i'm terry devoe with the grants to states program
and we welcome you to this orientation which is kind of a precursor to tomorrow
and wednesday's conference we are prompting folks to add their
state initials to their name and zoom and we have a travel theme for this
conference because we're all just thinking about travel and wishing
we could travel with you so we're going to travel in our minds
and the the icebreaker that we had prompted
folks to answer in the chat was the last trip you took before the
pandemic we got some great responses so far
lori fisher in new hampshire had taken a trip to d.c to see garth brooks at the
library of congress very exciting mandy in illinois had gone
to asheville north carolina stacy in arizona thought she'd gone to
san diego madison from our team had gone to new
york city jody thomas to new zealand wow laura mckenzie had gone to nashville
a few other folks had gone to pla in nashville
right before the pandemic dennis was in alabama
for a state library site visit and on and on susan forbes walt disney world
so cool tucson myrtle beach morocco so the the
chat is pouring in now and we welcome you to continue it
um so just a few things we are going to be recording these
sessions and we will eventually post them on our
website it usually takes us a little bit to prepare um so just bear with us they
won't be immediately available but we'll get them to you
and um yes this is an orientation for newer folks to the program maybe
you've been with us a year or not even a year or you just want a
refresher and we welcome you all um so a quick
hour precursor to the general conference and
the first thing i'd like to do is introduce our team
uh you will probably see our faces throughout the conference but just in
case you forgot what we looked like we've got all of us here on the slide
dennis nangle our senior program officer madison
bowles another senior program officer myself terry devoe our associate deputy
director laura mckenzie our newest team member
and program specialist and michelle farrell our program officer
so we are a small and mighty team and we've got a great
orientation plan for you so i'm going to kick it over to
laura mckenzie to get us started thank you terry i wanted to start with
some acronyms and vocabulary that are
part of the program so starting with the museum and library services act or
mlsa that's the broader imls statute that
encompasses lsta also known as the library services
and technology act and the lsta as currently amended
is a sub-chapter of the authorizing legislation for imls
in 1996 congress shifted the library services and construction
act lsca to the library services and technology act lsta and sub chapter
2 of the museum and library services act
this ended federal funding for library construction
and replaced it with a focus on new information technologies
lsta encompasses imls discretionary programs and it implemented a
population-based formula we have the cares act that was passed on
march 27 2020 an economic stimulus to assist
american workers families and small businesses during the
pandemic as a lot of you know imls received 50
million dollars to focus on digital inclusion and technology or
technical capacity building for example ppe
purchases to assist libraries and museums
arpa is the american rescue plan act of 2021
and this is a one-time funding supporting museum and library services
the grants to states program which we sometimes refer to
as g2s is the largest source of federal funding
support for library services in the u.s state library administrative agencies or
slaas are official agencies charged by law
with the extension and development of library services
the lsta regulations require each slaa to submit a five-year plan
that details library services goals slaas must also conduct a five-year
evaluation of service goals based on that plan
aco is the authorized certifying official for the grant award
in most cases this will be the state librarian
but it could also be the administrator that the state librarian reports to
and finally the chief officers of state library agencies
or kosla this is an independent organization
representing state and territorial agencies
designated as the slaa cosla serves as a mechanism to help
address challenges faced by the heads of the
state agencies which are responsible for statewide
library development next slide please
in 2019 imless switched our grants management system to egms
you will learn more about egms and the reach messaging feature
a bit later in this presentation sam.gov is the official system for award
management website of the us government this site
allows grantees no cost access to register and to do
business with the us government including updating or
renewing your entity registration among other tasks each grantee must
include their duns number tin number and bank
routing number and keep their registration current
to receive grant funds the state library needs to be sure that their
sub-recipients have put their information
into the system and that it is current next up is the federal funding
accountability and transparency act or fifata this was signed in
2006 to reduce wasteful spending and increase
public transparency of federal financial assistance
and expenditures the fifata sub subaward reporting system
or fsrs is the reporting tool that prime recipients
in this case the slaas enter information on subrecipients who received grants of
30 000 or more the state
program report or spr is part of an online system that is specific to the
grants to state's reporting requirements for grant awards and you can access the
spr login page at imls.gov a match is the amount of money
specifically 34 percent of the grant allotment that our lsta
legislation requires from the state library to contribute
toward the grant program each year these funds are from
non-federal resources including state local corporate
foundation or other non-federal entities the spr will automatically populate the
expected grant match amount and lastly moe
our maintenance of effort the library services and technology act helps ensure
that federal dollars enhance and do not replace
state support for library services to receive the full amount allowed by
the lsta grants to states formula a state must maintain its financial
support for library programs and services at not less than the
average amount reported for the prior three fiscal
years if the state does not meet its moe level
in any given reporting year its next allotment is reduced by the
same percentage as the missed moe the law provides an opportunity for
states to request a waiver of moe under specific circumstances
please refer to the grants to state section online at imls.gov
or reach out to your program officer for more information
next slide please
now here we have a few words that might be found on your grant award document
the federal government requires a business in this case the slaa
to have at least one of these numbers while imls does not assign any of the
first three numbers imls does however assign the federal
award identification number or fain
and the federal government will stop using the duns number
to uniquely identify entities registered in the system for award management
sam by april of 2022 at that point entities doing business
with the federal government will use a unique entity identifier
uei or ue created in sam.gov you should already be an active
registrant in sam.gov and the gsa another acronym here
general service administration will assign a ue to you
and it will be viewable within sam.gov there's no action for registered
entities to take at this time in the next slide please
and here we have a few more acronyms pte pass through entity is a non-federal
entity that provides a sub-award to a sub-recipient to carry out part of
a federal program for example the state libraries of pte
and the idc indirect costs are those costs
not readily identified with a specific project or
organizational activity but incurred for the joint benefit of both
projects and other activities indirect costs are usually grouped into common
pools and charged to benefiting objectives
through an allocation process an indirect cost rate is simply
a device for determining fairly and expeditiously the proportion of
general or non-direct expenses that each project
will bear it is the ratio between the total
indirect costs of an applicant and some equitable
direct cost base indirect costs include costs which are
frequently referred to as overhead expenses
such as rent and utilities and general administrative expenses for example
officers salaries accounting department costs
and personnel and department costs and with that i will turn it over to
madison i thanks so much laura we'll go on to
the next slide great welcome everybody so happy to have
you here i'm going to be talking a little bit about communications
uh once imless receives notification from the state library that a new lsda
coordinator has started we will send a welcome message
letting that person know who their program officer is and where to find
program information your program officer will also send a message regarding who
your mentor is as part of the mentors program the
mentors are drawn from a voluntary group of experienced coordinators
so you will have two experienced people to draw from
when you have questions about the program your program officer
is going to be the person to contact for the official
interpretation of program legislative requirements
you will also be added to the state program report system and the egms
grants management system and login and use instructions will be
sent to you next slide
between email and the egms system you will have a few ways to communicate
with your program officer email is going to be the more common and informal way
and here are a few reasons to use email in your communication
these can be allowable cost questions contact changes
spr issues or just general feedback that you have for your program officer
you'll also want to send your quarterly grant accrual reports
through email but that will go to the email address address that is listed
on this slide uh this is actually a pretty
good slide to keep for your records just in case you need to refer back to it
next slide please
as mentioned our egms reach system electronic grants management system
is used by imls awardees to manage their awards
and only official contacts like the chief officer or authorized
authorized certifying official lsta coordinator
or the designated library development or finance officer
have access to the system in order to administrate
and administer your award through egms reach
you can request payments see past payments
and see reporting schedules you'll also be able to send official messages
directly to your program officer responsible for administering your award
next delay please
now with this messaging in egms reach you will want to communicate things that
should be part of the official grant record
so so more formal communications uh this is a good slide again to
to keep for your records uh to refer back to uh for example
uh messaging messaging in reach is good for spr
extension requests uh sending newly signed certifications and assurances
and moe waiver requests um i i imeless has a great deal of
information available to you on our website um
about communications um but if you have any doubt about how to send
what message you can ask your program officer
program officer the best way to do it with that i'm gonna send it over to
michelle hi everyone i think
you've heard a lot about the vocabulary and such i want to talk about the imls
website if you go to the imls website at
www.imls.gov that will take you it'll have a number
of tabs up at the top you want to go to grants and then from
there pick grant programs and then select
grants to states when you've done those three clicks you
get to this page and this is the page that has the grants
to states manual you're probably going to want to
bookmark it there are sections in this grants manual
on the awards cycle calendar financial requirements
financial and performance reporting the spr
site visits imls guidance statutes and regulations any of the
presentations that we give at conferences or if we do a separate
webinar any forms that we use that we feel you
would need to have access to and our contact information and as you
can see on this slide there's history five-year plan evaluation tabs
and the state allotment table next this slide is showing you three webinars
that are available in the grants estates manual
under the financial and performance reporting tab
the first webinar which we have given in the past is called the spr
overview and guide
this particular webinar gives you detailed information on
concepts adding projects intents subjects
activities all the aspects of the svr report
and there are hyperlinks to those particular topics
within the uh webinar i think you'll find it useful the second
one is the imls state program reporting requirements
this gives you uh a description of the spr
framework and basically what is composed of the spr what they
call data elements and the last webinar is the spr
reporting system user documentation what the state
library sees so there's some glossary terms
there and screenshots which you'll find useful
next
this is the login address for the spr system iml your imls program officer can
set you up in the spr system by creating an account for you your
username is your email address and we will send
you your password you can change your
password by going into the account management
section of the spr after you're logged in
please note that chrome and foxfire are the recommended browsers
for using the spr system issues with saving
and editing can occur also if you have open two browser windows or tabs at the
same time in the spr so it's best to avoid that
next
and here's where you'll find the state info page
under the account management tab so you can see up at the left account
management and then it says state info this is an important page
having up-to-date contact information in the uspr
is important you will need it to certify your report
imls also uses the contacts listed here when sending important communications
this page includes the agency information as you see at the
top the chief officer the lsta coordinator
contact head of library development and the
fiscal officer please note that only you can update
this page once you have updated this account
management state info section then you might want to send an email to
your program officer so you can let us know that you've added
a new contact person and we've had a lot of that this year
the dons in ein are not required to save the data but
they are required to certify the reports so you'll want to put that
in the in that section there in the top also note the parent organization
should match the name associated with your duns number
next
there are three fiscal officers you can list in the state
info section of the spr the main fiscal officer is listed
first if you have other fiscal staff that you would like to have access to
egms you can list them as fiscal officer 1
and 2. if you have even more fiscal staff that need access to egms for
drawdown processes then email your program officer with the
contact information for those persons spr just has room for three
next here you'll see our table of yours user roles there are
four user roles in the str reporting system
the lsta coordinator and the authorized certifying official
aco accounts have permission to manage subrecipient user accounts
in the system and that's frequently used by states that do
subgrants they may establish user accounts as well
as update lost forgotten passwords for sub-recipients
the slaa project data entry user allows someone to add view or edit all
projects but they cannot validate certify or
change state goals so the role of ls
la a project data entry is something that you might have one of
your project directors at the state library
get that status use the menu to navigate to go to the account management
subrecipient access click add user and enter the contact information
email address will be used to log in enter and confirm the password you can
select a signed subrecipient an affiliated institution and
select save the user so you can enter sub recipients
one thing that you should realize about the sbr system
is nobody has ever really deleted from the spr
system instead should somebody leave the state library
um or move on and not be involved with this
then you can change their user status to inactive or you can ask one of your
program officers to do so and now i'm going to turn it over to
dennis thank you michelle i am here to talk
about timelines and deadlines and calendars
so um each grant award as you may already know covers a 24
month period of performance but we tend to
award the grants um on about a 12-month basis so there's always some overlap
with um the awards and the you'll see this is the one one first of
many uh visual timelines that you'll see us
share with you all um throughout the length of the
conference um we enjoy them because we find that they
are very um they provide helpful anchors um and
so this is um a visual example
of a normal uh lsta grant cycle timetable so for those of
you who have started in this role whether um at the state
library in general or as an lsj coordinator
if you started within the past year this may not look familiar to you because
there's a lot of new and exciting things that
have been happening with more awards than usual but um
when we don't have uh additional stimulus funds and rescue funds
to manage typically um you're managing two awards at a time and there's overlap
as you can see in this example um and so
in this example the fy 2020 award starts october 1st 2019
and it ends um september 30th 2021 and we've had some years where there was
a continuing resolution for federal funding
and as a result we sent out the award notifications after january
so it's not exactly like neatly right at the beginning of the federal fiscal year
sometimes there are other elements that uh cause a bit of
delay with the award notifications um but a best practice that we recommend
in general for working with multiple funds at once
is to finish off the funds from your previous award
uh before you start drawing down on the more recent one
and so again this is under the auspices of having only two at a time
uh but that's our general best practice for um
working with the 24 month period of performance
this is a snapshot of one of our grant cycle calendars this is the one for uh
2021. um the powerpoint which is linked on the um agenda link that we
sent out previously um that has a link to the grand cycle
calendar and we update it annually um and we found that it is helpful to
print out because um it's very printer friendly
and it kind of gives you a quick overview of um due dates for materials
that you need to send to us and so this what's nice about this is
that um it's also shaded to kind of help give
you a visual idea of what a word period we're talking
about to so we try uh there's a lot overlapping
but um but that's kind of the the goal of what
we're doing here and what's nice is that it
also includes like report deadlines but also period of performance
uh deadlines as well and it also has the quarterly grant accrual
report deadlines which tend to be quite sneaky
that not everybody is immediately aware of and so
um a quarterly grand account report is a way for us to ask you all for
just a brief snapshot of how things are going
with um with the spending down of your various awards
and so it's not a formal report uh that has omb approval and it's
standardized it's not a standard form or anything like that
which is why um you won't see it kind of in reach
as a formal official report it's it's um less formal than that and so
what we have here is and there's again there's corley grant accrual report
guidance on the uh grants to states manual and in that
guidance document is an example of this very very brief
and very simple um table and so what we're trying what
we're asking for you all from you is um to give us
the total expenses incurred as of the end of the quarter
for each of the grand awards um and then compare that with the total amount um of
draws that you've made in reach and then the final column is
column b less column c so we can understand kind of
how much you've accrued um locally and so we have a better snapshot of how
things are going um you know i feel like this this report um
sort of unnecessarily trips people up sometimes because it's a lot simpler
than i think people realize uh especially you know if you are if you
are like many states and are taking our guidance to uh spend
you know the majority of your funds first with your earliest
award and then your recent later sometimes that
that second row that would be your grand award for your most recent sometimes
it's a bunch of zeroes but even those bunch of zeros is part of
the quarterly grand accrual report so it's um and there isn't a formal way
of submitting it other than providing the figures
that the table is asking you for and then emailing them
to that email that's on the slide um so again it's it's something that is
a do quarterly and um
and we ask that you submit this information no later than four business
days after the last day of the quarter
because it's very um time sensitive information that our
grants admin office uses for their records um and
like i said at the end of each quarter you send an email to the address on the
powerpoint slide with the grant numbers and the total
grant accrual amounts then you'll be good to go
and finally uh we want to point you all to a very helpful resource for the lsda
coordinators and that's the lstac listserv um it's designed by and for
lsta coordinators to share information on practical aspects of administering
the lsta grants the lister is generously maintained by
the oregon state library and so we are very appreciative of them
facilitating this dialogue space for everybody and
coordinators can ask questions about reports and
sub awards um that's probably going to be an increasingly hot topic
uh allowable costs um the kind of the sky's the limit with a lot of the topics
um but larger questions of availability of
federal funds or other policy questions would be more
appropriately directed um to us your program officer if they're
very specific questions in that vein um
and as a disclaimer uh we are not the hosts of the listserv and therefore
we're not responsible for the content of the listserv itself so
um with that we would like to spend the rest of our time opening up
for any questions that any of you all may have
it looks like we already have two questions in the chat
the first one is from chris in connecticut um
do sub-awardees for arpa funds need to have need to be in sam.gov
or do they just need to have a duns number
i guess i can take a stab at this uh this is
a topic that will be covered in cam trowbridge's
two cfr 200 presentation tomorrow are it's it's complicated our
understanding of this and this is not specific to arpa
this is an umbrella sort of catch-all for all your grant awards
um sub recipients should get a duns at this time
that is the cleanest way of sort of accommodating them
you don't have to go through sam.gov at the moment
in order to get them a done so you can go straight to the dmb
site the tricky part of this is that we're in a migration
timeline that laura touched on at the outset
so in order to move from the duns to the ue
that is going to be accommodated through sam.gov
and only entities that are in sam.gov will eventually get assigned the ue or
have to go in later to get one so what we're
probably going to recommend for the near term is
you know if you're given spring summer awards
get them duns numbers and think about you know sort of easing them into
sam.gov as you have time in the fall program officers
correct me if i'm wrong on this and then by next spring april of 2022
when the changeover officially happens to the ue
the sub-recipients that are in the sam.gov system will kind of
automatically be you know brought into the fold
so there's a lot there um
we have a second one uh will one of the grand cycle calendars be created to
layer in cares act and arpa
we have not been in the habit of updating once
a grand award calendar is made for the year it's made at the time of award
we have not updated it now this happened last year with fiscal 2020
and then cares act were issued so what we were saying
is cares act is running in parallel to your fiscal year 2020 award and you
should follow the deadlines related to your allotment
grant as you would for cares act we're going
to say the same thing again this year because the same thing happened
when we created the fiscal 21 calendar we did make a note at the top and i
think this was like in a minuscule print on dennis's slide there
is you know any references to fiscal 20
in the fiscal 2021 calendar and compass cares act
and so when we make our next fiscal year 2022 calendar they're right up there in
the teeny tiny font at the very top is where that reference is
we'll do the same thing next year for arpa but for the meantime just know
that arpa is running in peril or will because
we haven't made the awards yet will run in parallel to your fiscal year 2021
allotment grant so any uh references in the calendar to
fiscal year 2021 will apply also to arpa
thank you another question excuse me uh when and how often do we
need to do fifato reporting
anybody have this one on the tip of their tongue i welcome other voices
i'll i'll note that fufato reporting uh is required for any sub awards that
are made at thirty thousand dollars and higher
that's a very recent change it used to be twenty five thousand dollars and
higher um you only need to do the reporting in
fufada within 30 days of you issuing the award
and you don't have to do anything additional um after that
so one time for fighter reporting within 30 days of an award that's over 30 grand
yeah um and that's i'm glad you brought that up because it's
for reporting it's a little bit of a reverse
schedule that i think most people are familiar with they're usually
once the awards are done and once everything's been spent is when we
report but for fada it's just as soon as you award the
funds and we've had questions before of well what if my recipient ends up not
spending as much as we were awarded and that doesn't matter
um it's how much you awarded them to begin with
and it is all about transparency people about getting the information out there
right away where is the money going if it's 30 000 or more who got it
and uh the public would have access to that
i'm hoping you all feel a little bit more comfortable since we've done the
orientation there was a lot to take in
well very good and of course if there are questions
that you have once the session is over feel free to reach out to your program
officer again our program officers are dennis nangle madison bowles
and michelle farrell hopefully you know who your program officer
is but if you don't just email any one of us and we will tell you
there is a question of from lori in new hampshire
or any of us participating in the casa webinar
thursday about sub grants i have not been i have been vaguely in
touch with tim carabini about the possibility of us participating in
webinars i don't have one calendared for this
thursday so that is a to be determined
here's an additional question on fifata if a sub awardee receives multiple
awards that total over 30 000 are over
a fufata report is needed that is a nuance i might have to look
into yeah my gut is that it's it's not a
requirement but we could double check on that because
it's a total i think it is uh for one one specific award it's the counting of
the award so it's sort of an interesting kind of
question yeah i get i get single audit threshold
rules mixed up with this sometimes where it's like a
single line of threshold is the total amount of any federal awards
given to any any particular recipient but but yeah we
can follow up with that to be sure it's a good question it is
well it seems our questions may be tapering off and that's okay we
just wanted to give you a kind of primer on the acronyms that we
tend to throw around in the federal government so that when you come into
the conference tomorrow you're not um completely confused and and then just
to you know welcome you and to say that
this is a federal and state partnership and we are
very eager to walk alongside you as you carry
out this program so that we can head off any problems at
the outset um there are no stupid questions
please come to us with anything on your mind always
and and we will do our best to help you through it we know there's a lot coming
at you right now from the federal government in particular
and um and we we we will help you along as best we can
so thank you to all of you and we will plan to see you tomorrow
tomorrow our conference starts two hours earlier and it will run
for four hours total
it has a different url so please don't try to use this one again
but we will we will see you there thanks
everybody
you