morning everybody and welcome to this week's AFN navigator program and where AML and AFN work together collaborate on providing resources related to ARPA and Cares Act. All the federal relief programs that have been put in place over the last year or so, an hour we've got this next round of infrastructure funding potentially to be thinking about so there's a lot out there to be aware of, but we're glad to have you join us for this navigator program. And today we're gonna focus on grant writing basics. And talk a little bit about what goes into the grants that are maybe out there, how to think about them, how to plan for them how to access information, that's available. And I should also recognize, I want to welcome everybody, I know that we had a shift in time from noon to 11am. So hopefully, that helps. And these sessions are recorded and materials and everything will get out afterward to everyone who might be interested. It's also Veterans Day, so Happy Veterans Day to everyone who's served and has had family members who have served. Thanks for joining us on on this day. Sarah, before we get going anything you want to add from your side,
but thank you for hosting this and if you if you can and you're not speaking it's it's and you're able to keep your camera off. It's just It helps with the bandwidth and then this is being recorded. So you can it can be utilized for later and it'll be saved on the AFN webpage on the calendar. You can go to this event and click on it and you'll be able to see that see the recording and any materials and if you have any questions feel free to either raise your hand via the the hand signal or included in the chat but
again, I
reiterate
Neil's his introduction and thank you for being here on Veterans Day.
Thanks, sir. And thanks again to AFN for organizing this. So today we have a couple folks joining us who work closely with with AML on on the ARPA process and implementation. Don Wesley is here from from our staff and Don is responsible for a lot of the content that's at Alaska arpa.org. So I think maybe I'll ask her to kind of run through what's at Alaska arpa.org. What's on that kind of central clearinghouse of grant information, how she approaches, putting grants up there where you can find them and anything more you can find you should know about the process to be able to do that data. And then from there, we'll go to Joan Herman, who's a partner of ours and we're excited to talk a little bit about a grant writing support center that will be useful for everyone on the call and tribes around Alaska. So, Dan, why don't I invite you in? Are you able to share your screen or do you need powers? Also, you're on mute. So
everybody, so I'm pretty sure I am. I'm just gonna make sure I'm pulling them right one. So what I'm gonna share is out the ARPA site, let's see if I make sure I'm sharing the right one. Although I'm showing the one where I make the changes, so it's okay. Right. Okay. All right. So this is our ARPA site. Basically, we have a section for grant opportunities, which we go in and update I look at every single day opportunities I go on grants.gov. I go to USDA website and look. I also just look randomly in new sites because sometimes they'll put me to different directions that are not listed. And we also have this right here is for everybody these grants here, under the ARPA recipients, and I'm just going to move it over. I know that tribes tab and these are different recipients. There are some grants on the bottom of this page that are strictly tribal entities that are not open for just cities. These are just tribal entities down here. And we do put those on here also. There are some we put some news information on here. Within this, this tableau so there's information. There's information for some individuals that relates to ARPA and there's some stuff about the child tax credits. Rent relief, was like ahfc is just doing a phenomenal job with rent relief here. And under resources, we try and put news, as much news as possible over here and yesterday. I noticed there was a big to do about the Coronavirus related relief when it comes to retirement and our IRAs which again, I'm straying a little bit from grants, but I just wanted to talk about the webpage a little bit. There's a lot of information on there. On the grants, we also have a grant writing tools page that lists some people who could possibly be grant writers that could be hired for con contract and those are on here. And then I think Neil's you wanted me to go and show you kind of what I do when I go look for a grant. So I'm going to bounce my screen over it and I'm going to go to grants.gov and kind of go through that. See if I can do that here. So what I do is I go to Search Grants. And I started looking through here, like an example I would look at this one because it says COVID vaccine, I may go in here and
check to see your ARPA page. Oh, okay, hold
on. Sorry. I thought if I pulled it over, it would actually change. Sorry about that.
There we go.
So you're through the grants.gov page now.
Yep. Okay.
Yeah, I go through when I look here, for anything Mrs. Arba This one says COVID night 19 vaccine I made going and look at this one. Going through I check whether or not it's forecasted or posted. If it's forecasted and it's something that's as ARPANET going and look at it. I may put it in my calendar, because it says forecasted for a month out and then put in my calendar to go back and look at it. And what I'm going to do actually is I'm going to pull up one that I have listed already, give me just a second.
I'm
looking at one that I'm not familiar with. This one is this one. So an example this one right here. When I pulled this one up, and whether or not I decided, if I'm going to list this on a web page obviously our web page we have who are audiences so one of the things I go is trying to see who is eligible for this grant and this one looking at it. We've got tribal we've got state or city government. This one the economic and infrastructure development activities are some private nonprofit. So I'm like, Okay, this is what I want to go look at and get more information on. So then what I do is go over to Well, let me go back over here one more time. I check the updated the Posted Date, and then it'll usually will show if there's a deadline, like this one doesn't have a deadline. Usually there'll be a closing a closing date, or the date it opens and the closing date, which is important. And it'll tell me that's a word sealing amount. It'll take the total amount of the funding, which we usually put on our web page. If that information is not here, when you go to the related documents, I go over to the NOFO which is notice notification of funding. Did it stay on the screen when I opened it?
We see the number. Okay.
All right. So this is where we go back down. You start searching for the information that's important on this screen. And whether or not this is something that we want. We want to know if there was a match, we want to know whether or not the entity that's going to apply for this grant has to have unrestricted funds and whether or not they can apply for this and if they have to have their own funds. And so if you scroll down a lot of times it'll talk about match. And on this one there's funding restrictions cost sharing or match because somebody that doesn't have any money to match, they're going to want apply for something as a match. And this one says 100% where the project merits and so we go check at the matching encourages cautions, but it's not required. And some of the other things we're going to look at is what are the eligible expenditures? What's the project? So we go down here we talked about the eligible applicants already, the description of what it does, and we talked about the dates. There's the overview of the program information, what kind of funding is available? We talked about cost sharing the dates, the restrictions. Basically, just go in and I'm gonna try and my screen one more time. Give me just a second. I want to go back to our page. To save to stop, share and come back give me just a second when we have one of the grants,
or one of these,
try and put in the basic information I'm telling you to look at and then NOFO like who's the granting agency? What's the appropriation amount? This one says no match. This was when it was announced. When's the closing? We try and put the NOFO in here. If if they do note on there who you can talk to for questions, and the purpose of the grant eligible expenditures eligible applicants. Some of these are this one is pretty basic. When you look at a USDA grant they typically give us a lot more information. And they tell you about going directly to the USDA website. There's a lot more information there. One caveat to the USDA is that you want to make sure that you go to the Alaska USDA website not just to the USDA website itself, because a lot of times Alaska has their own rules for their grants. And this one does the same thing. You know, it talks about the eligible expenditures, eligible applicants and it will send you to the help page but when you're deciding on what grants you want to apply for you really want to go through that NOFO this one is different how they're doing it. USDA is just different they have a have you go and apply you still apply through grants.gov. But the documentation for how you apply comes off of the USDA. Or the other thing that you don't see on here, which is a little harder is a lot of times you won't get a NOFO which I just showed you with the other item, you'll get a federal registry, which is a lot harder to read, but it basically has the same information as a NOFO. And certain agencies choose to use a federal agency or federal registry versus a NOFO. I have no did you have any questions?
Oh, that's helpful. Dan. Thanks. And, and I imagine that a lot of folks are used to navigating some of that process already. But this is wanted to be sure that so you have some sense of what goes off on to the Alaska arpa.org site, kind of the process that we go through to identify opportunities and bring information onto the site. And and hopefully what you see on the site when you click through to a program is content that is you know, specific and helpful to you to help you evaluate whether it's a an opportunity you want to pursue or not. And it's true that with ARPA and Cares Act, and now this infrastructure package, there are billions of dollars flowing into Alaska and through and from federal agencies. And it's going to be overwhelming. One to figure out all the different opportunities and whether they are even applicable to you. But also your own capacity. You should be thinking about what capacity yes, we've got lots of needs. Yes, we have lots of projects or potential projects, but what's our capacity to really respond to a grant competition in a way that's meaningful and has some probability of success. And if your capacity I think we talked about this last week in terms of partnerships, but if you don't have a lot of capacity, then and there's still something that's maybe of interest and think about who are partners you could bring into a process to help you out. I want to shift gears and ask John Herman with Alaska project solutions to join us I know Joan has lots of experience working through all of this process. And John, could you kind of give us a snapshot of what should tribes or other organizations be thinking about in in thinking about a grant writing or that potential? What should we know?
There? Well, just a little quick intro. I have been working in grant writing since well, almost 25 years. So a long, long time and I just came on that skill by accident, as I think every single person on this call probably has also because there's no real university that teaches grant writing as a as a, you know, as a degree, so I just got it, just working with tribes working with municipalities in rural Alaska. And over the last 25 years, we've done about 120 million in successful grants with about a 95% success rate. So we're really excited about that. We like to sort of brag but not really because we just feel like like we're doing what we're being paid to do and and we're happy for everyone who gets those grants because they need them so badly. rural Alaska is my exclusive market in terms of where I work. And I work with both the tribes the some tribal nonprofits, very few, but some and also the tribal, the community municipalities. And so Nels called me, I don't know a couple months ago, maybe and we talked a little bit about providing a tool or a way that people could find more information about getting ready to to submit their grant applications. And so I I really like to go through this process. With folks because it builds a really strong rapport and relationship with people who are needing help. And basically what we do is we talk about the need, we talk about why the need is there, what caused the need, what causes the need, and then we talk about a lot about good housekeeping in terms of financial management for the for the applicant, whether it be the municipality or the tribe, and we talk about resources both human resources, financial resources, and partnership resources because partners can be a really strong asset to your grant application. As Don was just saying, bringing in that match money can be really difficult and a very big challenge. If you don't have the money in your own bank account, or you can partner with another entity in your community, or even another grant to bring in match funds. So we strategize on how you can use match to make your project be able to be able to apply it for that particular grant. If you don't have that cash in the bank. We talked a lot about the different types of of partnerships that that they would have and how good the relationships are for those partnerships. Because we really want strong partnerships for grant applications.
It's really important that when you get ready for a grant application, you know who's going to work on it. You know who the people are, and you know what their ability capacity is to work on a grant grant application. And so, um, finding the right people who are available to work with the grant writer, whoever that may be, is is really key to making that grant application. Go all the whole way through. And that means from the start of the vision, to the writing of the grant to the submission of the grant. So those are three really key things that that have to be accomplished in a grant writing process. And I heard many horror stories about somebody who says, I got to the part where I had to submit it on grants.gov. And I didn't even know how to do that. They just thought it was an email to somebody or didn't realize how how complex grants.gov is and how important it is to have a current registration with sam.gov. So those are two registration processes that we go through in the very, very beginning before we ever do anything else. We talk about about sam.gov which is really critical for all applicants because that has to be an active account. Otherwise sam.gov talks to grants.gov and when you go to register on grants.gov If your sam.gov is inactive and hasn't been updated to exactly match the information in grants.gov, you will not be able to submit your grant. And how frustrating that is is at the last minute after all the work you've done and you go to submit your grant and it says here, you're not updated in the SAM that go. So that's a nightmare. Nobody wants to have to experience so really stressing that it's it's important to have your grant person registered in grants.gov and your agency registered in grants.gov and your sam.gov so that everything flows when it's time to submit it. There are some super good videos on grants.gov on how to do that. You can you can always watch them at your leisure and go through the process. And there's just some really good hands on training that you can get that all figured out. And there are a lot of resources out there to help you with sam.gov as well as sam.gov You can call them they'll help you through as well. It's a little trickier than it used to be because the security level on it is extremely high. So just try to remember that those are some things you have to do right in the very beginning. of your application. And never, never ever leave those for the last minute. You're going to want to know what all your financials are. You're going to want to know if you have what they call a federally negotiated indirect rate. That's really important. It's the difference it provides the difference between funding coming into the minutes valatie to pay for the administration and costs like like the light bill and the internet bill and the heat and also portion of your city managers city administrators that might be monitoring the project, um, it or if you're going to have to itemize all those things on your grant budget. So we talked through a lot of the that. And so then we we go through, as Don was saying going through the the narrative itself or going through the NOFO itself is really important. And I just want to add here. Sometimes they're called grant grant guidances. Sometimes they're called NOFA, which is known as a funding announcement. Some of them are notice a funding opportunity or NOFO. There you have all kinds of different names depending on the funding agency, but it's all the same thing. I call it an RFP, a request for proposal that covers it all. Because what they're doing is they're asking you the grant grantee or the applicant to submit your proposal to that agency according to the guidance that they've laid out for you. By the way I before I forget I want to say Don i I see that you have a have a big hand in that ARPA website. I can't compliment you more. It's it's an amazing website. The website, the navigator website on AFN is amazing. I've spent quite a bit of time in those websites and they're really well done really helpful. So I just wanted to remember to tell you that so so Niels, do you want me to talk a little bit about the hotline at this point?
Let's get there in a little bit, but I do what are I guess, do you mind just kind of a back and forth q&a? Discussion. And for folks who have joined us feel free to put questions in the chat bar, and also ask questions. I guess, John, I mean, you talked about a 95% success rate. I imagine that a lot of that's because of all the pre work involved right making sure right project right opportunity, right background and all this stuff. Can you talk a little bit about how to line those things up?
Well, I think one of the things I wish I would have put this on my computer, I could have shared it but hold it up. So you can see it. At least see the graphic. You see that? There's a graphic and all the words are backwards. And so I'm gonna just, I'm on today so I'm in a hotel room right now. Just got here before the conference. So anyway, the reason I show you that is because this is really the I think the answer to what you're asking is that a lot of people think that immediately you just take that NOFO and sit down and start answering the questions. But the reality of grant writing is that there is what we call the 8020 principle. And maybe some of you have seen that. You know where 80% of the people do or 20% of the people do 80% of the work and 20% of the people earn 80% of the money and it applies in many, many different steps of life and industries. And it's a commonly known principle, but it's the same for grant writing. And that is that 80% of the work has to be done before you can even sit down and write a grant application. That is all the research, finding the right fit for you finding making sure you're eligible to even apply for this grant. If you ever see a grant opportunity that's announced and it tells you the number of awards, estimated number of awards, and it says one or two. That means it's super competitive or they've already figured out who's going to get that grant. It's a real you really have to know how to read those little tiny things. If it says 80 That's really awesome because there's a good chance you can compete. But um, but the bottom line is the talking to the partners, the figuring out or your finances are the figuring out if you fit into that particular RFP all that research has to be done before you ever sit down and start writing the grant. And it's amazing how you'll come upon going through those processes alone. You'll come upon a moment where you say we can't do this grant. All of a sudden you realize this, this is not going to work. One of the huge things you have to do is show community support. You've got to get out there and and filter this through and with your community and find out if there be behind it. One of the worst mistakes anybody can ever do. In writing a grant for us a municipality or for a tribe is to just come up with an idea on their own and decide to submit a grant for it on their own with nobody else's input. It's just an it's just a Don't ever do that because these federal grants are all about community, that it's all about helping the community. So you really need to get the feedback and that takes time. That's community meetings, Zoom meetings, posting surveys, any of those kinds of things to get feedback and let people know what you have in mind. But then hear from them. Is this a real true priority for this community? does it really mean anything? Or do you want you want us to look for something else to put our energies into. So community input is really really important. And, and, you know, this means this means talking to your council members, your council, your city council, your tribal council, all of those folks and making sure that that everybody's on board, because you're going to need that as a grant writer, and then you gather all that up into one basket or folder, so to speak. And you sit down and you start writing your grant. And that's that's where it's all going to happen is after you've done all your work so at keep that in mind when you feel like Why haven't I even been able to sit down and write that grant yet? It's because you've got to get all the information. And then you can write that grant. Yeah. But that answer your question mills.
No, I does. I mean, I and I think you know, part of the question is, are part of the answer I was hoping for is it's a lot of work ahead of time, right and I think that's a good message to convey. What about I know that not everybody's going to have a grant writer on staff. Many might have done something like this in the past is there and so people reach out to a contractor who writes that grant for them. But it that also doesn't sound right. It's not? Is it? Is the grant, the contractor, grant writer, are they just going to do everything or how much is left for the tribe or the municipality to do things on their own? What does that relationship look like? I guess, because you can't just make up stuff right? So there's Yeah, what does that look like?
We actually have an acronym for that. It's called it MSU making stuff up, right? We don't do that. We joke about it though. Well, before I answer that question, I want to just I want to give you also something that was my what I call my million dollar advice. When I when I first was learning and didn't know a thing about a grant, you know, my teacher was from Dillingham and I was working in in elementary school. And he walked into my office and he flopped a great big, thick RFP on the desk and said I want you to do this. I said what is that? He said it's a grant. And I said, What's a grant? And here's what he said. Just read it and follow the directions. And I'm not kidding you. That is what has been my motto forever. In in learning how to write grants, does rolling up your sleeves, reading it, and following the directions and don't MSU anything else? But yes, there are a lot of different kinds of grant writers. Some grant writers will say give me your project. Tell me all your work plan. Tell me what you want to do and how much money you want to spend it. I will put it all into the format that the that the NOFA wants me to and I will make it look good and I will submit it. Some of them will only put it into the format send it back to the to the applicant and have them submitted. Some we'll start from a planning visioning, walking them through even changing some of that along the way to make sure it fits them the the actual application and and then write it, review it and submit it. So depending on what you've got it whoever you're working with, you really need to understand what their their skill set is, and what they are going to want to be able to perform for you and their price price ranges are all over the board in terms of grants. I think probably the biggest question that we get for that is do I do I pay you a percentage of the grant? Can I pay you after I get the grant awarded? Can I give you a percentage? I get that Oh,
right. The answer is no. The answer is
no nails. And the answer I give is actually that's against the law. Because the federal government is not allowed or you are not allowed to obligate federal money before it's been awarded. So that's just in case anybody wanted to ask that question.
No, it's a good question to get out of the way.
Yes, yes. Good. Yes.
Yeah. How, um, so we're, we're faced with all of these grant opportunities. Do you have any advice on how to prioritize or? I mean, do people call up a grant writer and say, Here's my project, find a grant for me out there. Do they kind of figure out what the grant is and then how should people think about everything that's out there and how they might respond?
You know, I like to personally I like to work with people both ways. If you if you have a grant already identified, because usually a grant will just land on your desk just either through an email or somebody will hand it to you like what happened to me. You just, it's going to come from lots of different sources, neighbors, friends, other tribes conferences. All of these kinds of things. So whoever comes up with the grant that they want to have researched, they can either research it and call me or the the grant writer or they can, you know, the grant writer can look through it and get back to them. That's that, that really, there's no rule or better way for that. It's however it works to come up with what it is that they need. And if it's a good fit, go for it, you know? So, yeah, it's
not a matter of kind of looking through all the grants and saying, Oh, I I like that grant that there's money there. Let's find a project right, you should have a need first is that
the need is critical. And I play this little game with folks and it annoys some quite a bit. But we do have a little fun with it. And it's a wide game. It's a I warn them and and I highly recommend this as a you know, sitting in your office sitting wherever you are in terms of in rural Alaska and saying, as a group, why do we need this? And then somebody will say, Well, we have a problem. And this is problem x. And I'll say why do you have that problem? Well, because we don't have this to do that. Or why not? Well, because we we it burned down or or we've just never built it or it's never been developed as a program. And I say why? And we do why until we get to the baseline of what that real problem is. And it is an amazing process because it must be a serious, real relevant need, or it will never be offended. And so sometimes that can get really emotional to do that process. But always it's something something that really needs to be done, because that's how you build the support for it when you find the real need. So yeah, it's it's not just going and looking for a grant. It's your sources that you've built are so helpful, because I always tell people when they go to grants.gov, it's like dry, like jumping into the ocean of grants. It's you can get lost so fast, just as you saw on the screen that Don brought up. And so if you don't know what the CFDA number is, if you don't know what the federal opportunity number is, it's really hard to find a program on other than the most currently posted a program or grant opportunity on grants.gov. So fortunately for Alaska, and there are some real common normal grants that circulate but with this ARPA money and all of the billions, as you mentioned earlier, that are floating around. It's overwhelming. It's like being fed with a firehose with these grants and trying to separate which one does what and which one is, is going to solve this problem and which one is going to require me to align with this topic or that topic? It is, it is a nightmare for grant writers as much as it is for people seeking the funds. It requires an enormous amount of research to make sure that those fits come together. So that's one of the reasons why I'm really appreciating the work you're doing. The work that AFM is doing putting those out in such a way that they're more focused on what Alaska's needs are, rather than going on to grants.gov and trying to just go through that millions of grants that are there that it's making. It's really very helpful. I've sent so many people to your site's
Oh, good. Yeah. Now I feel a little bit bad for Don, who I've sent out to search through grants.gov and
Oh, no, no, that was the perfect thing. Yeah, no, no, no, no, it's perfect. It's just that you can see how it can be. That's the place you need to go. And that overview is excellent. By the way, Don, but that is the place you ultimately have to go. But it's just hard to find the grants that you've put on your website. To just you know, filter through
so at this makes me I want to get to the hotline, but I remember your, your triangle earlier and in thinking about this universe, if the triangle is all the grants that are out there, there's ways to think about it in terms of narrowing your priorities, right where so that's the universe of all grants. And then there's these different layers of maybe at the top, it's ones that there's specific allocations with formula funds for tribes in Alaska and all you have to do is complete the paperwork and turn it in. Like it's already got your name on it. And there's certainly those I mean, there's two or three different ARPA specific funding pieces like that NTIA the tribal connectivity grants, those already have your name on it, all you have to do is complete the paperwork. So that's those are like the no brainer. Little bit of that's the top of the pyramid, right? And then and then the next level maybe and maybe this is the mate that's 5%. Then you've got maybe 15% is ones that are specific and are the only eligible entity is tribal governments. Right, and we've narrowed the universe down to here's grants out there that are specific for tribal governments in Alaska. And that kind of opens the door to immediately pursuing something that where there's a need, and then maybe the 80% Is everything else where tribes are an additional eligible applicant, but it's competitive nationally. And a lot more work that goes into those kinds of things is that I just made that up. But does that sound somewhat accurate? In how we can think about it?
Other than your math? Yes. Well, yeah, 10 and 15 and 80.
This is my other hard time.
Oh, anyway, sorry, made you made bearish. I would just get no
I appreciate that.
I don't do math either. Yes, it does. No, it sounds very, very, I know where you're going. And I will tell you Alaskans are so fortunate in that these big grants that are that really are made just for Alaska. Are you know the we don't have the competition law. 48 hertz, and, um, and yet, I one of my biggest frustrations is that the the, the RFPs are so complicated, that it makes it really difficult to get those grants and that's why I I say you know, if you have no one to to do this in your village or in your community, look around for someone to help you because it's worth it. But it's also really gonna raise your chances. Because there aren't very many people that apply. And, and for some of those Alaska specific grants, and so I'm, I really have a beef with some of the some of the complexities of some of the grants that are out there. I think it for the market that that it's supposed to be intended to. It seems like it would be something that you could do and submit via email, if needed because of the lack of broadband because of the lack of internet. So there's a lot of pieces there that make the challenges really real, you know, and so, so yeah, just just kind of be aware that that technical skills are required to write some of those grants and technology is required to write those grants.
So, yeah, well, and that's what we're here for. That is this collaboration between AFN through the navigator program and AML has resulted in you know, us thinking about how to support grant writing differently. And so I think we're able to announce today that we'll have a basically we're going to launch a grant writing hotline for Alaska. Tribal governments. And what that means is that you'll have a number to call or email to send a request into and be able to talk to Joan at some point 30 minutes an hour or so. And work through some of the basic questions and you can think about it as kind of a pre application process or a little bit of vetting, to make sure that you've got the right need and grant and eligibility and kind of think about what's right about the opportunity, and use that as a stepping stone toward additional grant writing beyond that kind of first interview and, and, John, can you talk about kind of what you envision as part of that initial kind of onboarding, vetting process, what goes into that?
Sure. I have a list here that I'll just kind of quickly go down. Depending on the need of the color. We'll we'll just talk about what the needs are of the community. And depending on their skill level, what they're asking for. We'll find that out right, right up front. For example, how many grants have you done or have you ever written a grant or, or how many grants does your municipality or your tribe have? So we'll talk about their grant history, their involvement with Grant history, either either writing grants or for managing grants. So we kind of have find that that common ground of how much I how much information I can or or they need that I don't want to blow anybody away. I like to talk but, and then talk about Priorities, priorities that are in the village, in the community, and that the community has hopefully, you know, expressed, we'll talk about grant opportunities, I'll give a lot of good ideas about what in my experience might be a good fit for them that that they could look at. And then we'll talk about budgets, audits and readiness. So we do talk a little bit about money, in terms of what kinds of budgets and what kinds of things are important to include into a budget for a grant, depending on the type of grant that they're going to do, or that they're going to look at. And talk talks about things like are your audits up to date? Do they have any findings this is really important. Do you owe the federal government any money? And that's a really key readiness question because if you do, you probably need to get that taken care of before you apply for a grant or show how you're going to take that take care of that because it's on a form. It's on the SF 424 that's required to be submitted. Do you all have the federal government any money? So we have to make sure we get that cleared up? And so then we talk about the research for demographics, you know, how many people are in your community? How many people are are Alaska native or American Indian, Alaska Native? What's the age group? We talked about where to find all of that there's some great resources out there, easy access to information that I can share all kinds of links to and different kinds of supporting documents that are going to be needed. Like letters of support, if it's a tribe, tribal resolutions, things like that. We also talk about the sam.gov that I mentioned earlier, and the grants.gov registrations that I mentioned earlier, I actually can go online with the caller and I'll walk them through how they can find that information. how easy that is to see. Um, I'll also show them a resource that they don't know already. Or they can find out publicly what all the grant awards are that have been made to their entity. It's online. It's public knowledge and that's a really great site to go to. We talked about a site that we can go to to find out if they do owe the federal government any money. So sometimes we don't. The person might not know if the 941 taxes or later haven't been paid, so I can show them how to find that out. And then we go through a list of call up questions that they may have specifically about. Maybe they're in the middle of writing a grant application, and then they want to ask a question, and I can help them through some of that, because there's there's a lot of other types of questions like What's leverage and how do I calculate my match? You'd be surprised how that works. With a lot of grant applications. It usually is different than what you might think. So things like that we'll go through and I am more than happy to just answer whatever questions I can to the callers. Look forward to it.
Yeah, that's awesome. So and I know, what we're trying to think about is how do we make this opportunity available to as many as who need it. So, you know, there is some kind of discreet amount of time that we're trying to focus on to get through some of those basics. And we're will match that with wanting to be as helpful as we can and for every color. We'll go through that process. If I know that AML staff is on hand to help with if you're a DUNS number, if you're sam.gov, your grants.gov any of those registration things are missing or if you need help with We've got staff on hand who will help to address that. We can help I mean if there's a if you do owe money, if there's a lien or something if we flagged that maybe that's something that we can help with and at least identify here's some ways to resolve those issues. So those are all kind of components of what's part of what we're offering there's in terms of offering this is all there is no fee for you know, reaching out to the grant hotline. And thanks again to AFN navigator program for making it possible for Alaskans to maximize the opportunities in front of them that's what that's what's really helping with all this. There is once you've gone through that process, I think Don noted there's a pool of grant writers on the ARPA last archive.org website. There's four or five up there right now. I think we're trying to figure out if there's more out there, Joan is one of them and her team. So once you've kind of gone through this vetting process and you'll be able to know if you need to reach out to somebody else or keep working through on your own whatever that looks like and I think mostly I know between the FN navic navigator program and AML which want to be as helpful as possible as you go through those processes and support you so that's exciting. What we'll do after this webinar, and the next day or so is follow up and get you all the information about you know, here's a number and email to call and and start working towards scheduling some of these interviews for those of you who have an interest and if you're not sure you have an interest or you don't know where to start, maybe that's a place this is a place to start to to as kind of a consultation on helping with some of that guidance. Yeah, so that's where we're headed. With this. We're really excited to be able to do this. At this point, we've got you know, a month or two to see what the opportunities are and try to help out as much as possible. And, John, anything else that folks need to know about grant writing generally or kind of where we're at in the process or any other words of wisdom you want to leave them with?
No, I see. There's quite a few comments or questions maybe. I don't know if that's something that's, you know, I can answer there. But, um, one thing that I noticed, you mentioned DUNS numbers, and that's kind of a complicated process because now they're going from DUNS numbers now to a unique entity identifiers u e eyes. So they they're starting to change most of the federal forms now to have u e. I instead of DUNS on them. So that's one of those other things that everybody has to know, before they start writing and filling out their forms. They've got to go into their sam.gov account to get those UTIs
so many things and steps to get through. Thanks for highlighting that here. Thanks
for having me. Yeah.
So we'll follow up, John, and move this all forward. There were there's commentary in the chat. Thanks. There's some feedback on HFC and other processes out there. Somebody mentioned block grants, and I don't we're not talking necessarily about block grants or things that are already coming to tribal organizations that are like that unnecessarily. But it's good to know that those are out there and part of this picture and I mean, part of this picture too is you know where else can you go for a match you know, that partnership you know, things like Denali Commission that all that conversation is beyond kind of what we're covering today, but might come up and be useful, especially with this infrastructure package rollout. So and then somebody mentioned lots of good programs out there that needs right language revitalization, summer reading programs, culture activities, like wellness, Camp leadership, etc. So, yeah, all of those things I know are important to our communities, and there's probably a match right now. In some of the grants that are being offered. And a lot of that leads back to things like behavioral health and mental health and wellness. And there's definitely good, good opportunities out there. So I think with that, we'll wrap up for today. Again, these have shifted to 11am. So we'll see folks in the weeks ahead at that time. And Mary, do you want to close us out as our navigator
is thinking else I want to thank everybody for participating today. We got some really good information. And I'd like to thank millstone and Don, for your participation, your time this morning, and look forward to the next training session. Thank you, everybody. Wonderful, thank you. Okay.
