Institute of Museum and Library Services 2020 Grants to States All States Conference May
12, 2020 Virtual Proceedings by: CASET Associates, Ltd. caset@caset.net
Agenda Item: SPR Reporting: Observations and Discussion
MS.
FARRELL: Hello, everyone, and welcome back.
This is Michele Farrell, and I'd like to welcome you to the section called Program Officers
Observations; myself and Madison Bolls will be doing it.
Dennis Nangle, as you heard earlier, was out on paternity leave.
So right now, I'd like to introduce Madison, who is going to talk about general principles.
MS.
BOLLS: Hello, everyone.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for joining us for our virtual conference.
I'm happy that you can join us.
As everyone knows, we spent a great deal of time at the beginning of each year reviewing
the SPR report, and we are consistently impressed with the caliber of work that you are doing
and helping out your communities.
Sometimes that great work gets lost in translation as you put that data into the SPR.
So we want to provide you with tips to sharpen those Spidey senses for more consistent SPR
data entry.
Now, keep in mind that this presentation is not about the projects themselves that you
are doing.
Again, those projects are out of this world fantastic.
But what we're going to be focusing on is the way that they are reported in the SPR.
We're keeping this at general tips.
So if you have specific questions about your reporting and the way that you are doing it,
you can contact your program officer.
So first we're going to tackle general principles, which is just about reporting on the project
as a whole, and then we're going to go through individual sections of the report.
So, general principles.
What we mean when we say that is thinking about the general project as a whole.
When you think about your project, think about what are you trying to tell us when you're
reporting on this project and what did you accomplish during this year for this project?
We find -- and this is most often with ongoing projects, that info is copied and pasted from
year to year, or there's just a tendency to have a general project description or general
history or background of a project and not include any information about what actually
occurred.
If you're using that project forwarding function in the SPR, keep a lookout for outdated information
or sweeping generalization about projects.
It's also a good idea to not be redundant or verbatim in each of the sections of the
project.
These sections should contain unique information that contributes to the project as a whole,
and creates a holistic view of what you're reporting.
Now we are going to be touching upon abstracts, which we find are really important because
they give a high-level overview of the project, and these things are the first things that
people read when they access your project in the public view.
Now we want your abstract to be kept at between 90 and 160 words, and again, we don't need
just a general program history or description.
Think about what did you accomplish and what did you do this particular fiscal year.
The abstract should also reflect the budget in activities of the project.
So you can take a look at that information and briefly summarize it in paragraph form,
and when I say paragraph form, we want the abstract in paragraph form.
We don't want to see any bullet listing in the abstract.
Also, pay attention to formatting.
I know many of you will originally compose the project information, maybe in a Word document
or another platform and then copy and paste it into the SPR, but oftentimes with preserved
formatting, that will leave in weird fonts, weird colored fonts, spacing issues, or weird
copy/paste formatting characters.
So be sure to strip out the formatting before you paste it into the SPR so it looks a lot
cleaner.
Here is a brief example of a project abstract.
This project is from California, and it's on a program for teens called Adulting 101.
You can see this abstract is broken down into what the project is, what the goal is, the
activities, or essentially what happened, and they do this all in 110 words.
There are no bullets, there are no weird looking text.
So clearly if they copied and pasted it from somewhere, they stripped out the formatting,
and it's just a really nice clean example.
Now I'm going to pass it onto Michele who's going to talk about intent.
MS.
FARRELL: Hi, everyone.
I'm just going to review what an intent is, because there are plenty of new people listening
in today.
An intent is meant to reflect the main purpose of the project.
There are in the SPR system 14 different intents you can choose.
IMLS asks that you select one that reflects the main purpose.
So now I'd like to take a look at what we've seen reported in the SPR this past year.
Here is an example of two intents that were listed for a project.
The project provided a digital media space for teens.
As you can see, one intent probably would have been fine.
You should be able to refer to the crosswalk that a number of you developed as part of
your five-year plan to see what intent was identified for that particular project.
If it's a new project that you didn't have as part of your plan, then just make sure
that you pick just one intent.
And this is important, because pretty soon, sooner than you think, your outside consultant
that you hire who will be working on your five-year evaluation is going to take a look
at each project and the description and how it met a particular goal and the intent from
your five-year plan.
It's a lot easier for that consultant or, frankly, for a new LSTA coordinator looking
at the information to see that there was only one intent, in this case this as a first one,
this particular team project, had more to do with buying and getting the physical space
and the technology in place.
So right now what we're going to do is show you this example.
The project includes a series -- so I'm going to describe this project -- included a series
of lectures by historians, authors, and artists.
Each presentation consisted of a book talk, a panel discussion, or a research update.
Speakers covered subjects that support the Library's mission to promote awareness of
the state’s history and culture.
It was a civic engagement project.
So keeping that scenario in mind of this series of lectures by historians, artists, and authors,
what we would like to do is have a poll taken.
These are four of the intents that were listed for this particular project in the SPR.
What we would like you to do is look at each of these four and based on the description
I gave you, figure out whether that was more to improve users' general knowledge and skills,
or improve users' ability to discover information resources; was it to improve users' ability
to obtain and/or use information resources, or was it improve users' ability to converse
in community conversations around topics of concern?
So when I get my results here, we will broadcast them.
(Poll taken.)
And people are still responding here.
We have quite a few people participating in this webinar.
So it's nice to see.
There's no wrong answer here, folks.
Feel free to participate.
And it's anonymous.
Okay, I think now we can broadcast the results.
As you can see, lots of people have different opinions, and I'm just looking to see some
of the results here.
Okay.
So what we're looking at are those four responses, and while people have different opinions,
you can see that there's varying opinions, and let me restate that scenario for you.
The project included a series of lectures by historians, authors, and artists.
Each presentation consisted of a book talk, panel discussion, or research update.
Speakers cover subjects that support the library's mission to promote awareness of the state's
history and culture.
It was a civic engagement project.
I thought that the best answer would have been number four, improving the users' ability
to converse in community conversations around topics of concern, and I think that's where
at least 41 percent of you thought that was the right answer.
Some of you picked improve users' general knowledge and skills.
The key point here is also you're the ones who know best what was the best intent for
this project.
So pick one rather than all four, and move forward as you're filling out your SPR report.
Now I'm going to turn it over to Madison who is going to talk about the budget.
MS.
BOLLS: Thank you.
With the budget section, we saw some trends of misplacing items in different budget boxes,
as well as not providing enough information in those budget boxes.
So we're going to cover those here.
We're going to cover here the other operational expenses category in the budget.
This other operational expenses is for indirect cost for subrecipients.
This is the only thing that should go into that budget box, and when we say indirect
cost, what we mean is any cost not directly identified with a single final cost objective.
So anything -- so things like rent, copy paper, or cleaning can be considered an indirect
cost.
If you as the SLAA incur indirect costs, they should go into that administrative project,
which is separate from these regular projects, and be covered in that 4 percent cap.
Any indirect cost you incur should never go in this box.
When you report in this category, you want to be specific in the information you provide,
who is incurring this indirect cost, and ideally the indirect cost rate, which is a percentage.
Now if you're bundling smaller subgrant projects into one larger project, you'll want to provide
complete information in this box and make sure you itemize which sub-awardee received
what amount.
Here are some examples for the other operational expenses.
The two descriptions at the top of the slide were returned because the charges described
are not considered other, as they directly relate to the project.
However, you can certainly see how these types of charges could be misperceived as a quote/unquote
other charge or charge that doesn't necessarily fit within any other budget box.
For the purpose of the SPR, however, this category is solely reserved for indirect costs
for the subrecipient.
So for both of these instances, they would go better in the services budget box.
The example at the bottom of this slide is a great example of how this category should
be used to capture indirect costs of the subrecipient.
What could have made this a gold star description is the addition of one more element, the specific
indirect cost rate percentage that was charged to the subrecipient's grant.
Again, if you have a project that combines multiple subgrants or several subrecipients
into one project, it would be ideal to itemize the cost in this budget box.
Now I want to touch on providing enough information in the box for salaries and wages.
When filling out information for salaries and wages, please provide the position titles
and the FTE equivalents.
These two examples here provide great examples for budget descriptions.
The first shows the differentiation between LSTA and state funds used to pay this person's
salary, and the second shows how a single staff member's salary is allocated across
multiple projects.
Now keep in mind here, we don't need specific people's names.
We just need their position title.
Here are some other quick tips about the budget.
Conference registrations should go in the Services box not in the Travel box.
Applications, software, and license purchases should also go in the services box, not the
supplies box.
And it's good to avoid using any vague language or misleading terminology such as other related
costs or miscellaneous.
Please be specific in the costs that you incur.
Now I'm going to talk a little bit about activities.
Essentially a project is defined as a set of interdependent activities carried out to
achieve an intended outcome.
So essentially the activity is the action that helps accomplish the intent of the project.
So it's pretty important to have these.
Some general things to consider about activities.
It should account for at least 10 percent project budget.
The activity title and description should be different, and the description should elaborate
more on the title.
They should not be verbatim.
Also, they should not be identical to the project title and description.
You want to keep each project to 10 activities or less, and keep in mind that if you are
bundling projects, maybe some mini-grants or a small program, you'll want to divide
the activities up by activity type, not necessarily by the mini-grant as a whole.
So here is an example of a project with way too many activities.
There are 11 listed here.
So it's over the recommended 10, and they are different enough to where they could be
divided into separate projects.
We're seeing some professional development activities, some early learning activities,
and adult services activities here.
So this is an obvious example, as these activities all have different beneficiaries.
We tend to see too many activities when one position's total job is clustered into one
project, and an example would be a youth services consultant, and in that instance, it may not
be so obvious as to how to split them up, and those types is what we would call a kitchen
sink project, where there's lots of things going on in one project.
But a good rule of thumb in unbundling activities into their own separate projects is to look
at their subject matter, their beneficiary, and their intent.
Grouped activities should have the same for all three.
Here is a great example of some activities from a project in North Carolina.
This project is about early literacy and story time.
You can see the project activities are all related to the project at hand and contribute
to the aim of one project goal and beneficiary.
It makes sense obviously here to have them all together, and there are only five activities
for this project.
And here is an example of one of those activities' title and abstract.
It gives great information and provides briefly what happened in this activity.
It is succinct, clear, and provides no unnecessary information.
It's very specific.
Now I'm going to turn it back over to Michele for outcomes.
MS.
FARRELL: Hello, everyone.
I am going to talk about outcomes, which are a very important part of the SPR.
What is an outcome?
An outcome is the effect of programs and services, something that changes an individual's life
or the community.
It's a change in their knowledge, attitudes, skills, behavior, or condition.
We are trying in the SPR to document what changed for participants due to their use
of a service or a program that you funded.
Note that IMLS does not expect you to survey children.
So activities that involve children don't have to have outcome figures.
That said, you may still want to include in the overall project outcomes section some
information on how many children participated and some of the things you observed.
Now let's look at where outcomes occur in the SPR.
There are two areas for inputting outcome information.
The first place is in the activity area.
As this chart shows, there are four times when you should be including outcome information.
Three of them involve surveying library workforce, and the other is surveying the general public.
For example, if you have an instruction for library workforce and it is in the mode of
a program, then you should survey the participants.
I know a lot of library workforce feel like they're being surveyed to death, but this
is grant money and it is required.
If you are having instruction for the general public and the mode is a program, then you
should include outcome information in the project report.
Samples of the outcome forms are available on the IMLS website in the Grants to States
Manual under Financial and Performance Reporting.
But this is a handy chart for those of you who are new.
Here's an example of the survey for library workforce for a planning activity.
IMLS also has a presentation deck called SPR Outcomes on the IMLS website with more information.
I think it's important for the LSTA coordinator to make project directors aware of the evaluation
forms that exist that can be used when they need to collect outcomes for their project.
And we have been seeing many more people include outcome information.
It's probably the area people get most confused about.
Here is what it actually looks like when reported in the activities section.
This is an example of what you see in the SPR system when you want to add the survey
results.
The codes translate into a number of respondents who SD, strongly disagree; D, disagreed; NA/ND,
neither agreed nor disagreed; A, agreed; SA, strongly agreed; or NR, did not know the answer
to the question.
Didn't answer it.
In this example, there were 21 respondents that the state library project did participants,
and if you look at the first question, 10 of them strongly agree and 10 agreed that
they learned something by participating in this library activity.
This is great information, folks.
This is just what we want to see.
Here is the second place where outcomes are requested, and it's at the project level.
These project outcomes are part of eight questions about the overall project, not just one activity.
So the top box illustrates the answer to the first outcome question: explain one or two
of the most significant lessons learned for others wanting to adopt any facets of this
project.
One of the lessons learned from this project is that staff need to know that it's okay
to make mistakes in front of participants.
God, I know what that feels like.
Staff need to use peer mentorship to help staff get comfortable with the project.
This is great information to have in there, for anybody who refers to this project.
The second example happens to be from Missouri, shows the impact of the small subgrant that
had the initial intent of helping libraries improve their nonfiction collections.
This is a great example of how a relatively simple grant can create a ripple effect.
It's wonderful for IMLS to know about these, because we regularly try to communicate the
impact of the LSTA grants.
Of course, this information is available when you look up the SPR projects in the public
view on the IMLS website.
Here is a digital services example from Arkansas.
It is helpful because this is an ongoing statewide project, yet they took the time to highlight
specific events that affected the project this year.
This information helps us to explain why this year the outcomes were different from last
year's, and as you can see right here, it says staff turnover has affected digital service
operations significantly the past year.
So you want to put that kind of information in there.
The example below is a virtual reality subgrant from Indiana.
It exemplifies the benefits of sharing lessons learned for the sake of future projects going
more smoothly.
In this case, they tell you, as it says right here, there is a great deal of initial setup
time if you do this project.
The library had originally planned to start programs in late fall; however, they were
unaware of the support equipment they needed for an optimal experience until they started
training and experimenting with the equipment.
That's a lesson learned, and it's good to put that kind of information in the report.
It's also valuable to include some anecdotal information.
This was a comment I read this year in a project report from Oklahoma.
A grandmother reported that her overweight granddaughter was now at a healthy weight
because of frequent visits to the StoryWalk.
She didn't even realize she was exercising.
I gotta go do that StoryWalk, I'll tell ya.
This was a comment included in a project report from Oklahoma.
Testimonials like this are always nice to include in your report.
You can include this information in one of the project outcome boxes.
Here is another comment, also from a project in Oklahoma, where you can see the impact
of having a partnership.
Due to its successful health literacy project partnership between the Anadarko Library and
the Delaware Nation Tribe, the tribe agreed to host outdoor games that encourage children
to be active as part of the summer reading project.
So the health literacy project formed a partnership and then they learned about health literacy,
and then they decided to put the outdoor games as part of the summer reading project.
This is great anecdote information.
Additional materials.
IMLS has found the additional materials section of the report to be a goldmine for us, and
very useful.
What kinds of materials would you put there?
Consider all types of relevant information, like press releases, social media information,
toolkits or reports are wonderful, and provide examples of administrative materials.
We love photos.
Attaching outreach materials or curricula help tell the story.
Website links are good.
Signup forms or marketing materials area also useful.
Here is an example of three of the additional materials submitted this past year.
The first one I'm going to talk about is the Public Libraries in Massachusetts; this was
the Public Libraries in Massachusetts: An Evolving Ecosystem report.
It was commissioned by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to provide a unique,
first of its kind look at how and why residents use public libraries in the commonwealth.
The study helps to understand cooperative borrowing and use patterns in Massachusetts
public libraries.
The study and report were conducted by Sasaki, an international firm that addresses issues
of strategic planning and data visualization.
A series of six in-person and one virtual community meetings were held across the state
to gather library feedback to the report.
Meetings were open to the public and conducted by the outside meeting facilitator.
You can find that particular report on the state library website.
On the far left, we have an example from Idaho.
It's called Idaho Bright Futures Library Toolkit.
On the far right we have an example from Saint Paul.
This is the Saint Paul Public Libraries Evaluation Plan for an Innovative Service Model to Expand
Community Services.
These are wonderful materials, and it's a great way if you hadn't had a chance to point
them out to us, ahead of time during the year, to include them as additional resources in
the SPR report.
So now Madison and I are willing to take any questions
you may have.
MS.
GONSALVES: Looking at reporting, the question is how would you prefer us to report activities
that are less than 10 percent of the total budget, but can't be clustered with other
activities?
MS.
BOLLS: That is a great question.
If you find that you can't cluster it with any other activities and you feel the need
to stand out as an activity, you can leave it as its own activity.
I would just be mindful of not having a bunch of little activities that add up to over 10
activities, for instance.
MS.
GONSALVES: The next question is what kinds of expenditures should be put into the travel
box.
MS.
BOLLS: For travel, you want to have any costs incurred with like flights, like literal travel,
car rental, mileage, as well as hotel costs.
MS.
GONSALVES: This one might actually follow up on that.
I believe this question is asking about reporting regarding the budget.
How would you categorize museum entrance fees, services, and travel?
MS.
BOLLS: I think we would put museum entrance fees in services.
MS.
FARRELL: I would agree.
MS.
GONSALVES: One more question.
Do we have formal documentation of the details needed in the budget breakdown that we can
share with our budget and finance department?
MS.
BOLLS: We do have resources on the Grants to States Manual.
I know there are several PowerPoint presentations from past webinars and conferences that are
still very useful, as well as the complete SPR guidance, and as you mentioned, we'll
also have this presentation available to you.
MS.
FARRELL: Feel free to, if you have things that you're thinking of, to send us an email
and we can refer you to the specific slideshow if we have one done, or we can just tell you
if it's a shorter question, what area you should put it in, too, because we do know
you have your own forms for things like budget, and then you have to -- a lot of people that
just did their own subgrant forms to the IMLS SPR reporting to make it a little easier to
move information into the correct areas.
MS.
GONSALVES: That seems to be it just for now for questions.
MS.
FARRELL: I guess we are finishing up a little early.
MS.
GONSALVES: I am sorry, Michele.
We do have one more that just jumped up.
Why does the project intent auto-populate the activity intent?
Good question.
MS.
FARRELL: The SPR is set up to put certain -- you have only certain options depending
on some of the main things you picked, when you picked a certain focal area, you'll have
certain options for certain intents.
So that is generating the kinds of questions that you will end up seeing when you go to
fill out your report.
MS.
GONSALVES: I see we have another question.
If we issue subawards and the grantees are required to match part of the award, can we
include the library's match in the SPR report?
Michele or Madison?
MS.
FARRELL: I was just thinking, I'm just trying to think of what match you're talking about.
You're talking about the other match in the SPR report.
MS.
BOLLS: If there is a project, a subaward project, that is LSTA funded and the sub-awardee is
contributing match, yes.
It can be considered match, yes.
It can be considered general match as long as they contribute to allowable costs.
The allowable cost principles apply to match in addition to LSTA funds.
MS.
GONSALVES: We have another question.
The question is can you reiterate how to report if there are no useful survey results available.
Michele?
MS.
FARRELL: Sure.
If you don't have any results from a program then you don't give any results.
I think what we're trying to do with this program observations is tell you at this point
we're seeing project reports that should have outcomes, and there aren't any.
For some reason, something must have happened and somebody didn't survey people when they
should have, and if there is some other reason why it's not there, you might want to mention
it somewhere and let us know that you're having issues with getting that kind of information
in there.
We request this information, as I say, the four types of places where you are required
to submit information, we are hoping you're able to get that information.
If you can't get it, you can't get it.
We're just putting emphasis on it because that's the data that we'll be pulling from
and looking at and where we compile statistics, the information your evaluator is going to
look at, and that frankly you would be looking at as to whether every year whether you actually
ran a successful program.
How do you know?
You have your evaluations to go on.
So that's why we included that as a tip.
We are seeing people put the outcomes information in.
So I don't want to give the wrong impression here.
We just like to see more people participate, and for our newer LSTA coordinators to become
aware of when outcomes are really expected.
Good question.
MS.
GONSALVES: We have an additional question.
Should we consider whether it is the speaker's time that can be contributed to the match
or attendee's time?
MS.
BOLLS: I would defer -- I would say no, but Michele, what do you think?
MS.
FARRELL: Can I hear the question again?
Who asking the question?
MS.
GONSALVES: Sure.
This is Angela.
She wants to know whether or not they should consider whether if it's the speaker's time
or that should be contributed to the match or the attendee's time.
MS.
FARRELL: I am not picturing the attendee's time to something being considered part of
a match.
MS.
BOLLS: If I'm understanding the question correctly, if you had a public event and somebody came,
you are not going to say they contributed their time.
I think we would contribute the speaker's time, not the attendee's.
MS.
FARRELL: The speaker is paid, so their time is paid for usually out of the grant.
That's the common way, that the cost is covered.
MS.
GONSALVES: Okay.
We have -- MS.
BOLLS: If you need to follow up on that, feel free to email the program officer directly
and we can talk about it.
MS.
GONSALVES: We have a question, actually a follow up to the intent question a little
earlier.
What if the activity intent is different from the project intent?
How would that be handled?
That can be for Michele.
MS.
FARRELL: I think if you are running into issues, just give me a call and we can look at that
particular thing and see what's happening and why that's happening.
I think that's the best way to take a look at it.
They usually build on each other.
If you have things that are really different, and we put this in our original guidance that
you can find on our website, sometimes people have an awful lot of activities in a project,
and really it should have been split out into two projects.
But let's say the youth consultant was doing a project, but the youth consultant did a
lot of activities, a lot of projects, but they were all listed as activities versus
a project, and so the actual project was almost like the workload of the youth consultant
for the full year.
So sometimes one intent doesn't fit with the rest of the activities.
So that's a situation where we ask people to take a look at if you're putting in way
too many activities, like 14 activities, cut it down.
Not to say that they didn't happen, but make another project out of it, and find an intent
that fits more appropriately for part of those projects.
These are things that we can talk to you about and explain, because it takes a while to get
familiar with the SPR report and some of the ways that you can deal with it.
In our guidance we suggest if it's this awesome or innovative program that has a lot of moving
parts or something, there's ways that you can break it out and so much of their salary
may be partially in one project and partially in another project.
MS.
GONSALVES: Thank you for that.
We actually have an outcomes question.
Lindsay wants to know would it be possible to have a nonapplicable version in the outcomes
when not all questions are asked and may not be applicable for all projects, and it's really
not a nonresponse either.
Madison?
MS.
BOLLS: I think that is a great suggestion, and I think we can take that back to our group
and our developers and see if we can work on that.
MS.
GONSALVES: I don't have any additional questions right now.
MS.
FARRELL: I think what we are hoping here is that people realize these are suggestions
for making their report a little bit more meaningful and, in some cases, I'm hoping
easier for you to do.
Just pick one intent.
I see people working real hard to pick all the intents that they think might apply.
Don't worry about it.
Just pick one intent that is the main focus.
Same thing with the budget.
You know, we're just giving you tips here.
List it here.
That's the underlying idea behind this presentation is that hopefully makes things a little bit
clearer.
Of course, you're going to have continual questions, and feel free to ask them.
(Pause.)
MS.
FARRELL: Madison, I think with that, no more questions.
I think we can go on to the break if that's okay.