Okay, before we get started,
we are required to inform all attendees that this session is being recorded.
Webcams and microphones have been disabled for all participants
to protect their personally identifiable information,
so communication for today will be via the chat box.
So with that, I'm going to go ahead
and turn it off to Margaret Allen, who will be our facilitator today.
Margaret.
Thank you, Shannon.
Welcome and thank you all for joining us today.
We are going to present a webinar on the mechanics of writing
a full proposal for the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge.
I'm Margaret Allen with the new Office for Coastal Management,
and I'll be serving as the moderator for the webinar today.
This webinar is actually the first in a series of webinars
that we have designed for applicants
that were invited back to submit a full proposal for the competition.
Our webinar today will be covering topics including the Federal grant process,
application guidance, required forms
and technical assistance that is available to applicants.
We'll hold our questions until the end, but feel free to type
your questions into the chat throughout the presentation.
We'll get to as many of those as we can and then follow up with the group
with any answers that we were not able to provide here today.
So to get us started, I would like to introduce my Office
for Coastal Management colleague Adam Stein, who's the competition
manager for the Climate Resilience Regional Challenge.
Adam.
Thanks, Margaret.
So welcome, everyone.
Congratulations on being selected to submit an application
and we're excited to be kicking off this phase of the competition with all of you
So, today I'm going to go over the grants process from where we are today to where
we're going, I’m going to provide a just a quick overview of the competition.
A couple reminders.
Talk about some guidance for the application process,
some activities that we have some concerns about that
we saw within letters of intent, talso grants, forms and systems.
And then I'll turn it over to our colleagues to talk about
technical assistance.
So just jumping in, this is where we are now.
We are in the pre award stage of the grants process.
We are now kicking off our application development and submission period.
That submission deadline, I know all of you have got it in
your calendars is midnight on Eastern time
on February 13th, 2024.
So right after the
submission, we move into our technical review, developing a panel recommendation
and our selection process that happens in March to April timeframe,
and then we notify those applicants that have been selected.
We negotiate with you all and then develop those awards.
Really important timeframe there is that May timeframe,
if you are selected to
if you are selected to receive an award,
that negotiation process that will take place in May
and into the first couple of weeks of June is really critical.
So just wanted to make sure that that's on calendars
and then our awards will be planning to start in October of 2024.
So I wanted to just remind everyone
that this is a very competitive competition.
As you all saw from my recent email, we had over
850 letters of intent.
So a real significant demand, a lot of competition.
And we invited, you
know, 120 applications
for the final competition.
And so for track one, we're only going to be selecting 20 to 25 awards.
And for track two, we're only going to be submitting about 15 awards.
And so just wanted to just to reinforce that
as we get started.
So we've taken some steps to make it easier for our applicants.
We've provided on our website a whole bunch of resources.
Please make yourselves
familiar with them.
We have obviously the notice of funding opportunity, which you’re
all familiar with and the summary which are still there.
But we've also developed some additional guidance on the application.
We've developed some additional guidance for the budget
and we've provided a template for the budget narrative.
We're working on a job aid for the evaluation criteria.
We hope to be able to provide that soon.
The evaluation
criteria that are in the notice of funding opportunity will not change.
Those are the same evaluation criteria.
We're just going to provide it to you in a little bit of an easier to read format.
And then obviously, we're doing a series of webinars
and we're always availablefor questions
through ResilienceChallenge@noaa.gov.
So there as I mentioned, we have an application guidance
resource on our website that application guidance
basically takes the information
that's included within the letter of intent,
provides it in an easier to read format.
that application requires a project summary.
So this is five different required attachments.
A project summary, a project
narrative, a budget narrative,
and then another attachment that includes
all your supplemental materials, including appendices.
And then one more attachment that includes all your letters of support
and collaboration.
So these are the five attachments that are required to submit an application
in addition to those five attachments.
There are some additional required grant forms.
These are very common.
These are typical forms for any federal financial assistance.
So the SF-424 is your application for federal financial assistance.
You will then use the SF-424-A
for budget information for construction activities.
I'm sorry for non construction activities
and the SF-424-C for budget information for your construction activities.
If you have any questions about anything on those forms,
there's great guidance available on Grants.gov
and we are always available to answer our questions as well.
In addition to the SF-424 form family,
there are also two additional forms.
One is for certifying that
we are not paying any of our
recipients to lobby.
So we have a lobbying certification.
And then lastly, for any applicant that does do lobbying
with other resources, we need to disclose those as well.
A couple of other things I want to mention about the application.
As you consider, you know, developing your...
as you consider your development pre award costs.
So these are costs that an applicant may incur with approval from NOAA
between the time that you are selected and we have negotiated your award.
So that is in that June timeframe
and the start of the award, which is in October.
So if you have a need to get started after June, but before October,
you can request
those pre-award costs in your budget narrative.
If we see those and your award is selected,
we will contact you for more information.
The same for advanced payments.
Advanced payments are payments for recipients
that are not able to work on a reimbursable basis.
So when you are selected for your award and when the award is made,
all of the funds that you've requested will be made available at one time.
But you are to withdraw, draw down those funds on a reimbursable basis
as you undertake activities that are within the proposal.
If for any reason an applicant is not able to work on a reimbursable
basis, we may be able to provide advance payments.
Those would
need to be justified and satisfy a number of criteria.
And again, we would look for those to be explained.
The justification for advance payments would be explained within
your budget narrative.
Those,
importantly, both pre-award costs and advance payments,
they can be requested, but they're not guaranteed.
They have to be approved by NOAA.
I just wanted to make that clear.
So I mentioned that there are a number of activities
that we saw within letters of intent that we had some concern about.
I'm going to speak to those here, and I also want to refer you
to the attachment in the email that I sent along with my reminder.
Yesterday.
So the first is acquisition of developed property or buyouts.
So NOAA will fund the acquisition of developed land,
but only when that land is held under conservation easement in perpetuity.
It cannot be redeveloped.
We will also fund the restoration of ecosystem services on that land.
But we will
we will not fund the demolition of the buildings or structures that were there.
And we will not pay for ongoing maintenance
for those lands
after the period of performance,
for retrofits of buildings
and structures, renovations or facility improvements.
It's really important that NOAA understand the public benefit.
Any activities that take place on private property, such as the retrofit
of a residence or a business, have to provide public benefit.
So it's really important that applicants describe the public benefits
of any activity, but especially those on private property
for construction activities.
Activities that require a permit are considered construction activities.
So when you're trying to determine which SF-424 to use, or
what are some of the restrictions on certain activities,
if that activity requires a permit, it's likely
considered a construction activity.
So any construction activities that don't directly reduce risk
are not likely to score well under our evaluation criteria.
Construction of
new facilities is not eligible for funding,
so please do not request funds for new buildings or structures.
In regards to stormwater.
It's important that any construction activity
includes green or natural features as part of the overall design
and there's some guidance for that within the notice of funding opportunity.
If you have specific questions about specific projects, please reach out to us.
I've got a few more activities of concern to touch on
in regards to workforce development.
We want to make sure that funding
is directly related to activities proposed within the application.
Funding should not be requested to fill vacancies for positions
that are not directly related to the proposed objectives and outcomes.
For pass through grants or mini grants.
We want to reinforce that these are not considered block grants.
It's really important that NOAA and our reviewers understand
what the funds are going to be used for, how they will be distributed.
And that those activities that they will undertake with those
grant funds are also eligible uses under this competition.
And that those funds and the activities
will be completed within the period of performance of the award.
For agriculture and
aquaculture activities,
we need to make sure that they are primarily intended to reduce risk.
We encourage co-benefits and we want to see co-benefits.
But the investment in agricultural and aquaculture
activities should the oriented towards risk reduction.
For our resilience hubs, we're requiring
funding for resilience hubs to go towards hubs at existing facilities.
We’re not able to fund the construction of new facilities.
So funding can be used for operating costs
and it can be used for retrofit of those facilities.
But those facilities must provide public access
and they must be under...
they must have a lease for the entire period of performance
and for the planned life of that resilience hub.
For relocation, so we're not able to fund
actual relocation of structures
so we can fund the acquisition of developed land.
As I mentioned, we will not fund the demolition of those structures,
but we will fund the restoration of ecosystem services.
But we will not fund the acquisition of new land
unless that new land is going to be held in conservation,
which means that we're not able to purchase land
that will be redeveloped for another use that's not conservation.
And then lastly, a couple of things on
meeting costs.
So we understand coordination and collaboration requires lots of meetings.
And so one of the things we wanted to flag are dependent care expenses,
if dependent care expenses are requested, it's important
that there's a good description of why those are essential
to the successful completion of that activity.
And the same with a stipend.
We are really advocates
for ensuring that compensation and engagement and where
we're expecting to see requests for stipends.
But it's really important that the reviewer and NOAA understand
specifically what the stipend is for and that it's directly
in support of the activities within the application.
So those are all the activities
that we saw that we wanted to kind of flag for all of you.
If you have additional questions on any of those, please let us know.
So I wanted to touch base
on our systems that will be using for the competition.
First is Grants.gov, this is where you will apply for grants to NOAA.
This is a common platform.
Many of you may have already gone there
to review the notice of funding opportunity.
If you go to the
there's a tab within Grants.gov that I think it says package.
You can see the entire grants package and you're able to preview that package
and you can see all the specific forms and places
that you would be attaching those five attachments that I spoke to.
SAM.gov.
SAM is the system for award management and this is the official website
to register to do business with the US government.
So every entity that we're going to be able to work with
has to be registered through SAM, and this registration
process can take some time, upwards of several weeks.
So we're encouraging all applicants that do not have a SAM.gov
to please register now.
And then the last
system I want to mention is ERA
or the Electronic Research Administration.
This is a system that is not new to the federal government, but it's new to
NOAA This will be replacing our grants online system.
For those of you that may have some familiarity
with NOAA grants and
this is a system that's been in use, I know
within the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation
and several other federal agencies.
This, the ERA is the system
that will allow you to manage your award once it's made.
But we also need to make sure that our applicants are registered
with the ERA so they can accept those awards.
So very important to go ahead and register to ERA.
So just some final thoughts.
I've already gotten some questions from some applicants and appreciate
you reaching out as always.
We anticipate
that the activities and partners will differ
from what you submitted to what you submit as your application.
And that's okay.
You don't need to flag for us what's changed.
We anticipate that,
you know, new partners may come on.
Partners may come off.
New activities may be incorporated.
And that's completely fine.
As I mentioned, really important to register now
with those systems and to make sure that you have the right credentials.
The last thing I want to say is the plan
to submit your application early.
There will undoubtedly be delays.
Some of them may be unanticipated.
And we really encourage applicants to submit early as much as a week early
to ensure that you have sufficient time
and are not impacted by a delay.
Unfortunately, if you submit an application late,
we are not able to review it.
So please plan to submit your applications early.
In regards to
communications with the program team,
we're going to continue to communicate with you
all through email when we have new program announcements.
If there are additional points of contact from your project team that need
to receive those program communications directly,
please let us know.
You can send us an email at Also, for those of you that have already requested
meetings to talk about some of the issues
or comments that reviewers raise,
we're happy to do those
and we will be after today
starting to reply and schedule those in the order they were received.
So if you do foresee a need to
talk with us about your project or about any of the comments
that reviewers provided, please send us an email
to ResilienceChallenge@noaa.gov and we'll get something on the calendars.
Also, we
just wanted to mention that we may be doing some office hours
similar to the way we did during the Letter of Intent phase, where
we'll make ourselves available for open dialog and conversation with applicants.
Those have not been scheduled yet
and will be kind of scheduled on an as needed basis.
If we think there's a real need to do that.
And I think that is all I had today.
So I think I'll turn it over to the moderators.
Thanks so much, Adam.
Thanks for all that information.
And thanks to the participants for all your questions.
We will get to those as we can at the end.
In the meantime,
before we move on to hear a little more about technical assistance,
we wanted to get some information from you.
I think this will help us to better
prepare for the needs of our applicants.
And so if you're new to Google meet,
if you could go to the right hand bottom corner of your screen,
your Google meet window, and there's a triangle square circle.
If you click on that and then click on polls,
you will see these questions launched.
You will also see how folks are voting and what their responses to these are.
So the first question is,
what is your level of experience applying for federal grants?
Is it your first time?
Have you done it a few times or many times?
And it looks like a lot of the votes are coming back across the board pretty even.
And then the
second question is, do you have experience using the Electronic
Research Administration or ERA for federal grants?
It looks like we have a handful that say yes and a big group that say no.
So one of the reasons is to help us prepare.
In asking you these questions, but also we wanted to make sure
to point out that joining these systems and signing up for them,
if you haven't ever applied for a federal grant,
can take some time, can take up to a couple of months.
So we just wanted to reiterate and Adam already mentioned this
in his talking points that you want to
register early and get into the system
so that you aren't waiting, sitting around and waiting on that piece of the pie.
So the next portion of our webinar is going to focus
on our technical assistance that we have available to applicants.
We’ll be offering technical assistance both during the process of developing
your proposals and then also providing tech assistance after the awards are made.
So Becky Lunde, who is also with the NOAA Office for Coastal Management,
and is the technical assistance lead
for the competition is going to share more information with us.
Becky.
Thank you, Margaret.
And hi, everybody.
It's so nice to have so many of you here today live.
So thank you for joining and congratulations again
on being selected to submit the full proposal.
I think getting here is a real achievement already.
So congrats again.
I'd like to start by defining
what we mean by technical assistance for the challenge.
It is the customized support that will be provided
both to applicants during the application process
and to those that ultimately receive funding.
And it's targeted to help them to help you achieve your project goals.
The support that NOAA can provide during the application period right now
through the February 13 deadline is outlined on the technical assistance
Web page, and you'll see that link come up in the chat soon
if you'll please visit that page.
You can reach out with any questions about the kinds of assistance
that you can receive right now during this application process.
And we've also set up additional proposal development support
that you're going to hear about in just a few minutes from our next speaker.
But I'm going to focus right now
on the technical assistance for funded projects.
That’s the assistance that will be provided
during project implementation after the grants are awarded.
And we're talking about that today
so that you can consider including it in your proposal.
This support refers to the expertise, the services, the products
that would be provided directly by the Office
for Coastal Management Staff or by other offices
and assistance that we are hoping to provide
through establishing other mechanisms that will help us to provide
some of the support that goes beyond our current capacity and capabilities.
So the inclusion of technical assistance
from NOAA in your proposal, I must emphasize, is optional.
Technical assistance needs will not be a part of the evaluation criteria.
It will not be scored.
It is helpful for NOAA's planning purposes
and will provide a really important basis for the conversations that will be had
during the negotiation period if your proposal is successful.
So therefore, we really encourage you to consider including it.
There are some really valuable services
available that could help you
attain from your project or collaborative goals
that could support the program's priorities and relieve
or reduce, perhaps in some cases, pieces of your budget.
So first, let's talk about the kinds of support
that is available, and then I'll turn to
how to include it in your proposal.
So these are very generally
the kinds of support that's available.
And I’m going to pause so you can read these four bullets.
I'm going to touch briefly on each one of these to give you some examples.
Direct support related to a specific needs,
grant recipients can access the breadth of subject matter, expertise and resources
across NOAA from interpreting flood models
to risk communication best practices, to
examining natural infrastructure and other adaptation strategies and so on.
But I want to specifically highlight a mechanism that's available
for geospatial data and services.
Many folks may not be aware of this
or might be confused by a mention of this in the notice of funding opportunity.
So let's talk about it for a moment.
If you plan to acquire
geospatial data or services as part of your proposed work,
NOAA can offer the use of our Coastal
Geospatial Services contract.
This would be for things like, for example,
the collection of remotely sensed data.
So you need to collect elevation.
Data services could be a quality assurance quality control.
A QA/QC of existing data, it could be modeling a data analysis.
That's just some examples of what I mean when I say geospatial data for services.
And for those activities, we strongly encourage the use of this contract.
It is an efficient way to acquire these services.
It eliminates the need for you
to go through your own separate contracting processes.
It's already set up for use
and we can provide guidance and
the critical expertise that's listed here on this slide
because we have extensive experience with this.
So if you do choose to use this contract
mechanism or investigate using this mechanism,
if you could review page 31 of the NOFO, the notice,
the funding opportunity, it's also in the frequently asked questions document.
Right now it's question 118.
There you'll find an outline of what should be included in the proposal
so that we can prepare to address your need.
Okay, Onward.
Workforce Development Assistance.
This can be thought of as really
supporting the competition's priority of enduring capacity in some ways.
So NOAA and the Office for Coastal Management offer training courses.
These courses draw on the vast experience that we have training
coastal professionals
and the courses focus on job skills and topics for resilience.
On the Digital Coast Academy
and thank you for putting that link in the chat.
You can check out the training that's described there to see what's
currently available and what might be able to be tailored for you.
And side note,
for areas that are beyond our government expertise, our Office
for Coastal Management expertise or abilities
for training, we will be investigating some non-government training providers
so you could let us know other kinds of training that you'd be interested in
to help support your proposed work.
That's a side note.
We are also exploring a possible fellowship
program for interested collaboratives that could host a fellow
that would be based with the grant recipient or partner
and would work under their leadership to support the efforts on the ground.
So these would not be NOAA staff,
but a place based fellow that's working for the host collaborative.
So that's something to think about as well.
Assistance to convene partners and community members
in effective ways is available through some resources
like our meeting engagement tools and facilitation training, and we can help
provide ideas for community engagement in various stages of adaptation efforts.
I will also note that we will have two upcoming webinars
in our series that will focus on meaningful engagement,
so they'll be a little bit more on that before we adjourn today
and we will provide
avenues for sharing your approaches and lessons learned.
So the goals here are to help the grant recipients
find support and ideas from others and expand the impact
of these investments beyond the individual awards.
So to that end, NOAA is going to convene a series of national events together,
all of the funded grant recipients together,
and we're interested in supporting regional peer to peer sharing events
that could also engage non-grant recipients.
So for these, NOAA will provide
the planning and programmatic support and consultation support for these events.
But the travel would be a part of the Grant award
to get one or two or however many project representatives there.
So note that in your budget proposal,
the NOFO on page 32 suggests factoring in travel
costs for travel to these events during the period of performance.
So I just wanted to spend a moment.
So you are understanding what these events are.
Again, it will help us to
plan ahead for these services if we know what you need.
So including the anticipated technical assistance
in your proposal is optional, but if you do choose to do so,
it will be in a section at the end of the project narrative.
It does not count toward the 25 page planning.
I'm going to say that one more time.
If you decide to include your technical assistance needs,
it would be at the very end of the project narrative
and it does not count towards the 25 page limit.
So if you refer to page four of the application guidance document
that Adam talked about, that's available at the bottom of the Challenge website.
It outlines that you could include a brief description of the technical assistance
if you are able to articulate the specific topical expertise needed.
That's great.
If you know the NOAA offices or programs, please call those out as well.
If you know that you need to
or would like to connect with support from the National Sea Grant Office
State Sea Grant offices from the NOAA Restoration Center, or maybe
a regional climate adaptation program funded by the Climate Program
Office, please, by all means provide us with that information.
And if you don't know or you're not even familiar
with the folks that I just mentioned, that is perfectly okay.
So what happens next?
This is my last slide before I hand you back to Margaret.
How will the technical assistance
delivery be confirmed or decided?
Well, whether or not it's included in your proposal,
NOAA will be working with the successful applicants to explore the types
of technical assistance that we may provide for project implementation.
We will be having those conversations and what the support will look like
for each project will be firmed up as part of those award negotiations.
Recall those are happening in the late spring, early summer May to June 2024.
That's the period of discussions with final successful applicants
whose projects are recommended
for funding or all the details are finalized for the award.
Someone in a chat had asked earlier, so
be assured
that what you might decide to include in your proposal related to technical
assistance is really just a starting point for those conversations
that will take place if your proposal is, your application
is selected for funding.
On that note,
I'm going to hand you back to Margaret to hear a little bit more
about the other support that you can request during the proposal development.
Back over to you. Great.
Thank you so much, Becky, for sharing some of that information with us.
So I want to introduce Sarah Pautzke to talk a little bit more
about the technical assistance
that we are planning to offer during the application process.
Sarah is serving as the lead on the connecting our subject
matter experts with applicants requesting this one on one technical assistance.
So she will talk a little bit
about how to request that assistance and the types of things that can include.
Okay, Sarah.
Thanks so much, Margaret.
It's a pleasure talking to all of you.
We will be providing
assistance during
the your application process.
So technical assistance during the application
period will require you to fill out a form that looks like what you see here.
You can find the link on the CRRC website
and the technical assistance website.
So we will then provide ask you fill this out
one on one assistance to applicants during the application period.
It will be going through me.
I will be setting up the meetings between you and one of our SMEs
and support is available all the applicants.
And like I said, you can request the support via
the form on the tech assist website.
Services can include
the proposal development language.
So navigating a federal government grant system and developing your timelines.
The timelines for actually writing your proposal as well as the timelines
for afterwards for project implementation.
We can also assist develop your budget narratives
and completing the budget forms.
We can review your draft proposals and then consultant areas for improvement.
We also can inform proposal ideas or content through subject matter,
expertise on climate resilience, nature based solutions, and geospatial data
and tools.
What we are not doing, though, is writing your proposals for you.
So please come to us with questions and stuff that is already written.
And with
that, for more support, I'm going to pass it back to Margaret.
Thank you, everybody. All right.
Thank you so much, Sarah, and thank you for the link
to that form which you guys can find in the chat.
So before we go into questions, I did want to mention
I mentioned in the beginning this was just the first in a series of webinars
that we're planning to offer to the competition applicants.
On this slide, you can see some of the other topics that we're planning to cover.
So next week, already on October 30th, we are going
to offer a webinar on how to develop a compelling grant proposal.
Then the following week, on November 6th,
we are going to have a webinar on meaningful community engagement
just part one.
Other topics that we will announce dates on soon
will be a part two to the meaningful community engagement webinar,
a webinar on monitoring and measuring performance,
and then webinars on diving into the digital coast,
which is where some of the technical tools that OCM, data
tools, training and other resources that OCM provides can be accessed.
So before we go into
Question too we had a couple more polls questions for you guys.
So if you weren't here during the last poll session, if you could click on this
Triangle Square circle in the bottom right hand corner of your screen,
scroll down to poll question and three and four and answer those for us.
The first is: We'll be providing this one on one technical assistance
during the proposal period.
Are you planning to request this assistance so you can say yes?
No, or not sure.
And then we'd love your feedback on whether this webinar
was a good use of your time.
So that’s poll question number four.
And then in the chat, where you've been putting your questions,
could you please also list anything you might want to hear more about from us?
So other topics you'd like additional information on.
And we will see what types of assets, what resources we might be able to provide to
applicants.
Okay, So one last time for more support.
While you guys are working on putting in some more ideas of technical resources,
these have been mentioned many times on the webinar,
but just wanted to reiterate and put these in the chat again so
you can learn more about all the technical assistance that we have available
on our technical assistance website, which Shannon just added into the chat
to request one on one technical assistance during the application period.
There's a form that you can fill out
and Sarah can connect you with a subject matter expert.
And then NOAA also has a general email that a couple of our speakers
have mentioned ResilienceChallenge@noaa.gov
for any questions that you have and want to reach out to others about.
Okay,
So thank you so much for your participation today.
I am going to read off some of our questions from the chat
to our presenters and they can decide
who would best be equipped to answer.
So one of the questions was what was the negotiation
process include?
Adam, do you want to take that one?
Yeah, I'm happy to take that one. Margaret.
So the negotiation process may include
the terms of our technical assistance that we will provide as part of the award.
It may also require...
it may also involve us
adjusting funding levels
for particular activities based on the overall portfolio.
There is a possibility that we may not
have enough funding to fund every single activity
at the requested level, so we may need to negotiate certain activities
and then just going through and making sure
that the general terms of the agreement are
all agreeable to both
the applicant and NOAA. Okay.
All right. Great. Thanks so much, Adam.
So will NOAA pay for demolition of structures for the purpose of conservation
and public benefit on acquired lands during the performance
period?
I think generally
the answer would be no, but it's possible.
I think it would be important for an applicant who's considering
proposing that to reach out to us and help us understand the context
so that we could help them to provide the information
that NOAA would need and the reviewers would need to be able to evaluate it.
So I think the question there is, it depends.
Okay.
And folks can reach out with specific questions one on one to us also.
Thank you, Adam.
So do pass through grants or mini grants need to be competitive
or can they be directed or both?
They can be both.
If they are noncompetitive, though, we need to understand
the justification for
going directly to that one entity.
So I think it's commonly referred to as a sole source certification,
but we would need to ensure that
those funds are being sub awarded
and consistent with the kind of
any regulations associated with that entity.
So if we're passing funds through a county, that county needs
to ensure that that those mini grants comply with its procurement
in addition to NOAA's procurement.
Thank you.
Is part of a stormwater project that has a gray component,
but overall work is green.
Would it be eligible?
One more time.
Margaret
is part of the stormwater project
that has a gray component, but overall the work is green.
Be eligible?
Yes, absolutely.
So I think context is really important for our viewers and for NOAA.
This is not a traditional stormwater infrastructure fund.
Those funds are available from other federal agencies and state governments.
So I think what is...
will be helpful for NOAA and our reviewers is to understand the context around that
investing and why it
both provides that risk reduction benefit that we're looking for.
But those additional co-benefits that are important to NOAA. So
by all means, you know, gray or traditional
construction techniques are eligible, but they need to be set
in a broader context that relates to NOAA's mission
and is different from other sources
of funding for stormwater improvement.
Thank you.
Here's one about letters of support.
Can you say a little bit more about the letters of support?
What kind of support?
And from what kind of partners are relevant for this process?
How will those be evaluated in the overall scoring?
So there is a description, a detailed description
within the application guidance on letters of support.
I think we are looking for general letters of support from stakeholders
that are likely to benefit from the investments made through the grant.
I think in addition,
we're interested in letters of collaboration.
Those entities that will serve as collaborators
or more substantive partners in the project.
We want to know what it means to them to be
a collaborator and where they see value
for their constituencies as well.
I think also we've suggested that
a letter of commitment by all of the...
one letter of commitment by all of the
collaborators
is also a great way to show reviewers how committed
each of these partners are to successful implementation of the award.
Okay, great advice.
Thank you.
And this one's about the grants.
Do all subcontracting organizations
need to register for Grants.gov, SAM, etc.
So the the grants online pieces.
The only sub awardees that the question. Yes.
Yeah.
Sub awardees only need to register for SAM.gov.
They will not be submitting the application, which is where for Grants.gov
and they would not be managing the award which would be
in through ERA. Right.
Here's another.
Will applicants receive individual feedback regarding
any activities of concern included within the LOI?
Or is the attachment and table the only information provided?
That's a great question.
I would encourage anyone
that thinks they may have an activity of concern
to reach out to us and request
a time to meet and discuss those concerns or those activities.
You know, we're not...
We need to make sure that we maintain a very level playing field.
And so we don't want to be we want to identify
all these different types of activities,
but we're leaving it to our applicant to consider
if any of those are potentially within their own letters of intent
and then to take the step to reach out to us.
So we will set up times to meet and talk about those activities.
And at that time we can also talk about technical assistance opportunities.
We can also talk about any of the reviewer feedback that you got
and other
topics that you may
also be interested in talking about.
We're not able to provide specific information about,
you know, scores or anything about the reviewers
or the selection process for letters of intent.
We're only orienting our conversations
towards the application.
So are the required forms only
for construction activities?
No, the SF-424 is
the actual application form for funding.
So that does required for no matter what your activities are
and the SF-424-A is required for non construction activities.
That's where you include your budget information
for non construction activities.
That would be your personnel meeting costs, you know,
indirect costs, travel, that sort of stuff.
And then your SF-424-C would be
where you would include budget information for construction activities.
Right.
So this will be a good question for everyone to know the answer to will
NOAA publish a list of questions and answers received
so the applicant can see the responses in writing. Yes.
So we have an extensive FAQ that we will be updating after our webinar today
to make sure that all applicants have access to the same information.
And so for any of the questions that we did not get to today,
I know there will be many, we will either provide you a response
if it is maybe
a specific circumstance that only is relevant to you,
we're going to probably encourage you
to have a meeting with us to discuss that situation.
Or otherwise, we'll update our FAQ and then notify
everyone when we've got a new version available on our website.
Okay. Thank you, Adam.
I think we're getting into
some of the ones for Becky regarding technical assistance.
So, Becky, I have a question for you.
Who funds the fellows?
Is it the host institution or the grantee?
That's great question.
So we are exploring setting up this fellowship program
in a way that would provide a fellow to the hosts at no cost.
So the host organization would need to provide daily oversight, right?
Some kind of structure for providing mentorship.
And, you know, the daily work management for the fellow
that could be a project partner that's a part of the grant.
It could be the grant recipient themselves.
It could be someone that's a part
of the regional collaborative, but that needs to be identified
and then potentially also a space to work, right?
So unless the fellow is going to be fully remote,
and there's some advantages and disadvantages to that.
But depending on what that would look like for each host,
that might be another piece that would need to be provided.
But otherwise the idea right now is that the fellow costs would be covered.
Thank you.
So if folks are interested in hosting a fellow,
how would they reflect that in their application?
And then would anyone who wants a fellow be awarded one or do we need
contingencies for personnel in our budgets in case the fellowship
program falls through?
Yeah, these are great questions
and I'm glad that folks are interested in the fellow program concepts.
If you're interested in hosting a fellow,
please mention that desire in your optional technical assistance section,
along with any details that you have in mind for the focus
of their work.
At this point in our planning and exploration
and setting up this fellowship program, we
anticipate that
fellows would primarily support the track one grants.
We sort of see that as a space where a fellow would be most needed.
But if track two applicants are interested,
we do want to know that in case they're able to provide that kind of support.
Right now, as you can imagine, it's a bit of a black box, right?
We don't know how many of you all will be interested in having a fellow.
And so knowing how many will be helpful for our planning, we cannot at this moment
guarantee a fellow for all because we don't know the demand.
And that's a good question about the contingencies.
So many to get back on that one.
Hey great. Yeah. Thank you.
So another question about technical assistance.
Should the use of NOAA a technical assistant be budget neutral
or if we want to write it in can we adjust the budget to reflect
possible additional workload?
Yes.
Aiming for that technical assistance to be budget neutral is the goal.
This is assistance that we will provide to the grant recipients.
If there are pieces written into the budget.
Right.
Whether it's you know,
I'm just spitballing, but like if there is a contract
for training or something related to workload on
getting specific assistance about adaptation strategies,
we can adjust all of that during the award negotiation.
If there are pieces that NOAA can't sees in the Grant award and can provide.
So we can do that adjustment during the negotiation period.
Great.
Thank you.
Let's see if we have any others.
It looks like we have one for Adam.
Are we expected to stay within the annual budget parameters
indicated in our LOI?
I think stay is what was meant.
Are we expected to stay within the annual budget parameters indicated in our LOI?
Margaret, I think I need that one more time.
Okay. Sure.
Are we expected to stay within the annual budget
parameters that we indicated in our LOI?
No, you're not.
We anticipate there will be additional information
that you uncover through the development of your application.
So you have the flexibility to adjust.
We obviously don't expect to see like dramatic
changes entirely new projects
because
you know that obviously is not what our reviewers provided
you feedback on, but absolutely
there's latitude to adjust
allocations of funding to adjust activities.
And even in some cases, if
applicant, the lead entity
for the application needs to change,
we can accommodate that as well.
Great.
So a little bit of wiggle room.
I think this one may be more for Becky.
How many knowledge transfers slash lessons learned meetings do we anticipate?
Yeah,
the notice of funding opportunity section that I referenced
mentions planning for three events.
We would love to do an event annually,
but there's a lot of different ways that this could look.
There could be a national event every other year.
So that would be three for those folks that have a five year
period of performance.
And in between, we're able to schedule
regionally targeted events.
So there's just a number of ways that that could look
according to the NOFO, three rates.
Okay. Thank you.
And we're getting close to the top of the hour, so we'll take one
last question.
I think this is more for Adam.
When can we expect the updated evaluation criteria job aid be added?
Will there be a new NOFO or will this be separate?
Yeah, thanks for that clarification.
So we are not at this point, we have no intentions of changing
the evaluation criteria, evaluation criteria that are in the notice of funding
opportunity are currently the evaluation criteria
that we anticipate using to review applications.
So the job aid will take the same words
and provide it in an easier to read format that is not with
you know, that is not in the notice of funding opportunity.
So I think we'll have two separate job aids, one for track one,
one for track two, and it'll be much easier to read
and use alongside your application
than relying on what's in the notice of funding opportunity.
Great.
Thank you.
Okay.
So I think I know we didn't get a chance to answer all the questions,
but like we mentioned,
we will be back in touch with applicants to provide these answers.
Always feel free to reach out to us at the provided email address
If you have any specific questions that may be more specific to your project.
And thanks for your participation today, we will be sending out notifications
as we have more resources available
and you can always find them on our technical assistance website
which we provided the link for several times in the chat.
Thank you for coming today and I appreciate your support.