one of those. We recommend you do formatting; not just block-to-block filled with text. Not so much for this overview page. For sections that are longer consider putting formatting in like headers, bold, underlining. You can format it in a word document, you can copy and paste from that into the pdf form. If you already have text in the form, you can highlight it and right click for some formatting options. That'll help the reviewer read through it and stay focused—with all the applications they have to read through. That's a tip.

(0:41:19) The second key piece for the application is the budget spreadsheet. This is an Excel spreadsheet, so you can customize it. You can delete or add some columns if you have fewer or more partners. Fill out all of the budget categories you are applying to use the federal funds for or the match. Make sure to fill out that column B to provide a description. Last year we had some leave this column blank. That's not going to help you. Describe how the funds are being used. Put it in there. If you want, you can use more detail, but it doesn't have to be super detailed. It'll help the reviewers get a better understanding of how funds are going to be used. They can see how funds are justified. You can put in non-match leverage. Make sure to fill that in too. They can see the amount there.

(0:42:37) How to apply. All applications are submitted in grants.gov. Click the link here it'll take you right to the opportunity. If you don't have that later remember you can type LSR in the search bar. For all applicants, except tribes, make sure to submit a draft of the application narrative (pdf) and budget spreadsheet to the relevant state forester by September 24th or earlier. So they can consider sponsoring. You are required to have a sponsorship. They are only allowed to sponsor five. Then the final applications are due to Grants.gov by 6:00 Eastern on November 5. The whole package. Grants.gov has a great support line. There is a phone number you can call. Past applicants say they were helpful. If you have issues using grants.gov reach out to support folks. If you are newer to applying for these applications now is a good time to make sure you have your employer identification number and SAM registration. If it's been a while since you've done that SAM renewal, take time to check when you are up for renewal. It's important to be active. Once you have that you can set up your account in Grants.gov and your organization’s authorized representative. You can have multiple people working on the package in there.

(0:44:37) This is what the opportunity looks like. They synopsis describes the competitive grant program. The grant opportunity has a related documents tab. I put the documents in there this year. As we have been switching to the website, we have used different technology, but all the main forms and guidance documents are in the documents tab in grants.gov. If you can’t find something you need, send me an email.

(0:45:44) For the overall package you have the narrative form I covered (the PDF). Any maps or photos you want to upload are optional. For all applications you have 424 and 424A. Some fields will auto populate. We need a letter of sponsorship from the relevant state forester, unless you are a tribal applicant. You want to have a good number of sponsor or support letters. You don't need to have dozens. The quality is more important than quantity. If you have partners contributing key pieces having a good letter of support our sponsorship explaining what they are contributing and what's important will help your application. There are a number of forms required and forms may be different depending on what organization you are. I recommend looking applications checklist. It will help make sure you've got all pieces required. If you are looking to do forest health treatment work, you need to fill out cooperative lands request form. If you are looking to do any sort of fire mitigation type activities, make sure you fill out the national fire performance form and upload those. All of those on the screen have little asterisk next to them are submitted through the grants.gov attachment form available and the others are available in grants.gov you can fill it out.

(0:47:33) This is the package tab in grants.gov. It has all the forms. I know it's small to read, but those on the right column are labelled optional. Some of those are actually required, but which specific form you fill out depends on your organization. If you are a state agency you will fill out one version of the form. If you are a nonprofit, you might fill out a different one. Look at the application checklist of requirements and forms in appendix 3 of the instructions as you are getting everything pulled together pull that out. Go down through the list. Check everything off. It has instructions for which forms to include. If you have any questions let me know, or if you're working with somebody in one of the Field Offices with the Forest Service, you can ask them as well.

(0:48:24) For the timeline, I see your note about August 20. That could be -- I don't know. Is that for specific state? That was the date last year. This year, the application processes are open now. Some state forestry agencies want you to let them know by a certain day if you are going to apply. Most of them stick with the September 24th date of having a draft application and budget spreadsheet due to the State Forester’s. They might have a point or lead person you are going to work with to do that. It's helpful to reach out to the State Forestry agency earlier. If you don't know who to connect with, reach out and ask me or your field rep person. You might want to talk to them earlier about your project to help you pull together that best case and need for the project. It's helpful to do that earlier. They are all due by November 5th. It will take the better part of November to do the preliminary review to ensure requirements and eligibility. In December we will do the review. The interagency Review Team is made up of 12 people. Six from the U.S. Forest Service, State and Private Forestry in the Eastern Region, and six State Foresters. By February first we need to have the list to the Washington Office. It's a little bit later this year. We had a little delay. Luckily we have a little more time there. When we know what our budget is and funds available, we will work down that list and announce which projects are going to be funded.

(0:51:02) If your project is funded, you will be assigned a grant monitor that will help you through the process to get everything ready to go so you can get started. Projects are typically three-year for LSR. You can do a one year. There is annual reporting. Accomplishments at the end of the calendar year are reported in our grant system by March 31st each year and that's grant performance reporting and your grant monitor will help you with that. They will help you with the second one the performance reporting due in LaSR, the database for LSR. That's due October 28th. For any of you with LSR projects right now--don't forget that. It's due October 28. Make sure you get those reports published. There are two public views with information in that database I linked to here. One is a list of projects. The other one is more helpful is the interactive map. The second link there. If you go to that you can see the list of projects for each state. You can pan around the map.

(0:52:26) Any other questions at this point?

Question about if in process of getting 501c3 status. It might affect your ability to get into the set up. If it affects your ability to get into grants.gov, but it could be an issue. If you don't have the status when the applications are due, we might have to drop it from consideration. Feel free to reach out individually.

Any questions I missed?

To make sure we covered this for submitting—does the applicant email the draft application to the state foresters of does it go through grants.gov somehow?

No, that doesn't go through grants.gov. Applicants will prepare information. They can save the package from grants.gov, but all they really need to send to the State Foresters is the application narrative and budget spreadsheet. If you're going to attach any maps or photos. They don’t need the whole package from grants.gov.

Voice cutting out a bit. [recording was cropped to remove this technical glitch time] My service went down. Thank you for your patience. Technology happens. I will email the PowerPoint and recording to everybody who registered. I’ll also post the recording and PowerPoint on our website and in grants.gov.

(0:55:20) Tips. The last couple of years we had reviewers share tips for competitive application. Here are some tips. Earlier I saw some reviewers on and invite them to type additional tips into.

The first one is clear writing. Focus on clear writing. A clear description of who, what, where, when, why. Organize and format clearly. It could be helpful to have others review and edit. Think about criteria and review and edit and provide suggestions.

The second one is make sure to include the problem statement with any context about the issue for that particular sure to include the problem statement with any context about the issue for that particular project area. We do have a twenty-state area, so sometimes the reviewer may not be familiar with specific watershed or ecosystem or issue. Include why it's important--making the case. Help them understand that.

This is required and is going to help you score better. Don't forget the strong connection to the relevant State Forest Action Plan. You want to make sure you have a strong direct detailed connection. How this supports the state forest action plan. Tie to specific priority areas or strategies in the plan.

Make sure you provide an explanation of how federal funds and the match are going to be used. There's a spot for that in the spreadsheet. Make sure the costs are relative to the deliverable. Reviewers will be looking at that. Make sure that math adds up: matches your total budget spreadsheet and also the 424 and 424 A. That will save me from having to come back later to ask you for the correct numbers.

A few more tips. Focus on strong partner collaboration and key support letters. You don't need dozens of letter; key letters from partners the project is going to benefit or partners contributing to the project. If your effort builds on existing efforts with that partner in that area, or adjacent to other important land on existing efforts with that partner in that area, mention that in your narrative.

Focus on strong outcomes and describe those clearly. Also be realistic. We've had reviewers say that is seems the applicant was trying to look like they could achieve more outcomes than is realistic for the project and time of the grant. Be realistic about the outcomes for the funding and time to implement it.

Identify land ownership were activities themselves will take place.

Don't be discouraged if you applied in the past. I mentioned that out of the 49 submitted last year we funded 15. Not because others weren’t good applications; but because we ran out of funding. If you applied in the past, work on your application. Get people to review it to help make it stronger. Apply again.

(0:59:41) This is our website. At the very bottom of the website there are some links that are not in grants.gov: past application narratives and reviewers comments.

(0:59:59) Here are the Forest Service contacts. These are on page 11 of the instructions. Feel free to reach out if you have questions, specific activities allowed. For the Midwest states Carlene is retiring. Congratulations! After August 28th, Sunny Lucas is going to serve as the field rep.

(1:00:44) The PowerPoint is now available for download in the files to download pod.

Yes, 23 funded 15 projects last year. That was based on funding we have. We take the rank list based on funding we have and work down the ranked list work to fund as many as we can. If any states have reached their 15% we will jump over that one and go to the next one down.

Other Questions? If we did miss something, feel free to type it in again. If you are on the phone you can raise your hand and dial star 6 the phone to unmute. I'm going to pause right now if there is anyone only on the phone that would like to ask a question.

(1:02:45) Regarding partially funding projects, we typically haven't done that in the Northeast and Midwest. Sticking with the process of the reviewers scoring based the full project deliverable and cost. That is something the Northeast Midwest State Foresters Alliance is considering. We might in the future As far as if priority given to multi-year projects. Typically these projects take multiple years to implement. Funding becomes available in the spring. You may not be able to get started until summer. So right there you are already partially into another fiscal year. There is no priority as far as asking how long it's going to take to implement although it's good to explain that in your application.

(1:04:07) Question that came in privately: Can private landowners provide cash match. Does it need to be collected at the time of submission? No. They can contribute to the project but you wouldn't collect that at the time of application. You would need to verify that they are going to provide that. For that I recommend you reach out the Forest Service Field Office to ask about the match you have in mind. Make sure what you are considering is allowed.

Regarding the question of it being a one-year grant: Typically these are three year projects so are set up as a three-year grant from the beginning. If you know it will be shorter project, you can set it up that way. If you finish early that is fine.

Contributions of match can be over the life of the grant.

The total federal funding is what you request for the whole project. If this is phase 1 of a project you have a vision to implement over a longer time, design the project application, funding, and the match for those three years. In the 424A there is space to split out the amount of funds for each year, but you don’t need to fill that out. Just provide the total amount for the whole project.

There is a Federal funding maximum request of $600,000 for multistate applications. While there is a not a max. for single state projects, we don’t recommend any project be a larger request than that, due to the state/tribal cap of 15% of funding for each state and tribe. This is based on the funding level the last few years of $4 million annually. If a project has a Federal funding amount over $600,000 and our funding level is $4 million, we wouldn't be able the project because it would exceed the state/tribe cap.

Question around when you can start the project. I think you're talking about when you first would be able to get your funding to get started. You are going to work that out with the grant monitor. It's not going to be earlier than spring. Sometimes it takes longer. We don’t know how many projects we can fund until we have our budget. In some years, that has been as late as July. When we have our budget and funding information, it takes a few weeks to get the grant paperwork processed. You don't want to incur any expenses for your project until this is done. Your U.S. Forest Service grant monitor will guide you through that process and let you know when you can start submitting invoices your project.

When everything is in place for the grant, you will submit invoices for expenses and get reimbursement. You don't want to incur any expenses before you have that grant instrument in place.

What other questions?

Regarding projects in multiple states: you need to have sponsorship from all of the states. For example, if you are doing a multistate project with three states, you need to have that sponsorship from all three. If your project is funded, that will count towards the total they are allowed. If the project covers a certain number of states, but you cannot get sponsorship from all of them, you can move forward with the project in those states you have sponsorship.

Multistate projects count towards the five applications each State Forester is allowed to sponsor, unless there are 11 or more state forester sponsors. The state foresters sponsoring can be across the 3 regional LSR projects. For example, states from the Northeast and Midwest and Western or Southern states. If there are 11 or more State Foresters sponsoring the project, then it doesn't count against the five they are allowed sponsor.

Note the list of states has a type on the contacts slide. New Jersey is supported by the Morgantown Field Office.

I am pausing to see if there are any questions over the phone.

I don't hear any questions over the phone. Any other questions in chat?

With multistate proposals, if submitting a multistate proposal is the budget broken out by state to make sure they don’t exceed the 15%? That depends on how you submit it. I recommend in a multistate application that you fill out the funding going to each state in the budget spreadsheet. If the main applicant is going to subcontract funds out to other states, describe that. Place the match each state is contributing in the budget spreadsheet. That funds to each state amount in the budget spreadsheet will be used to identify what counts towards the 15% caps for each state/tribe. If they are getting half of the funding for the project, half the funding will count toward their 15% cap. For funding, a multistate project can move forward for funding iif at least one state will not exceed their cap.

In the project application, you can clarify what amount or percentage should count toward each state. If you don’t do that or if it’s not clear in the budget spreadsheet, then we will divide the funding amount equally among all states that sponsored the project.

I would like to thank the captioner and thank Sheela for helping today.

Another question regarding submitting the draft application to the state forester. Yes, it should be sent by email (is not sent through grants.gov). It's a good idea to have a connection with the state forestry agency before that. Some states designate a lead for the LSR program. You can reach out and ask if they should go directly to the state forester or a different designated lead for LSR. It might be good to reach out before the 24th to make sure who it should go to. So they know it's coming and you will know who to send it to.

If you're not sure who to connect with in the state, you can ask the Forest Service field representative listed on the screen.

As far as the recording: If it recorded fine, I will process that and send along with the PowerPoint to everyone who registered. I will also add that to the Grants.gov opportunity. In the next day or so, we will get it posted on our website.

If you have additional questions, pop them in the chat. I feel us winding down a little bit. Thank you for joining today to learn about the program. Reach out if you have questions! We are here to help you through the process. I wish you best of luck in the process.

Confirm we answered the question regarding how to submit the application to the State Forester: Send the application narrative form (PDF) and the budget spreadsheet and if you have any other supporting maps or photos to the State Forester directly (not through Grants.gov). They don’t need the other forms that are part of the package in grants.gov.

I don’t see any more questions, but will stay here a bit longer if there are any other questions.

Thank you for joining. I think we are done for today. Good luck with your application I think we are done for today.

[Event concluded]