So Rachel, thank you. Welcome. Thank you for being here today. If I hand the floor over to you, once you're done, you know, we have, I guess we will have, you know, have it open for questions. For those who might have a question, please raise your hand or send me a chat. And I could, we could call you up. So thank you.
Great, great. Well, I'll apologize in advance because our two year old is six day and he's home unexpectedly. So I only plan to probably talk for 20 to 30 minutes max. And then I'm going to hand it over to my colleague, Melinda Chase, who has some really great opportunities for support. She and Justin Leone are the leads the tribal climbers, liaisons for Alaska, and there will be another one hopefully coming on very soon. And they work closely with our program. And they can they provide a lot of technical support. So I, I'll just speak for the first one here, 30 minutes, and then hand it over there. My name is Rachel Novak. I'm from the Navajo Nation. And I'm here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. happy to speak with you today about our opportunity. We are, I am the coordinator for the tribal Climate Resilience Program for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and we have a funding opportunity that I'm going to go over today. And I will just use this page since the full screen is not cooperating but, but I'll send these slides over after so folks will have them. And I did give this presentation on our ITEP webinar. A few a week or two after this opened, opened in early April. And proposals are due on July 6, so it's just a week away. But it's never too late to get the word out. And I appreciate AFN for hosting this and trying to further get the word out. So but there is a recording of this webinar, or these slides on the ITEP. website as well. So a little bit fuller, and we go more into all of the FAQs that I will save today and handover instead to Melinda and Justin. So anyhow, this is our team. And, yeah, and all of our titles here and I will continue moving on for the sake of time. So I'll talk a bit about the purpose of our branch should give you a little context of who we are, if you're unfamiliar, our annual awards program solicitation, the categories of funding content requirements. And if we have time, we'll go into resources and partnerships. But if not, I will hand it over to Melinda at that point. And the FAQs are available on the slides. So you should be able to reference those after I won't go into those because they're, they're longer than the rest of the presentation combined. And they're online. So the purpose of our program is basically to help tribes to be successful and climate preparedness and resilience. And we do this primarily through two main ways two main mechanisms. And that's the funding financial assistance, such as this annual awards program, as well as technical support. And a good example of that is Melinda Chase, and Justin Leon's support and our partnerships with them. And a little more about our words, program solicitation. Apologies, that slip is out of order. So this is just a little bit more about our technical systems I mentioned and then the financial assistance. And then our focus areas. We have focused more on the past and planning and preparedness. And we do also have a set aside for ocean and coastal management planning. And this year, we are really excited to extend expand that out to implementation support. And that is a really unique progression this year that we're really excited about. It's made possible through the bipartisan infrastructure law as well as an increase in our annual appropriations. Oh, all right. So the more about our annual awards program solicitation. It can be found on our on our BIA tribal climate resilience website and through the annual awards program. And also on the Eco ABS application site and the links are right there for both. We opened the opportunity
April 11, and it's So this is July 6, so it will have been open for almost 90 days next week. And we are asking this year for folks to submit their proposals directly through eco ops platform. And a really important note, I'll probably say a couple of times, is that you have to register 24 hours before you can upload an application. So if you've been thinking might be interested in upload or in, in submitting an application, we encourage you to just go right in right away and, and register and ecoop, so that you don't have to read about that 24 hours before the deadline. And then we're asking folks to limit proposals to six links, in terms of the proposal content, that doesn't include supplemental materials. So you could still have maps or information on your previous plans, or any background and material like to provide. And other entities may participate as grantees, or maybe sub grantees or sub awardees. These awards will be going out through public law 93 638 contracts and compacts. And so others may may participate, you know, is several warranties, including like contractors or tribal organizations, maybe that themselves don't have 638, contracting authority, et cetera. All right. So, again, here's our website, you can link to the annual awards program through that URL, and then three gops here, and this is just a screenshot. And emphasizing, again, the Eco ops registration platform, and that those needs to be the registrations need to go in 24 hours before application can be accepted. So again, if you even think you're interested in potentially applying, go ahead and get a registration going so that you're not worried about the that registration, ceiling anything. Okay, so Oh, and I just want to emphasize one more time these, this is this shift from last year. We are moving the funding out this year through 638 contracts and self determination compacts. So as opposed to last year, where we did our federal grants, and a couple years before that as well. All right, so a little bit more about our categories of funding. We have 13 categories of funding, and I'll go through all of those, and some of them are new this year. And we kind of split them out into climate adaptation, ocean and coastal management and planning. And then relocation manager treat or partial relocation and protect in place has three of its own categories. And then we have a category for internship and youth engagement. So go back to this slide here. So this is about our categories of funding, and for climate adaptation. And this includes trainings and workshops. Not important if you know, if you are tribe or authorized 630, or tribal organization that has 638 contracting authority. And you have some experience, you'd like to think we're really like help other tribes. That would be a possible type type of application for the trainings and workshops, which is really designed to try to help develop tribally focused content for for other tribes, basically, so kind of like peer learning. So learning from one another, and then so the max for that is 150k. And then we have a category two for adaptation planning. And in the past, this has been our most kind of popular category of funding, and we were able to raise it this year to 250k. This can be adaptation planning or data development. If you need some information to help make decisions or plans, risk assessments and vulnerability assessments can fall under here as well. And yeah, this is a very popular category of funding, probably, I think, definitely our most popular and so that is category two. And we have gotten the question quite a
quite a bit this year is that you know, if I've gotten a category two or you know one of these other categories of funding in the past, am I still eligible to apply again this year? And the answer is yes. Oh, unless anything kind of, unless there's some sort of legal challenge that's those are usually very far, far and few between but but so in general, the answer would be yes. As long as it's not duplicating any work that was previously funded, so the work does have to be new. So and I'll keep moving down our category three, award there, the third bullet is focused on tribal support for adaptation planning. And we do have kind of a more short, like a shorter, more concise template within the Eclipse platform for that. So it's not it's not it's time intensive in terms of our compared to like the larger categories of funding like that category two, and the max for that each year is 15k per award for travel. And then our category six, this category is focused on capacity building for scoping efforts to help you develop like a category to plan in the future. And this is really designed for tribes who have never received any of the larger words from us. It's okay, if you've gotten like a travel support a word from us before. But if you haven't gotten any of the larger awards for us, and you're eligible for this category of funding, and this is really, it was really designed to support tribes who felt like they don't necessarily have the current capacity that they would like and, and would have trouble developing a competitive category to adaptation planning cat proposal. And we've seen that be really a great stepping stone for a lot of tribes. So that is 65k Max, sorry, there's zero missing there, I'll fix that. So that is the category six. And that's why it's a little bit unique. But it does come with some benefits. So awardees of that category, do get an extra extra points, like an extra 10 points in future proposals to our program. So if you wanted to, if you applied to this, and then the next year, use the kind of lessons learned and the scoping efforts to develop a proposal for Category Two, then you get 10 Extra points. And we've seen that really make a really big difference and be a great stepping stone for for tribes that might feel like they don't have the the in house capacity right now to develop a category to proposal. I think we've got category 10. And this is new, this is implementation for climate adaptation strategy. So if you have like a adaptation plan from previous award cycles, and it's ready for implementation, you could apply to this or if you have like a hazard mitigation plan or some other type of plan, it could be an Arn, P and IRLP. As long as there's a plan that identifies the climate adaptation strategy already, and it's, you know, relatively shovel ready. And that is, then those will be eligible for category 10. And the max for that is 2 million. And then we have a smaller category of funding, and that is category 13. And this is new. And it's for an international I tech virtual exchange. And I know there's a few different names for this, but indigenous knowledge or traditional ecological knowledge. That's what I tech is referring to, in this doesn't support so much isn't support the travel. It supports like a virtual exchange. And it's kind of a pilot project to see what kind of interest there is out there for tribes to to enter into exchanges, cultural, virtual cultural exchanges, etc, with with other indigenous peoples in different parts of the world. And then we have our ocean and coastal management and planning category categories. And that's categories four, and five. And the first is, is focused on planning. This category is kind of unique, because it doesn't need to have any climate elements. They often do, but they don't have to. And then Category Five is travel support for ocean and coastal management and planning. All right, and then almost done describing the categories of funding.
We have a kind of a, an umbrella category for the relocation full or partial or protecting place. Those are category 711 and 12. And category seven is focused really on the planning aspect of that and that maximum is 300k per word. And then the category 11 is moving from the planning to the implementation of those, those plans that might exist for relocation for partial or protect in place, and that's the 3 million Max and then can category 12 is also new this year. And that is focused on supporting relocation coordinators. And that actually, I started that's a typo, the max, there's 150k per year, up to three years. And we did that to try to really provide some support and capacity for tribes who are facing these, these very urgent, acute challenges. And that requires so much interagency and inter sectoral coordination. And we will. And this is mentioned a little bit in the, in the actual RFP the solicitation, but we are planning a training for the cohort, the first year is cohort at these relocation coordinators. So to help get get folks started, and so that those are the categories under kind of relocation, full or partial would protect in place. And then we have some youth categories, ones for internships, more for for college students, and the other is for youth engagement. And that's more K through 12. To help our next generation, get experienced and get interested in in these roles. All right. And then we have some notable items that I've kind of mentioned before, but it's always good to repeat, repeat the really important ones. So we did have some increases to categories of funding for the category two and seven, those are the planning categories for climate adaptation plans, and then the planning category for relocation related plans. And then, again, also the Eco ops platform for applications that's new. And again, I think for the third time, because I think it's really important, the registrations for that platform usually take 24 hours to process. So please, if you think you're gonna apply, get in and just go ahead and register today, just to make sure that that's not a barrier when it comes down to the deadline next week. So just a reminder, that's the way we're accepting applications this year. So please don't email them. But if you do have questions, you can submit them to resilient state funding@va.gov. All right, and then some on content requirements, and then I will probably pass it over to Melinda chase after that. Okay. Um, so what complete application needs to contain five of the five content requirements, and that is the cover page. And that's within Ico ops. A tribal resolution or cover letter with a signature summarizing in interest in leadership support. And that, if the tribe is a self governance tribe, just a letter summarizing leadership support is fine since the self governance compact already has a covering a resolution, and that is described in the RFP as well. And then number three is a proposal describing the proposed project and the associated activities and the criteria are in the the RFP, reminder to try to keep it as concise as you can we try to keep them to six pages or less. And, yes, and for some for the smaller categories, we do have everything that would be needed that all the space kind of the query boxes for the questions within the ICO ops platform. And then for the larger categories of funding, like the training category, the planning categories and implementation categories. There is obviously the option to like upload the proposal itself since that the the requirements kind of there for the information are larger. Okay, and, and again, just a reminder that these awards are going out is 638 contracts and compacts not as federal grants this year.
Okay, and then the last content requirements are a detailed budget table and budget narrative. And we need them to be uploaded as separately as Excel files, and then a copy of the negotiated indirect cost rate agreement, or other statements. So if you don't have an indirect cost rate agreement, and some tribes do not, then there's the option to to take the 10% de minimis or you then, you know, if you want everything to go to the project, you don't need to, you know, you can kind of wave that if it's up to the tribe, basically. And more information on kind of those options for the indirect cost rate are detailed within the within the solicitation. And just make sure and equal apps that you submit, or that you click submit before you upload any attachments. So, yeah, okay, so I think that is enough for me, again, I will submit or send all these slides to Nicole and to them so that they can be available. And I will just provide one more, I guess, intro slide here. Or maybe I'll do two more quick ones. And then I'll hand it over to Melinda. But we do have big regional contacts. And up here, the most important one would be Rosalie, Deb and him, she's our VA POC up there. Many of you probably know, Rosalie, and then Keith caughlin, is alternate. And then this is sorry, from an older page, but the tribal liaisons in Alaska are Melinda Chase, and Justin Leone, we work with very closely with both of them. And they're familiar with our program and can be really great, great local contacts there. And this is just a slide with some of the photos. We have Melinda here. And then Justin over here. And the others are partners in other regions in the lower 48 that we have. So yeah, so I will stop there. And again, I have we have kind of a little bit longer presentation online at the IETF I tips website that goes through all of the FAQs. But we won't go through all those today because there's about 70 slides worth of FAQs. And I wanted to try to keep this higher level for now. So alright, so I will stop sharing, and I'll hand it over to Melinda Chase and Justin, if Justin's able to join us. Well, thank you.
All today. Thank you, Rachel, that was fast and informative and a lot of information. And so I'm the tribal liaison at the Alaska climate adaptation Science Center, and so is Justin Leon, who alternative to I'll turn this over to when I get done here. And I I've been in this position about four years. I recognize many of you who are on so I'm good to see your your faces. And some of you are really familiar with this information. Well,
we figured Melinda's audio out she can
second here on the screen. Rachel, we could hear Melinda
I don't know if she can hear us responding saying we can chat. Sorry, that it won't continue.
I'm just texting her or chatting her okay. Okay, I put that director Sorry, folks. Okay, there we go. Okay, I'm going to continue for the third time. Okay. I'm the tribal liaison. And I know many of you so good to see you. I want to say that there's quite a bit of expertise in Alaska already with some of the tribes and the regions that have that have received the funding. I'm not sure what sounds like there might be a volume issue. Okay, I'm going to continue in hopes and speak up and hopes that all of you hear me okay. So there's sort of my point is there's quite a bit of expertise here in Alaska, because we've Alaska has received this funding for quite a bit the majority of the funding on the national level and the northwest region for the last several years. And so a lot of you do have expertise and in some of you I know have been helping one another at the regional level or at the tribal level. So just know that whether that's in applying for the funding or understanding some of the terminology and and some of the categories. So in my role at the tribal, at the Alaska climate adaptation Science Center, we have rolled out a, a technical assistance and training arm. And looks like I'm able to share, I'm just going to share some websites. And many of you are familiar with the Alaska climate adaptation Science Center. So the Science Center is a partnership between USGS, US Geological service, and the and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, we're affiliated because of USGS, we're under the Department of of interior and affiliated with BIA through the tribal liaison program. So we're here really to support all of you tribes that are looking to seek this been some of the climate science, that's that's our role, that's what we're here for. And then to help connect, and provide, connect tribes and provide training. So the one of the things I wanted to share with you today is, we have the Alaska tribal resilience Learning Network. And then this, this is the mechanism that the Climate Science Center has been building out just in the last year, year and a half to provide training, you don't see much up here on our upcoming events, because we just, we just finished several, several, one, several events. One of them was a project development webinar series that we had to apply for this funding. But I wanted to call your attention to some of the resources, we have information sessions. And in a moment, I'll show you the next page where those are archived at because they, they'll have information in terms of applying for this award, we have a monthly network call that will start up again in August, and there's a button there to sign up for that network call. And that's really to provide a space for you to ask questions.
In form, when form you know us or others of the progress you're making on your project, and to share among each other. We have a button here for one on one technical assistance. So through the network, you know, you can, you know, if you're feeling like you need some individual support from any one of our team or a collective of our team members, you can request that. And then we also have an E bulletin. And if if, if you're not on that, I just definitely encourage you to subscribe for that, because it has a lot of resources from tribes at a national level, but are also Arctic resources, and then Alaska. So that's really specific to our Arctic situation. But you'll see under the tribal learning network that we're in partnership with a Native American Fish and Wildlife Society, they're hosting Justin as a new liaison, and we'll have two new liaisons coming on board. So I just want to emphasize that this network is expanding, as well as bas network in terms of providing support to tribes, especially in your proposals. And so one of the things I wanted to make before a point I wanted to make earlier is this is a it's really a six page proposal. It is manageable, it is doable. And, and the Climate Science Center as well as the learning network is here as a resource to help you're in use of support you and applying for that funds, as well as carrying out the work once you're awarded. The other page I wanted to highlight Oh, excuse me before I do that, I want to go back and I know some of you might have called in. And so maybe Justin you can put put the website address in the chat. But I wanted to share right here. This is how I was you have to scroll down a little bit to see that we have a large Learning Network team. There's myself and Justin as I just mentioned, we also have some specific expertise and folks that have been working in community plans and climate issues for quite a while now. They're listed here. Two people I want to call out who are with USGS are Ryan Tui and Jeremy lotto Jeremy Patel provides most of the climate projections for the state of Alaska. So he's, he is somebody that we often turn to you for information. And then Ryan is a hydrologist and he has his own specialty. And then we have folks who are either indigenous scholars or folks who, you know, from our own tribal perspective or local rural perspective, have expertise and other issues like land issues or, or leadership and governance issues. So we're not, there's not just one or two of us, here, we have a growing network. And then in terms of the resources, we have, several of our information sessions are available in some of our, our, our planning that we've done in the past, I want to call your attention to this page here. In particular, there is a list of our webinars that we've held that we hold monthly, we just had one on getting to know the 30 by 30. initiative, but what I want for those of you who are new to applying for this funding source, you know, climate, the issues around climate change, and adaptation, it has its own language. And sometimes that language can be overwhelming, right until you increasingly become familiar with it. And like we have a information session, it's early on in it was about like the language and climate change planning.
And, and so you can access that information session, we also have one on examples of what the tribal Resilience Program has funded in the past. I know that klinken Haida and I see one of their folks kind of is on this call here, they were our guest. So oftentimes, we try to have our own Alaska, tribal governments and organizations involved in our information sessions. And then the other thing, if you want to know the difference between like a desktop report a vulnerability, vulnerability assessment, or a risk assessment, like we have a presentation on that. So this is really a source of information for you. And then the other, the other point that I want to make when you're writing these proposals, you know, is definitely don't get intimidated by the language, you know, this is a capacity building award, it's, it really is an investment in the community, in the tribe. As you know, as staff as leadership, we, you know, we are going to be dealing in Alaska, we're gonna be dealing with climate issues there for definitely for the rest of our lives, and probably our children's lives. And so the more that you access this funding, and you help train our own tribal members and our own tribal employees, and in our leadership, it's going to build upon issues that we're going to be addressing, not just right now in our generation, but you know, coming times coming generations, I really want to stress that and just know that this funding, like Rachel said, you can apply for a certain category this year, if you're just starting like category six, and then continue to apply in these other categories. And, and so think about that, not just for this application, but down the road. And, and finally, there's one other resources and I'll just switch my screen here and then I'll turn it over to to Justin here shortly. Is you can often cite resources or site current issues that you're dealing with, you know, that it may be that you've attended some of your local tribal meetings or some of the observations that you're experiencing or the impacts that you have are recorded. You know, in a in a community meeting or an issue has been raised in a A local tribal meeting. And you can reference that when you're writing your proposal. There's also some recent material out that I just want to highlight, like the state of tribes and Climate Change report. It's available on the Institute for Tribal Environmental professionals website, they helped put this together with BIA. And that it's called the stack report. And that has a tremendous amount of material in there. But it's, it's easy to read, you know, a lot of times when you think about reports, you may not want to read them. But this, this is written in accessible language. And it has multiple chapters. So for instance, there's a chapter on health and well being that talks about food security issues. And many of you know, you know, that we are in pretty rugged times in relation to our fish, and access to our fish, particularly last summer, and this summer on the Yukon Kuskokwim rivers. So if you need to cite material that is relevant to your situation in your community, you might want to look at this report, and it has key messages, and you can reference those in your proposals. So the it's not necessarily requirement, like I said, you can also reference, you know, local material, whether it's from like a tribal council meeting or a local meeting. But I just wanted to point that out to you. So
I think that was the biggest thing I wanted to talk about is that this is an investment into your community. And really, how do you how do you go ahead and, you know, put in a proposal, and don't get intimidated by the language or the process? You know, we're here to assist in that. And there's resources to understand the climate language. And then I guess, the, you know, it's an approachable proposal, that's pretty much six pages, you can have room for backup document. And of course, those appendix is like the budget and that you may also want to, it might be easy for you to include a visual of maybe how you're going to deliver your project, if it helps you to summarize in that short, six page proposal. So I think I know this, this webinar came together really fast for all of us for AFN, and for BIA and us and so hopefully that's helpful for you. And Justin, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you.
Okay, thank you, Melinda. And thank you, Rachel AFN I appreciate the time to speak. Melinda, you did a great job covering everything. I'm going to turn on my video real quick. I'm out GNOME, so it can sometimes bog things down. So just to introduce myself here. Hello, everyone. My name is Justin Lyon. And as Melinda said, and Rachel said, I'm one of the tribal climate resilience liaisons for the cask, specifically as part of the partnership with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. So I mentioned that because as Melinda said, we're not only going to be able to bring on a couple other liaisons here, hopefully shortly, but it'll we have some other information on potential funding sources as well, which I'll get to in a moment. But first to just introduce myself. I've I've lived in Alaska since 2008. I currently live in Nome, Alaska with my family. And I come to my current position, which I've been in since the middle of March of this year. So I'm still getting my my legs under me, but I've been out and helping a bunch of people bunch of tribes in with this current funding source and others. But my background is I was a fish biologist for 10 years. I know Melinda spoke about the current state of fish right now, which is unfortunate to say the least, but I worked for fishing game and across the state. I've been to a number of villages and indigenous communities and my time mostly in the Northwest portion of Alaska. And yeah, just happy to be part of this, this team and and both with The Native American Fish and Wildlife Society and through the cask, as Linda mentioned, we just want to be able to support tribes. And even in my previous work, a lot of it was going out and conducting outreach, seeing how people are doing what people are struggling with not only fisheries, but just everything that's going on. And a lot of that can focus and does focus or has to do with climate change. And so, again, Melinda did a great job covering this current current request for proposals Rachel did as well. The only thing that I would like to add, as far as that is concerned is for those of you who may be thinking, and this may be your first information as far as this current funding source, while they've only got like a week, week and a half, we do have other opportunities, specifically through the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society. They've we've been putting on webinars for the America the Beautiful challenge, and I do mention that, because as I'll stop my video here, and share my screen
so that we do have webinars put on for this America, the beautiful challenge as well. And it does have a category focusing on climate change and building resilience. And there is roughly $85 million potentially available for this. And I bring it up again, because it is due July 21, as well. And so again, just trying to support tribes in all we've been helping tribes with with with in any way shape or form regarding the tribal climate resilience proposal, but then there's the America the Beautiful as well, for those of you who may think, you know, gosh, making it by July 6, maybe kind of tight, this does give you a couple other weeks. And yeah, just happy to be available provide any technical assistance. We've already been doing that for for a number of tribes. And yeah, just here to support. And so I'm happy to put in the webpage for the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society as well. But But again, Melinda did a great job covering everything that we're currently doing with the tribal zones Learning Network and the climate adaptation Science Center. And just appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself. Thank you, AFN. And, and, yeah, with that, I'll kick it off to whoever. We're letting speak. Next are opening time for questions. So thank you.
Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Amanda. And thank you, Rachel. Rachel, before I go on, is there any additional presentations or members of your team you want to introduce?
Nope, that's, uh, that's it for today. The rest of our team? Is it a training? Actually? Yeah. So yes, there's three of us today.
So now is the most important time is the question and answer. If you have a question, please raise your hand and could unmute you, or let me know, in the chat if you have a question. But before we start, you know, I guess I'll take the floor. And, you know, ask a question on behalf of AFM. If AFN is submitted a a application on his own on behalf of our membership. In terms of what is required requirements, do we need to get letters from our members since we're a statewide organization? Or what's the requirements for that?
Yeah, that's a great question. Sorry for the delay there. I was trying to pull up the relevant language. And I'm just assuming, then, like, FN does have 638 contracting authority? Right.
That's a good question. Because I don't think we mean, do your job organization ever entered a context?
They don't know.
Okay, so yeah, this this, the eligibility for this is for tribes and tribal organizations that do have security contracting authority. But we do say that we do emphasize that a tribe can you know, include, you know, any, anyone on their sobriety be, you know, a contractor or another tribal organization? Or what, or, you know, another partner university. But yeah, the main entities that are eligible to apply are federally recognized tribes and tribal you know, that contract and compact with which I think is all of them through six through eight contracts and contracts or are there are tribal organizations that have that authority as well. So, yeah, does that does that help you want me to answer that in terms of other tribal organizations that might have 630 Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely. So, for category, it differs by category actually. So like for Category One proposal, where we often see tribal organizations applying, because it's, you know, developing tribally focused trainings. For that one, we don't require, like, resolutions from all of the participating tribes, because often you don't know which tribes might want to participate. Yeah, it's because because they will be open to anyone. So like for that one, it's described in there. But yeah, for that one. The Yeah, there isn't. There isn't like a requirement for resolutions from all the tribes. But if, if you're proposing to develop like, a product for tribes, like, I know, some tribal organizations support their member tribes, by developing, you know, risk assessments, vulnerability assessments, adaptation plans, if they are proposing to develop one of those for tribe, then we would require resolutions from that tribe just to formalize you know, that the tribe does, you know, is endorsing this and does plan on, you know, using that plan or whatnot. So just make sure that the that the tribe is, wants this work done has been is planning on using it. So, for those where it's like a product, then we would need resolutions. But if it's like a training that would be open to anyone, then then there wouldn't be resolution required from the participating tribes. Does that make sense?
Yes, thank you. And I see we have Cassandra Johnson's your your hand is up.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for this presentation today. I had a question about and maybe this is addressed in the NOFA. Which I haven't read that wanted to have this question on, possibly answered for maybe next year when I you know, opportunity to apply. I first worked for the Bristol Bay Native Association here and Bristol Bay region, and Dillingham, we've operated a big trouble resiliency, or climate resiliency grant before under grants, Grant Solutions. And I was just wondering, with a switch from that kind of style of disbursement to the compact or the 336. Authority, can it does that allow for more flexibility with using funds? I know in the past, working with bi, bi, bi contact through grant solutions we had any kind of change to the budget required us to get our president and CEO signatures on all those changes. I was just wondering if this different style of distribution would allow more flexibility for tribes and organizations to to use funding?
Yeah, that's a really great question. And, yeah, there are changes moving from federal grants to 638. So So yeah, I, I do think there is some greater flexibility there when it comes to needing to pivot because you know, something, something changed. We saw a lot of that during COVID, of course. And there is a little bit greater flexibility, we still, you know, need things to say generally in scope. But But yeah, there, there should be some greater flexibility. We did use 638 from 2011, up until 2016. And so, so in previous years, we have gone this route, and that is my understanding that it is a little bit more flexible. And we've heard in our listening sessions that this is the preferred route to and the 638 contracts and compacts. And so, so we hope this this does help with some of that flexibility. And we are we are we all we also heard, you know that Grant Solutions was not the easiest to navigate. It's it's a system we still have to use for our federal grants and cooperative agreements. But but for 638 We won't be using grant solutions. So that might be good news. For some of you who have been past awardees and and know that that was kind of a rough transition, I think for everyone, we will need to continue with, you know, federal grants. If you received a previous award as a federal grant from us, you'll still still have to finish that out, because that won't change to 638. But the new ones going forward will. So, so apologies for some of the confusion there and the transition, because if some of you guys are awarded this year under 638, and still are working on some previous work, you'll, you'll be it'll be a little bit different. And hopefully, hopefully, we can get through that together. But yeah, I hope that answers your question. Cassandra. Great.
Xandra, do you have a question? I'll unmute you fast.
Yeah, I did, I throw it in the chat. But um, I've developed my proposal, and we've worked out our budget, we're pretty ready, we're almost ready to submit. But then I saw it was a little confusing between the E coops and the the RFP, that where the budget was supposed to go, and it looks like part of the budget needs to be in the proposal itself. And that would come under the six page limit. And, um, that, you know, potentially just the budget narrative, and the table and the line items could take a full page or two pages. So I just wondered, like, how much do you expect in the proposal regarding the budget, versus the material we're going to upload anyhow, with the budget narrative and the Excel sheet?
Yeah, for places and eco ops, where there's like a special place to upload, like the budget. You know, please make sure you get all of that uploaded. If there's a specific, like a query or, you know, I guess, I don't know, if people still call them quarry boxes. If there's a place to upload like a specific item and eco ops, please do upload it there. Are you referring maybe to the budget narrative in terms of what would be included in the proposal? I think that might be
what it was, it seemed a little confusing to me, we plan to have the Excel sheet go up, and then a separate document with the budget table and the narrative that went through the line items. So is that incorrect? Should that not be uploaded separately, all of that table and narrative should be within the proposal. And that's part of the six pages.
No, I said budget should be uploaded separately as an Excel doc. And the narrative I believe, can be with within that. And I Yeah, but just make sure that if there's a space, like specifically designated for a part, you know, a piece of one of those elements, like those five elements that were mentioned, that they are uploaded there. If and also, if the proposal is like a little bit over six pages or anything, it's not like we will still review it. So if you feel better, like, you know, with some duplication, like putting the narrative into places, like with the Excel budget, and with that, you know, that's, that's fine. If it if you're just trying to duplicate and make sure that that you have all the components, we will will still will still review it. But I think rule of thumb is make sure just that everything that's required. All those elements that are already kind of within that digital form, or online form and Ico ops are completed. This is, again, the first year we're doing it.
So it's a little confusing, and there's no templates to use or anything. So it's just a little What goes well.
Yeah, if you Yeah, if you could, like provide any feedback to us, we can try to improve it for next year. This is the first year we've use eco ops. And And yeah, if there are areas where you think it's confusing, we can definitely look at that and try to smooth that out for next year. And we appreciate that feedback.
Awesome. Thank you, Rachel. Is there any more questions?
Oh, I think I see one in the chat. That some people are wondering if their accounting staff needs to access ie co ops to track the budget as though it were kind of like a new grant solutions. And that is, that's a no equal Ops is just being used for us to take in applications and then do the reviews. So the actual tracking of the budget that'll be basically the same as you do any other 638 contractor compact. You'll have an AO TR assigned that you can work with. And there'll be other region like the BIA region, or in some cases it might be at the VA agents. See. So that will that will go through the normal way that usually handles 638. Contract and contract funding. So eco Ops is just for, for us for receiving applications and for reviewing them, so you won't have to worry about it. After you submit it.
Thank you, Rachel. It is now 1102 Nearpod an hour. Is there any last minute questions for the group? I think Rachel, your team has shared her email in the chat I believe that's already happened to measure and sharing again. Um, people have questions and they want we want to reach out to you.
Yeah, absolutely. I'll put the our kind of our group email on here, too, because that way, whoever can get to it fastest will be able to answer it sooner than I might be able to. Perfect.
If there's no one last last questions. I want think Rachel Linden. Justin, thank you for being here today. You know, so you appreciate your time. We are going to record this order. This workshop has been recorded so we have it probably up to watch after party by tomorrow or later on today. And we'll share that with the show that you know on a vendor's webpage. But that said any last question if you for recall, call it a day okay, hearing none as well. Thank you all for being here today. And yeah, thank you. And I
thank you, everyone.
Thank you, everyone. Have a great rest of the day.
