questions about working with grants

[Zoe Girl]

lhamo this sounds like maybe you could have insight.

i have been through a wringer lately, a lot of stress, lots of people leaving with restructuring and voluntarily leaving, confusion and frustration and supervisors who say things in crappy ways. So today i went to a conference thing for the federal grant i am under. i am a little more understanding of what some of my supervisors need to do, however i have more questions than answers. the basic question is, are grants generally this confusing or should my supervisors know more about what we are doing than they appear to.

the latest is that i am only supposed to have kids at my camp that are supposed to go to my school i have been running my programs as school first, community second for 3 years. usually i get a lot from our school but this summer i didn't come close to filling so i have kids from 7 schools in our local area. i found that out today, in the middle of the conference, after 3 weeks of camp. i do tell my supervisors when i open up registration but i have been told to make sure we are getting our school kids first and i always have a few from the community. these are kids who can ride their bike to camp after all, so to me that means our community.

then i watched the grants fiscal person give a presentation about the latest publication on rules on spending federal funds. it kinda ruins our sustainability plans written into our 5 year grant (i am finishing year 3) if we charge any fees they are taken off of our award. my plan was to start charging fees for some activities that are higher priced and still provide a core of free activities, then i could use my grant money to scholarship as needed to the fee based activities and maintain equity.

i want to sit down and read the grant again for myself, and i keep thinking i can understand it all, then i watched the rules change on how we spend federal money and realize i may never get the clear answers i want. i might even need to stop being upset because i have to change things in the middle of what i am doing all the time and i think someone should have known. reality check?

[LDAHL]

Were they referring to the changes under 2 CFR 200?

[Zoe Girl]

they referred to is as the omni circular, and our grants fiscal person said they could have accepted it right away or kept some of the grants that are in the middle of their cycle with the old omni circular and the new grant with the newest one. they chose to have everyone go with the new one for ease of management, however that puts us in a bad position,, the other 3 schools are okay but i will be in a serious bind.

[Zoe Girl]

i looked it up and it streamlines 8 regulations into one circular, so it looks like the changes have been all included into one document which includes 2 CFR 200, i don't know the details of any of this but i talk to the accountant a lot.

[lhamo]

oh lord -- the dreaded omnicircular! Just one of the reasons I am glad I left my job. My previous organization receives a LOT of federal funding, and has been spending massive amounts of time/money over the past 12-18 months preparing for omnicircular compliance. It was one of the things that was making running our office so draining.

I would not bother to spend the time/energy to figure out what you need to do to be compliant. It is complicated and that is what you have grants management people for. Just focus on developing as close/supportive a relationship as you can with them so that you can get into compliance as soon as possible. There are usually ways to get waivers or exceptions in special cases, it just has to be thoroughly documented. Put all your communications into emails (even if just a summary of in-person or phone conversations) so that there is a paper trail of your efforts to be compliant.

Just FYI, one of the biggest headaches for us was how the omnicircular changes requirements for procurement. So be extra double sure before you make any purchases related to your program that you are complying with whatever current procurement procedures your organization has. I was having to do some ridiculous things like go through a full bidding process for a few hundred dollars worth of electrical work we needed redone after our renovations last year. It was nuts/a huge waste of time and money. Such is work that involves government contracting, unfortunately.

[Zoe Girl]

i had a feeling you would know about this. they did talk about procurement at the conference so that is good, it may mean that certain providers will need to go through a bidding process if they provide programming at multiple schools since the overall contract is above the threshold. i think that we generally do multiple small contracts which may or may not work. But i have virtually no money to work with so i am not spending that money anyway. i love our grants accountant which helps, however a huge number of people are leaving, including the grants manager. i love her, i think that the issues in the department are getting us pretty close to non-functional in staffing.

i hear that the newest cohort cannot buy food for events ! this is really hard, i am not sure if it affects me or not since i am in the previous cohort, but getting parents to come to an event in the evening takes at least some simple food. So i can deal with that later, meanwhile my brilliant idea to provide all the things i need to (and not sure if i can charge fees) is to create an adult kickball team! Sounds good to me, and i can take credit for it and not charge any fees or pay a provider. our scout troops are coming back and a part of Americorps is working in our school which gives me a way to provide after school clubs (with a lot of training and development, they come in excited and not up to my standards for a few months).