Grant Selection & Performance Task Force

Present: Stacie Haines, Rob Meinders, Ed Barrett, Matt L’Italien & Jonathan Barczyk  
VM staff present: Maryalice Crofton & Jamie McFaul

Discussion of formula ARPA funds. Maine's Formula AmeriCorps ARPA award will cover just under $359,000 each year for the 2021, 2022, and 2023 program years if it is allocated equally across the years.  The directions from CNCS for allocating the funds to address increased living allowance are complicated and means several programs cannot claim the new allowable rate of $20,000 per MSY.

The operating grants authorized in June need $164,429 to increase the living allowance to the new amount and cover increased FICA, worker comp, etc. The funding requests of programs on the waiting list exceed the remaining annual amount. As a reminder, the wait-listed entities are Town of VanBuren (for balance of request), Trekkers, Main Street Skowhegan and Maine Youth Alliance. The VanBuren project decided not to go to a full 5-member project this year but stay at 2 members. That means, following the order of scores in the competition, Main Street Skowhegan and Trekkers can be fully funded. In addition, there are enough funds to provide the Maine Youth Alliance with two AmeriCorps slots and associated funds. MYA had the lowest score. Total funding for the first year of the awards is $234,900. The porposed total for increases and wait-list is $399,329. Funds can be drawn from year 2 and 3 to cover the higher amount. Staff don't believe the ARPA expenditure in year one will be fully used because the existing grants do not usually fully enroll and recruitment is very challenging right now. 

Task Force members agreed with the plan. Staff will move forward with the award process.

All programs must provide evidence they meet the qualifying criteria for ARPA. The criteria are they 1) serve communities disproportionately impacted by COVID–19 and utilize culturally competent and multilingual strategies in the provision of services; and 2) take into account the diversity of communities and participants served, including racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, linguistic, or geographic diversity. To affirm eligibility, each applicant (continuation and new) submitted a short statement explaining how their program does meet the criteria.

Discussion of new section CNCS is adding to AmeriCorps application. The federal register notice was this week and there is a 30 day comment period. The proposed application changes will assess diversity as part of the selection process. Task force members had been provided a copy of the list of data to be collected. The notice stated the information requested will be collected in the aggregate for each grantee and applicant for funding. It will be used to better understand the demographic characteristics of current grantees and potential grantees to further AmeriCorps’ efforts to take into account the diversity of communities and participants in its grantmaking. 

The data is quite extensive and covers people served, applicant staff, and applicant board members. While CNCS claims the new section will add only 30 minutes to what is already a 40 hour process, task force members agreed it would add much more time and discourage participation of small or grassroots organizations. ASC is developing a single comment based on input from members but it would be advisable to submit a state comment to make it evident there are a number of groups looking at the impact of this new data collection. The time for comment closes September 23rd.

After discussion, three points were identified for comment from Maine: 1) there must be an offset in the application development process to make room for this new section because compiling and composing the application will now take more than a week's time; 2) the data does not ask for socio-economic or urban-rural data which is essential; and 3) this information is better collected after an award, as part of the grantee data reporting, in order to not further discourage grassroots organizations from applying.

Other. It was noted that this is Jonathan Barczyk's last meeting as a Commissioner and task force member. He will move to the Communications task force which meets outside of his work hours, thus allowing him to participate as a resident. Everyone expressed appreciation for his contributions.

There being not other agenda items to discuss, the members dispersed at 9:17 am.