Teri DeVoe, IMLS: And I want to welcome everybody again. I'm Terry to be with the Grants to States program, and every year we try to put together a refresher on the State program report, because in recent years it's definitely seen differences, especially with those stimulus spots.
But i'm very happy to report that we are getting back to normal order this year, where you do not have either cares or Arpa to report on. In addition to your allotment, you just have your allotment grants. So we are going to cover what that means for you this year.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: We've got a great program outlined, and it starts with a quiz. We're gonna uh start. Start you off just with some warm up questions. There is no pressure. Um, Since you're muted we're going to ask you if you want to respond to the quiz questions, to just type this into chat we'll get a sense of where the answers are landing, and then we will share the actual answers.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: We're gonna give you some top takeaways near the top of the hour, so that if your time is limited and you can only stay for a portion at least you'll hear the most important essential things that we want you to take away from this Webinar.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: We'll cover reporting deadlines. We often get questions that pertain to how obligating funds versus liquidating funds. Different are different. And so we're going to cover that
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: although we're not going to get deep into allowable costs. In this Webinar there are some considerations that when we review the Spr each year we think it would be good to cover these again. So we're going to just go through some light touch below costs.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: Similarly, the interim Federal financial report which is actually reporting just on financial data for the two thousand and twenty-three award, which is the one that you just were issued this past year. Uh we often have uh typical mistakes like the same kinds of mistakes made across from report to report. So if you happen to be a finance contact for your state that are tuning in today, and you're responsible for this portion of the report. We encourage you to stay
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: around so that you can hear how we would love to see that report filled out,
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: and then we're going to get into the main report and entry project data and the financial status report and it and the administrative part of the report. The administrative costs, and then just some general best practices uh for these day program reports. So we have a full gamut of things to share with you. And with that i'm going to turn it over to Dennis, who's going to get us started with this? Quiz?
Dennis Nangle: It's great to see so many people um attending. And again, as Terry mentioned, this is just a warm up to get our kind of wheels spinning with some of these questions. But, um! Ah! We already have some answers, so i'll get right to it. Two or false. Both. The interim, financial
Dennis Nangle: and the final report are due on December the thirtieth I'm, seeing a flood of false,
Dennis Nangle: which is very exciting, because that is the correct answer.
Dennis Nangle: Um, but uh, yes, it used to be this way. Um, But obviously things have changed, and while one deadline has been extended, the interim financial report has remained due on. Still, on December thirtieth,
Dennis Nangle: I think the answer will pop up
Dennis Nangle: it's
Dennis Nangle: on the
Dennis Nangle: Okay, which are the best dates to reflect in a project A. The default dates of the entire two-year Grant period B dates for when the project actually ran, or C project dates can start thirty days before the start of the great period, and thirty days after
Dennis Nangle: I'm. Also seeing such wonderful immediate consensus of again the correct answer. This is a good one. So far we're looking for B dates, for when that project actually ran.
Dennis Nangle: Now, if you wanted to be a stickler and over a really technical and break the system like I would do. You could say that technically A and B. Were correct if your project actually ran for the whole two years. But again, we're just looking for real dates of Lewin activities and funds applied for actually happen during that time.
Dennis Nangle: Next question
Dennis Nangle: the trade of cost, a collections for a new team room be a trainer's salary and benefits for a computer class. See new office furniture for the State Library, administrative Agency, or D. All of the above
Dennis Nangle: it's interesting, seeing some
Dennis Nangle: less of a barrage of answers immediately.
Dennis Nangle: He's
Dennis Nangle: it's just
Dennis Nangle: interest and interest.
Well,
Dennis Nangle: the correct answer is, See new Office Furniture for the State Library Administrative Agency, and we'll talk about the difference what the constitutes and administrative costs. Later, we'll also talk about how that differs from maybe a sub recipient indirect costs, and how those kinds of principles overlap. That's all coming later. So that was a good warm.
Dennis Nangle: What is a baseline consideration for bundling discrete-grant activities bundling question into a single
Dennis Nangle: A. When a single grantee is running multiple grants.
Dennis Nangle: When grants with statewide audiences and large price tags. Don't have a lot of exciting outcomes.
Dennis Nangle: See when the work all supports a single intent and the same subjects and beneficiary.
Dennis Nangle: Ah! Since a little bit more unanimous,
Dennis Nangle: and you all are correct when the work all supports a single intent, and the same subjects and beneficiary audiences. If that's a lot of words to process. That's okay. We go over bundling in more specifically.
Dennis Nangle: I'll come to. I'll come.
Dennis Nangle: So Yes, you all made it, and it survived the warm up quiz congratulations.
Dennis Nangle: Uh, now we're moving on to the top. Takeaways. We get into some of the um out to logistics of in the Svr. A top takeaway, and you'll see this theme. Several places throughout this presentation is to submit all your reports in the Spr. Not a gms um Egms is built as a system to receive reports, and so that's why he can be confusing um for for people who are in the Egm at Egos more often than the Spr.
Dennis Nangle: But for grants and States. Considering the complexity of our program, we submit everything in the Spr, and that will always be the case.
Dennis Nangle: Um! The second top take way is not to have two tabs for windows open when in the spr um we recommend instead especially we see this we at we, we we urge people not to do this for the sake of data. Um! When you have two tabs or windows, open the system doesn't know what content to save. And this often happens when you might be multiple users might be in the system. So what we recommend instead is, if you need somebody to review
Dennis Nangle: um a draft of a project that you've written up, or financials to use the print function, save it as a Pdf and ask for feedback that way. If you have to do that
Dennis Nangle: uh the third top takeaway would be to open the final financial status record and save it one last time before you certify your report. Um, you. Some of you may have heard feedback from us on this where we um needed you before we could accept your report to um save the Fsr. One more time, and that's because saving sort of is also sort of a sink
Dennis Nangle: button, because so much of the Fsr. Has fields that auto calculate and pull from your project financial. So if you started your Fsr once and you hit save, and it was marked as completed. But then you made additional tweaks to your projects. The Fsr. Will will reflect those changes until you hit safe. So that's the top takeaway, and we will cover that further again later in the in the Webinar.
Dennis Nangle: The fourth top takeaway is
Dennis Nangle: it's similar to the first one? If you have any State contact updates. If somebody changes a position, if somebody vacates a position or somebody is new, um use the state intersection of the Sdr. And not egs. What we use, say the State info section, and are alerted of changes um to that as soon as they're made. And then Laura, primarily, who is huge. Help um make sure, once we get that notification that those contacts are reflected in all of your open awards,
Dennis Nangle: and that will also ensure that they're on the right communications and contact lists for communications. So
Dennis Nangle: those are important. And then the final top takeaway for this section is a reminder of the authorizing official certification steps.
Dennis Nangle: So, um! As you are getting, wrapping up the certification process and working with your authorizing official, who is often your State librarian, but not all the way.
Dennis Nangle: Um The steps for the interim Ffr. Is going through projects, then a financial status report, and then choosing the interim Ffr. And Then there's a certified by N.
Dennis Nangle: It's that differs from when you're having your certifying official on certify the financial status report, and all the rest of the projects related to that that's going into projects, certify projects, and then clicking the certified reports like button again, and then at you're asked to enter your password and then those projects are certified. We will go through visually those steps later on in the Webinar.
Dennis Nangle: Uh another top reminder to have a little reminder is upcoming, reporting deadlines. You all um knocked out the knocked out of the park. That's true or false questions. So to uh just reinforce what you already know. But uh the two thousand and twenty-three interim Federal financial report is to December thirtieth um and once again. That's like a halfway through your open award sort of check in um that's separate from your what's due in J. At the end of January, which is your two thousand and twenty
Dennis Nangle: two final financial status record which encompasses your performance report, which are your spr projects, and that is sort of your full picture, a close out of the entire two thousand and twenty,
Dennis Nangle: and as a reminder, if you're unable to meet your reporting deadline, you do need to contact us before that deadline to ask for a recording
Dennis Nangle: that it will be one of our webinars out our handy dandy visual timeline that we love to pair it out. We're especially excited because it's a simpler timeline than in a couple of years previously. Presentations that we've given. So that's very exciting. But this is just here to once again remind everyone that we give. We offer Grant to States awards on a yearly basis. But, as you all are probably aware, most of you,
Dennis Nangle: the award period is two years, so that inevitably creates overlap, where often there are two awards open at any given moment.
Dennis Nangle: And so this just exemplifies that we have October one to September the thirtieth
Dennis Nangle: um of ah at the top there and then those dark boxes, right after the awarded period is finished, represents how much time you have to ah close out. Your financials make us where everything is reconciled, and also get the Svr. Ah, and we'll talk more about liquidation, and and in a little bit. But I also wanted to just add a caveat to this visualization, and even though that dark box at the end
Dennis Nangle: case when you can, the time that you have to report after the Grant periods over it doesn't mean to suggest that you can't add projects that are completed before the end of the Grant period to the
Dennis Nangle: the spr is always open for you to begin adding projects. So I just wanted to make that clear.
Dennis Nangle: Yes, that's a I want to cover just a difference between what obligating funds um compared to liquidation of um from a grants to States perspective uh this little quote is pulled from the grants of state's award guidance. That is, um. If you have a link to the Powerpoint, the this is a link to that guidance that's on the grants to States Manual, and this guidance also shows up in your each grant award in a Gms under your files. So
Dennis Nangle: But this says, all project activities must be completed and all funds obligated by September the thirtieth, two thousand and twenty-three and all financial obligations incurred under the award must be liquidated
Dennis Nangle: by january the twenty ninth two thousand and twenty-four,
Dennis Nangle: so I hope that clarifies um that we were still looking at from a time period activities and charges obligated within the allowable period of performance
Dennis Nangle: as long as they've been obligated, and you can demonstrate that the activity took place before September thirtieth. That's fine. And then you have from October one to January, twenty-nine to actually do on the liquidation and liquidating could include reconciling accounts. Um, making some like final uh journal adjustments internal entries related to things again that occur within the Grant period,
Dennis Nangle: and then making payment requests from Imls to make sure the balance is he wrote out, or the balance just matches what you've actually spent.
Dennis Nangle: And, hey, have you heard this before? Here's another reminder to submit all the reports through the Spr. For Granted States program, and not so. We just would love to visually remind you, emphasize that help
Dennis Nangle: rehearse that. So? There's no confusion, and for your convenience there's a link to the spr at the bottom of this slide
Dennis Nangle: once again. Um, if you ever attempted to submit a report in e Gms. And Egms ever tries to convince you that you should be submitting reports there. Do not listen and remember this: these tips from this refresher.
Dennis Nangle: Okay. And so another top take away. And this is more related to you, as you can compile some of the narrative elements of your Sdr. Related to costs that are not allowable; that some of the narrative, and even some of the budget descriptions could all lead to that. We don't want to see in a project.
Dennis Nangle: So these are some examples of costs that are not allowable. Um entertainment, for example. Um! There is a fine line with most of these. There is a fine line, so that's why we kind of want to make it clear that it is not something on allowable. Um, if you are paying for um
Dennis Nangle: a a band to play music related to maybe a cultural literacy program that is not technically entertainment that's related to education. But if all you say is, you know, we had a great band at this event, then it can be construed as entertainment.
Dennis Nangle: Um advocacy is a little bit clearer, but we all we often see advocacy or advocacy adjacent language um often with projects that go toward trustees which makes sense. But we just have to make sure
Dennis Nangle: that funding Lsd. Funding in this context deals with it, does not um relate to advocacy or fundraising um something else. We see a lot um, which there is also a fine line with is general marketing. Um! It has to be specific to an Lsta funded project. And so
Dennis Nangle: just remember that when you're paying for marketing or on marketing is going toward a project, it should not be posed or presented. As you know, we let the general public know how great the library is. It has to be specific to um something that was funded
Dennis Nangle: uh something We also want to see in a project, and this is sort of especially in this post. Arpa kind of returning back to what a grants and State funds are initially intended for the furniture with no programmatic purpose. Um, there is some furniture, as you all know, that helps maybe in certain early literacy, um context, which is fine, but just separating uh furniture for a sub recipient or a library would not be um considered allowable,
Dennis Nangle: and certainly in a State library context would not be considered a direct cost.
Dennis Nangle: Ah, some planting funds. This is Federal funds that are used in place of local funds. So if we see budget descriptions or narratives that said, You know, these Federal funds have helped
Dennis Nangle: kind of replace gaps or losses in our municipalities operating budget that would be considered supplanting because Federal funds are intended to be used to supplement or to to be, in addition to the baseline local funding.
Dennis Nangle: Uh Another reference we don't want to see is costs associated with starting a new organization. So we know we think new organizations are great. Um, you know that that's fine, but just from a purely from a a legislative and allowable cost standpoint. Our funds simply cannot go towards startup costs of starting
Dennis Nangle: um. Another uh
Dennis Nangle: reference we don't want to see in a project our operational costs in State Library administrative agency projects,
Dennis Nangle: and we'll go over this. But in a future slide. But this would be considered an administrative cost, and so that would go on to the administrative project instead.
Dennis Nangle: And then, finally, this is maybe sort of an umbrella or a catch. All ah activities unrelated to the library services and technology act purposes and priorities. This,
Dennis Nangle: in the context, to contextualize this, and where we saw this, especially after reading a lot of innovative Arpa funding projects.
Dennis Nangle: This it's great to work with community organizations, or maybe even other State or agencies or organizations. Um, but they always have to be all any any costs or any funding that we support. These organizations, or these collaborations still have to be under the umbrella of Lst. Purposes and priorities. We don't, for example. Um,
Dennis Nangle: you know we don't want to uh
Dennis Nangle: put money all in to an outside organization for them to do their work. The library has to be integrated in some capacity, and the purposes and priorities of providing library services to the public still has to be considered in those kinds of activities and projects,
and I see questions, but I am trusting that they are being answered.
Dennis Nangle: So I do believe now that i'm passing it on to Laura for the interim ffr portion.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: Yes, thank you, Dennis
we will be going into how to enter your interim. Ffr. Data for the my twenty-three allotment award. We've had to return a lot of these reports in recent years. So We just wanted to review some common issues
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: as a reminder. We've included a screenshot here. That shows the path to the interim Federal financial report in the espr which you'll fill out with your fy two thousand and twenty-three allotment information now from the project's venue, you would select financial status, report and then select interim Ffr.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: For the Ffr Federal Agency. Brand number make sure that you write in the allotment log number, and these are seen here on the screen. You can find it in the Imls egms reach system as well as on your official award notification document, which is seen here in red at the bottom of the page,
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: and this is a screenshot showing where you can locate the amount drawn down in reach. First, you want to go to the payments, tab in the two thousand and twenty three award record.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: Then look at the total approved request. Figure as seen circled here in the middle of the page. Be sure to look at the request status state, as shown, circled, and read at the bottom of the page, and then subtract any requests approved after September the thirtieth two thousand and twenty-three,
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: and here we have the total Federal funds authorized field. This is auto-populated, and it reflects the fy two thousand and twenty three allotment amount, and you note that you may have to open the report and you hit. Save for the auto-populated fields to appear
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: the Federal share of expenditures will be how much you've extended on your award as of September, the thirtieth two thousand and twenty three, and you can find this information in Htms. Reach under the payments area.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: The total recipient shear required field is also out of populated, and it reflects the allotment match requirement
in the recipient chair of Expenditures fields. You will report on how much you've contributed to match so far.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: And again, as I mentioned before, You know, in recent years we've been turning a lot of intermf of ours, and so we wanted to just highlight Some of the most common issues we've seen. Cash disbursements should match egms. Reach payments as of September thirtieth, two thousand and twenty three,
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: and the amount in cash disbursements, typically matches the Federal share of expenditures. You'll want to leave indirect expenses blank. And you will also typically leave program income like
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: we've also included a link here at the bottom of this slide. If you want to see more tips.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: Also note that the interim Ffr. Has its own certification process of this sometimes falls through the cracks, and will follow up the authorized certifying official, which is usually the chief officer, needs to certify by the reporting deadline of December, the thirtieth two thousand and twenty three,
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: and you can ensure the certification went through by looking at the certification fields in the interim Ffr. Which, once certified, should contain the name of the chief and the data stamp.
Laura McKenzie, IMLS: And with that I will pass it back to Dennis,
Dennis Nangle: going to go over um going through some of the elements of the administrative project, and what is considered um costs under the administrative project. So what you would use the administrative project for, or what it is available to you to use for our
Dennis Nangle: funds that fit as administrative costs under or percent
Dennis Nangle: of your total award, as well as any other state or local match that would be considered administrative costs. And so you have up to four percent that you can use. But you don't have to use all four percent for administrative costs.
Dennis Nangle: Um! And so this kind of breaks down. What administrative costs are. I won't. Read every bullet by bullet that I will give a top-level overview.
Dennis Nangle: The administrative cost something we we probably heard. If you've been around us talking about costs a lot. You've probably seen a lot of these
Dennis Nangle: um adjectives to describe them, but they're necessary, reasonable, allocable, and we underscore an allowable, because even if they are under this umbrella of maybe indirect. They still have to be
Dennis Nangle: um, and they still have to be. Ah, not still have to be. They are often associated with that. Our State library's, management, oversight and administration of plans and activities under the library services and technology app for Lsta. As you can see here, there's a list of examples
Dennis Nangle: you know, personnel who manage and administrate the Lsd. You know um travel expenses of those who would be maybe doing site visits, or other sort of administrative activity would be considered an administrative cost. Um. Any costs related to financial management or even audit of the outstate program would be considered administrative. Um. This is a big one that we see a lot, and that we kind of um provide guidance on is facilities related costs,
Dennis Nangle: rent, maintenance, utilities, security. Um that would be considered indirect, but still related to the administration of the program, and so that would fall under administrative costs,
Dennis Nangle: State advisory councils, any, and costs associated with the State Advisory Council and convening them would be considered it
Dennis Nangle: any the publicizing, the publicizing of the State plan, or potentially also the the work related to the the plan in the evaluation. Um. And if you do, ah subgrants grant selection, and obviously, if you ah needed Federal funds to
Dennis Nangle: cover your time reporting on the Federal funds, it would be considered administrative cost.
Dennis Nangle: I want to indicate with those bullets on the bottom there that the four percent ceiling is related to the Federal funds
Dennis Nangle: the administrative costs at the State Library Agency. But there is not a seal on State or local funds that go toward administrative costs, and those the reason why that might be helpful to you, not only just to provide a a complete picture, maybe, of how your state or other funds are supporting the Administration's program, which would certainly be helpful to know. But, um! That would
Dennis Nangle: putting match funds in that column in your administrative project would count towards your overall match requirement. So in the event that um that would that would help You just know that your State funds you wouldn't have to have. That's not part of the cap for the workers um administrative. Now, on this, on the
Dennis Nangle: sub, award side, administrative costs are counted within the project, and those would be
Dennis Nangle: considered under each subrecipient's indirect cost rate
Dennis Nangle: that does not count toward the four percent ceiling that would be related to whatever indirect cost rate your subrecipient has negotiated, and as many of you may already know, that de Minimis at least is ten percent.
Dennis Nangle: So when you're dealing with sub recipients, often their indirect costs for administrative costs would be that percentage would be higher than what a State Library has with the four percent seal.
Dennis Nangle: This is what part of the This is what the administrative costs.
Dennis Nangle: Section of the financial status report it looks like, and just to um, briefly kind of give you a sense of how the form works the under the allowed column that is, auto-calculated, and um and provided automatically because we have all of your award data in the Str. Already. And so it's already giving you that number automatically based on four percent
Dennis Nangle: of of your award. In this case your Fy twenty, two award for recording purposes. Um. The actual column will be auto populated from the number you provide in the administrative project specifically under the Federal column. Uh, and so that will be, what, whether it rolls up into the actual. And as I mentioned earlier, if you don't see that number in there, and you've already added it to your administrative project you might need to save
Dennis Nangle: again to make sure that the number carried over. And then the third column is obviously just the difference between these two numbers.
Dennis Nangle: And so, as I mentioned, if you have any incorrect calculations, try saving it again, and you might get the number in the right place.
Dennis Nangle: So this is once again
Dennis Nangle: more of the financial status report and um beyond the administrative art. Just ah areas that we want to point out that you need to fill out compared to um compared to what the system fills out. So the first thing that you would need to fill out that isn't automatically populated is the grant award number, and now that we are
Dennis Nangle: not dealing with two awards under one fiscal year, they'll just be one Grant award number, and you can find that in your
Dennis Nangle: in your official award notification in egms uh under the line this is Federal award Id number or fame. Um Also, if you're in egms already. The Egms will organize your rewards by the number, and you so you'll be able to see your one number that way also,
Dennis Nangle: and the total Federal funds authorized for this funding period. That section is
Dennis Nangle: is already in the system, and you can see in the State allotment table The awards are, The word amounts are reflected there, too. But that's not something you would have to manually.
Dennis Nangle: This is the section of the Fsr. Specifically, the match and the Federal outlays. Section. Uh, as you can see, those first three fields are once again auto populated um, but they're auto populated, based on the numbers that you provide in other sections of the Sp. Specifically, the projects in this case. So it will take any financials that you've added under match, state, or match other
Dennis Nangle: across all of your projects, including your administrative project
Dennis Nangle: and um, it will pull that and add all of that into one number um, And once again, if it's not showing the right number, it might be needing to save the Sr. Once again to show the the updated figures. Um, and so that will give you the total match, and then that fourth line that says minimum match required. That is, auto populated because it's a flat.
Dennis Nangle: The match is always a flat thirty, three percent of your total award. So that's already in there
on
Dennis Nangle: that's fairly straightforward. Um. And then that final field down at the bottom. The federal share of net outlets. This is another auto-populated number,
Dennis Nangle: and this is all of your lsta financials of that column in all of your projects rolled up into this number.
Dennis Nangle: So basically all that to say is, if you expected or anticipate that you've spent down all of your award um. Then
Dennis Nangle: the Federal share of net outlays when you're all finished reporting that number should be the same as the total award amount that you were given,
Dennis Nangle: and so hopefully that kind of helps you, as you're cross-checking and making sure that you have reported all the financials for your across your projects.
Dennis Nangle: I'm going to turn it over to Cindy.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Thanks to us it
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: I'm going to kick off that second. This section by going over some first steps. If you are a new user
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: as well as some suggested approaches for preparing your spi report.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: I saw some um new names on our participant list today, so if you do not have a login for the Spr. Your Imls program officer can set you up in the system by creating an account for you. Your username is typically your email address, and we will send you your password.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: You can change your password by going into the account management section of the Spr. After you've logged in.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Please note that We recommend Chrome and Firefox as far as browsers, for the system issues with saving and editing may occur. And we've talked about this, but it absolutely bears repeating, If you haven't to have two browser windows open or tabs um while working in the spr um,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: it's best to avoid that by using well, this often occurs when users want to look back at the prior Year's report while computing the current years, especially if you're trying to copy and paste
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: previous or statewide projects. However, this often leads to editing and reporting bugs. Instead. Use the print function within older projects, and grab a Pdf of the text, so you can view it concurrently. A caveat to this,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: avoiding a secondary tab is when an activity tab automatically pops up.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: I'm just going to find the right slide.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Ah, there we go. One of the first things that you should do when logging into the Spr for the first time is updating or verifying your own information, as well as the info about your State Library, including fields like the Uei, which appears in the final report.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: All three of these options are in the account management. Menu. If your State library grants sub awards don't forget to maintain the Civil Ward info section in the Spr.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: The zomb Award info section is separate from the project section of the Spr. And provides information about some awards beyond just the ones that were funded. This is a great way for Im ol to keep track of award applications that you received, but didn't necessarily fund
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: some writing tips for projects. I'm not going to go through these, but when you're working through the spr and individual projects. In addition to using some plain language, remember that the report is happening after the completion of activities, and should be written in past tests.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: The Spr. Reports should avoid library jargon. We all have that alphabet soup in our brains.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Um! And you should keep in mind that the text will be accessible to the general public. The one excess. Excuse me. The one exception to using names. Proper names in the report is with outside consultants, which is, and it's acceptable to use their names in the report
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: when working through abstracts, project abstracts or activity Abstracts Imls does not need a general Sl. Aaa program, description or history. Think about what did you do this year? What was accomplished?
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: It should generally reflect the budget and activities,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: and I will also say that after years of formatting woes in the Spr abstracts, we have updated the system this year
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: to render everything plain text so hopefully, you will not see all that spacing issues if you're if you're copy and pasting from other reports into the abstracts that was our goal. So, hopefully you'll see you're welcome.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: So yeah, that was a goal. Ah, apparently that was a good. That was a good goal. So Ah, if you have some awardees or project directors filling things out in the spr. These tips are really important points to relate to them, and, as always, always,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: review and or proofread prior to submission to Imls, and you're all very welcome. I'm so glad you're very happy about that.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: So statewide projects. This This tends to stop some folks rightfully, so I know in my former life it was always something that I had to really stop and think hard on an example. An example of a statewide project might be statewide databases. They are provided to everyone in the State.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: However, something like summer reading,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: while potentially made available to the entire state, may not have statewide uptake, and only have a few participating libraries. If this is the case, summer reading probably isn't a statewide project, even if the grantee and you can list, the grantee as the the Sl. A.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Instead in the activity area indicating the participating library's, bar by name or number, would be optimal for reporting
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: undulating projects for those of you who have known me, especially when I was a former Lsta coordinator. You know I love a good bundle. There are several criteria that must be met to combine a civil ward into a single project at a minimum. They support the same intent and cover the same subjects.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: For example, if a State completed a continuing end project that offered grants of, say, two thousand dollars to individual libraries, the grants could be bundled as one project or one line item with different locals listed In the
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: In cases like these you would list the State Library or sl aaa contact as the project director. If you have straightforward purchases by a number of libraries that are more expensive, such as bookmobiles, which we saw a lot of during Barba. They could also be bundled. Even if they're a lot more expensive,
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: you would indicate the sub recipient at the activity level in the locals section, if possible, or report them by number to keep the administrative burden in check.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: And this is another example of bundling seventy five libraries within a State utilized funds to purchase learning kits. These projects could be bundled into a single line item in the Spr. So long as the libraries were counted somewhere, either by institution, name, or institution type, at the activity level
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: and Don't forget.
Sl Aas can always upload additional materials to support various projects or provide details if appropriate.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Now, this slide may look familiar to you, but hopefully, at least those of you who worked on the most recent five-year Plan
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: projects should have one intent
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: there are fourteen intents to choose from with six focal areas in parentheses.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Intents are critical to knowing how to report and define your projects.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: The intents are related to the crosswalk. Your State libraries submitted within their five-year plan.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: State goals correspond to focal areas and projects correspond to intents.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Now, Madison is going to provide some more details on reporting individual projects.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Thank you so much, Cindy. All right. So we're going to tackle some activities. An overall principle of the spr framework is limiting activities to ten per project.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): A related principle is that more complex or more expensive projects would likely have more activities to consider something in activity. It should account for at least ten percent of the total budget of the project, and that includes both I'm last funds and matching, or in kind funds.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now, uh, let's talk a little bit about the descriptions.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Here is an example of an activity abstract, that briefly outlines what happened. This is a great example. It's the same clear, and provides only the necessary info and keep hearing a say Only scribe only great What happened this year doing? Um ask yourself, Does the writing, the activities and abstract, actually accurately reflect what is going on in the budget. We want to see these activities reflect your budget.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): You can see the activity, mode, the activity, and mode selections here in this screenshot, underneath which are our instruction consultation
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): uh activities, also prompt you to enter quantities which is not in the screenshot. Uh and these can be, how how long a program lasts ten minutes, how many consultations there are which would be an example for this one, or how many books are purchased, and a somewhat common issue we see is leaving those quantities blank zeros. So when you're feeling out these activities, be sure to click figures
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): in those quantities.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now, the selection of the activity type should generally follow the spending and focus of the project. If you have a staff, if you have staff attending conferences. You want to use the instruction, dash other activity and mode and activities uh the surveys that you do for your activities do not do do not need to be logged in as a separate activity. Remember, it's probably not part of that. Ten percent of your of your total budget.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Um. So You don't need to include that
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now for that procurement activity. This one is used very sparingly, and is only available under the institutional capacity intent.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Here you can see two examples of purchases that are not procurement as defined by the Spr. System. So things like purchasing a database would be content. Acquisition, or purchasing laptops for a learning lab would be considered instruction.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now, as a reminder, we have outcomes reporting built into the Spr, both at the activity level and the project model. An outcome is the effect of programs and services, something that changes in the individual's life or changes the community. It's a change in their knowledge, attitude, skills, behavior or condition. Uh, and what we're trying to do in these outcomes is document what changed for the participants due to their use
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): of a program or service. Now we have this chart. This may look familiar to you when it comes to activity outcomes. Um! There are four times when you will be prompted to include outcome information for an activity, and those are the ones showing up in a warrant.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Three of them involve surveying the library workforce, and the other is survey the general public. For example, if you have an instruction uh program for the library workforce and in the mode uh it's in the mode of a program. Then you should uh have surveyed those participants, and we realize that this requires a lot more uh forward planning. This can be done after the fact, and you can see the screenshot on the bottom is how it shows up
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): the spr once you input it in activity. Um, And that little outcomes. What uh shows up as orange. That means we're expecting outcome outcome survey information in that activity. Now note that Im less does not expect you to have surveyed children, so no one under the age of eighteen
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): activities that involve children do not have to have outcome figures. But that said, We want you to include in the overall project outcome section some information on how many children participated, or some things that you observed in that project.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): So some budget reminders. We're We're not going to touch too extensively on the budget section here. Um, but we want to provide a few tips uh Conference registrations go in the services category, not travel
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): purchases of application, software and licensing. Those also go under services, not supplies.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): And in general, please avoid using vague or misleading language things like other related costs or miscellaneous. Uh, do not work in the reporting here, so please be specific in those budget categories when you're describing what you pay for
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): now for the salaries and and wages and benefits category Uh, when filling in from out in this category, please provide the position, titles, and ft equivalence, especially when there was more than one staff person being quantified here. Uh, Now, these two screenshots provide good examples of a bunch of descriptions. The first shows the differentiation between Uh Lsta funds and State funds covering that position,
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): and the second shows how a single staff member salary is allocated across multiple projects. And we've said before, I will say it again. We do not need names. We just need the position titles.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): So the other operational expense category is one. Uh we see errors, and often Um. This category in the budget is only for indirect costs for a sub recipient. If you, as the sl aa, have indirect costs. Those should be represented in the administrative project, and we have some examples on this slide. The two at the top were returned, because the charges describe are not considered other operational
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): expenses, as they directly relate to the project. You can see that these types of charges could be misperceived as other type charges or charge that doesn't necessarily fit within the other budget boxes.
But for the purpose of the spr, this category is only reserved for indirect costs. So for both of these instances you would want to move those to services.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now the example at the bottom is what we want to see. Uh when filling out this budget category um, which are indirect costs for your sub recipients. Uh, we'd like to see the specific indirect cost rate percentage that was charged to the sub recipient. Uh, if you can provide that
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): um. And again, if you have a project that combines multiple sub-recipients, if you're doing that bundling, it would be ideal. To itemize those costs and have the indirect cost rate for each of your sub-recipients.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): So additional materials. Uh, remember to upload any additional materials. If you have them. These really help us understand the story. And what went on uh for a project. We really love photos. We use them internally and externally. Uh in our work at Imls, and uh attaching other things really is helpful, too, so that that includes outreach materials curricula uh website links
include a sign-up forms or any sort of marketing material. So please please please use use that field.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): So uh project outcomes. I talked about activity outcomes. So projects may not always have obvious outcomes, especially if you have a project that you continue from year to year. But this section is a good place to justify why you are continuing to do this project every year, or why not be continuing it?
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Some ideas that you can include here things that help save you. Money changes and logistics, and and the effects of those changes, and the reasons for those changes um from users. Or you know, anecdotal stores that you've heard that work that happened during the project.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now we understand also that all the questions in the Outcomes project outcomes may not necessarily apply to all of your projects. So, instead of leaving it. Link, please just put in a or not applicable that will signal to us that you did uh in in personally. Uh, just skip the question. Uh, and please remember that these questions are public. Uh, they go onto the Fbi public website after we review and approve your projects.
So the public has access to them as well
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): project tags. Um. They're also of interest to us for for national level analysis, and they could be helpful for you as well. But this is an open text field with no controlled vocabulary, so you can do what you think is best in terms of tags, and if you have multiple tags that do separate them with commas.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Uh, not only projects uh some States do have a match only project where the budget would have zero dollars for Lsta funds, but it it's covering uh the match funds, the State funds. Um. These will be recorded as any other project, and the budget figures budget figures are recorded. Uh, we'll have those figures in the appropriate categories, and you will need to at least identify an intent and have at least one activity
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): these treat match-only projects as you would an S. And Sp: Excuse me an lsta-funded project
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): right Well, you've completed your data entry uh I've got all your information into your projects, and now you have to change your project status. You do this from uh. You change the status from draft to complete it, and you have to do this before the validation or certification process. Uh, the best way to do it is to do it in bulk. Um in the project listing area. You could just uh check all projects and change the status.
You complete it.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now you also need to change the status of the administrative project separately from the projects Uh, you have to open it separately and change the status uh manually and for the financial status report that is automatically completed. But again you said it before I will say it again. After you finish all of your project data, input. Go into the final Fsr and click, save, and that way it will roll up a
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): new data from those projects into the Fsr. And be the most up to date.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now we're in certification uh your say librarian or chief or authorized official. Uh, we'll. We'll need to certify the Fpr. In this screenshot here shows the steps uh for them to do that. If you want to validate the project, all Lc: all Lc. Coordinators can validate the whole Spr report before the certifying official certifies that will help you eliminating risks of
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): uh errors that may show up at certification. But you can do the validation, and it's the same pathway here. If you go on your set of five reports you would just click the the validate reports button, which would show up orange for you.
Now this will certify the two thousand and twenty two reports, the Fsr. And the admin project.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Now you can ensure certification by checking the project status under list projects, and it will say, certified or by looking at the certification fields in the Fsr. Which once that is certified, it will contain the name and the date stamp of your certifying official
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): final reminders taking you guys home. Um! So we got the recording deadlines. You guys seem to be pretty pretty on top of that. That's great, if you need uh have. If you want to have a place where you want to play around with the Spr, or you want to train a colleague, we do have an Hecr sandbox. If you don't have access to that uh contact your program, officer, let us know we can set you up in that uh, and also any sort of uh resources extra resources for the Sp.
And how to use it are found in the grants to States manual and the like is at the bottom of this slide.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): All right, with two minutes to spare. We have concluded our refresher, Webinar, and you have our contact information listed on the slide, but we are open for any final questions,
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): feel free to unmute or put him in the chat.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: Maybe i'll just go over a few for questions that come in during, so that the people listening to the recording will get the benefits. There was a question about whether, when marketing projects use Lsta funds, whether they have to um. Acknowledge that in the marketing that this was, you know, funded by Lsta, and the answer was, Yes, and that is part of our acknowledgment requirements.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: There was a question about whether in the budget boxes, instead of putting percentages for salaries and fte. If people could put exact dollar amounts, and that is also acceptable. We just need precise levels of detail.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: And then there was a question about whether the entire spr now has plain text in it, and the answer to that was yes. It is all plain text at this point.
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: Thanks for those great questions.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: We also had some shout outs to the validation feature. If you want to head off errors before your authorized certify official accidentally gets them. That is a great tool.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Who hasn't done that?
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: I think I think we've covered it, folks, and you have our contact information. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for your work to report these funds and be good stewards of this Federal investment in libraries. Your work
Teri DeVoe, IMLS: It is the reason for why we do what we do, and it proves back to Congress and the administration. How important this work is! So we don't take it lightly. We appreciate you, and we look forward to reading your reports.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Thanks so much, everybody.
Madison Bolls, IMLS (she/her): Thanks, everyone. I'm gonna stop the recording now. Thank you.
Cindy Boyden - IMLS: Somebody is headed back to the.