FY 2023 Visiting Fellows Program

Transcript also available as a PDF.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, “FY 2023 Visiting Fellows Program,” hosted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. At this time, it's my pleasure introduce Tenzing Lahdon, Senior Policy Advisor with BJA, to begin the presentation. Tenzing?

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Daryl. And first, I want to thank everyone for joining us today. It's exciting to see high registration numbers for the fellow solicitation. So we are really excited to have you here and we are going through a lot of information during our presentation today. And there are a lot of slides with a lot of information in it. So I want to make sure to make the best use of our time today. So we might have to skim through some of the information, so we can highlight some of the more important areas. But the presentation, as Daryl mentioned, will be available to everyone after the webinar for reference, including the PowerPoint slides. We have a number of presenters here with us today that represent different focus areas for the fellowship. And I'll introduce them each prior to their part of the presentation. Next slide.

So in terms of agenda, we'll do a brief overview of OJP and BJA and overview of the solicitation. We have a guest speaker who is the current BJA fellow, followed by eligibility and application requirements, as well as resources and support that is available to you. And then we will save about 10 to 15 minutes at the end for any questions that you might have for us. We will be taking all the questions at the end, so if you have any questions as you go, please feel free to use the Q&A function at any time during the presentation. Next slide, please.

So what is the Office of Justice Programs? The Office of Justice Programs provides grant funding, training, research, and statistics for the criminal justice community in the field. OJP is one of the three grant-making offices within DOJ, along with COPS Office, and the Office on Violence Against Women. The Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Amy Solomon, is the current head of OJP under the Office of Justice Programs. There are six bureaus, or program offices, that administer various OJP programs, grant programs. We have the National Institute of Justice, which is our research, development, and evaluation agency within the Department of Justice. Office for Victims of Crime, which supports in broader way the programs and services that are available, that are really focusing on helping victims. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which supports states and local communities in their effort to implement effective programs for children. Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is the primary statistical agency for Department of Justice. SMART Office, which provides jurisdiction and guidance regarding implementation of Adam Walsh Act, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which I'll cover in the next slide. Next slide.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance, also known as BJA for short, was created in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our nation's criminal justice system. BJA strengthens the nation's criminal justice system and helps America's state, local, and tribal jurisdiction in reducing and preventing crime, reducing recidivism, promoting fair and safe criminal justice system. Our Director is Karhlton Moore, and Director Moore was appointed by President Biden in February of 2022. Director Moore leads programmatic and policy effort in providing a wide range of resources, including training and technical assistance to law enforcement, courts, corrections, treatment, reentry, justice information sharing, and community-based partners to address chronic and emerging criminal justice challenges nationwide. Next slide, please.
And the way that BJA focuses on that is through funding, which invests in diverse funding streams to accomplish our goals. Education, including research, development, and delivery of what works. Equipping our folks with tools, products to build capacity and improving outcome. And lastly, partnering, consulting, connecting, and convening with our partners in the field. Next slide.

Okay. Now, let's move into the actual BJA fellow solicitation. A little bit of background on the fellowship program. BJA launched the Visiting Fellow Program in fiscal year 2012. So we are going into 11th or 12th year of this fellowship program. The intent of the fellowship is to be able to leverage expertise across the country in order to assess areas of need; develop strategies, tools, policy, and resources for the field; and to have each fellow make an important policy and programmatic contribution to a particular focus area with collaboration and support of BJA. Each fellow will be expected to produce specific deliverables. They can include things like applied research tool, training curricula, toolkits, articles, publication, and also technical subject-matter assistance to the field, as well as assisting BJA and enhancing our capacity and strategies, and then bringing that expertise back to the field. Next slide, please.

As I mentioned, the fellow program provides an opportunity for BJA and the fellow to collaborate with practitioners, advocates, and researchers to build capacity to address gaps, highlight trends, and flag any emerging issues in the field. We are hoping to host up to eight fellows in six different focus areas. And we are looking for folks who are subject-matter experts in the selected area, focused self-starters, can proactively manage their planned work while collaborating with BJA staff, and be flexible to the needs of the project and other work across BJA. And I'll skip the last bullet as we have covered that in the earlier slide. Next slide, please.

So the application that we are talking about today was released on April 20th of this year. The closing date or the due date is June 20th. So you have little more than a month to get it all submitted. And please remember, there are two deadlines. The first deadline is June 13th, 2023, 8:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. That is the deadline to submit the SF-424 and SF-LLL in Grants.gov. The second deadline is June 20th, 8:59 p.m. Eastern. That is the deadline to submit a full application in JustGrants. So I'll just say you cannot go to the second part if you have not met the deadline of June 13th. So it goes in steps. And lastly, we highly encourage you to submit your application in Grants.gov and JustGrants prior to the due dates to allow you sufficient time to correct any errors or resubmit your application if there's any issue before the deadline. Next slide, please.

The next is the program objectives. And we have already covered a number of these. But I want to highlight the second bullet, which really is to bring real-world experience as well as lived experiences and knowledge to BJA that helps us enhance our ability to deliver relevant and effective tools to the field, to assist and translate knowledge about critical criminal justice issues and strategies that promote innovation. Finally, to support development of research[ers], practitioners, as well as BJA staff in order to collectively help advance BJA's mission. Next slide, please.

So, without any further ado, now I would like to welcome our guest speaker, Angel Sanchez. He is a current BJA fellow, and I would ask Angel if you could please share a little bit about your experience as a BJA fellow and any tip that you might have for prospective applicants. Go ahead, Angel. Thank you.

ANGEL SANCHEZ: Thank you, Tenzing. Welcome everyone. As you heard, my name is Angel Sanchez, and I am one of the current visiting fellows that's inside the corrections, reentry, and justice reinvestment portfolio. My personal expertise comes from having over two decades of lived experience with the criminal legal system. Half of that was in and out of jail as a juvenile and then serving over 12 years in prison. And then the other half of that has been reentering into society and what one can call the never-ending struggle of overcoming barriers for people with lived experience. I also, because of that, want to make sure that I let the audience know that my particular presentation would be of great value to everyone but specifically to those applicants who have lived experience. I hope that I can share some insights as to both my application process and also to my experience currently in the fellowship that might help one, demystify anything that might be deterring you from applying, and two, highlighting some of the valuable opportunities and transformational gains that can come by being selected as a visiting fellow with the Department of Justice.

Now, some of the, what I would call myths that I want to demystify that I encountered initially when I opened up the solicitation were one, that it was not a position like that of a job that I was applying to, which I'm very comfortable in doing. But instead, it was a grant application. And that to me was a challenge in large part because I had never put together a grant. And so immediately it became what people call a paper tiger, a tiger that intimidates you, but it's really fangless. And so, that was the first part where I thought, I don't have enough to give or enough experience putting together a grant application. The way that I burst that myth in my head was that I said to myself, this could be a great opportunity for me to start, get some practice in putting together a grant application. And then once it's done, even if I don't get selected, I can now repackage this and now potentially shop it around to other opportunities involving grants. Much like when we build a resume, we can then tweak it to apply to certain positions. So that's the first way that I challenged myself and overcame that myth that this was beyond my experience to do.

The other one involved this part in the application that specifically said that they were encouraging an innovative project proposal. And coming from the world that I come from, for some reason innovative in my mind meant something that other people don't know about or applying technology or advanced technologies to existing practices. And I felt I've been working as a grassroots advocate on voting rights for like seven years. This is new to no one, so it's not innovative. And I really am not a tech person. But I was wrong about that. And the way I discovered or how I overcame that mental barrier was by reframing the fact that something that you're doing may still be innovative even if you've been doing it for a long time, when others around the country that don't know about it or have not been doing it. So the fact that you've been immersed in it for such a long time doesn't mean it isn't innovative. The other part was also that something that is timely can be innovative, such as something that, maybe an issue that hasn't been addressed for a long time, but there wasn't any momentum for it now is being addressed. Well, that project proposal can be innovative because it's very timely and it has been ignored.

And finally, the fact that we're overcoming barriers and trying to break the felony conviction barriers to opportunities, that too is innovative because for most of our society, we've been excluded, and that's been the norm. So challenging status quos and norms also is innovative. And so my project proposal was to address barriers to higher education in and after of prison in light of the timely Pell reinstatement law that goes into effect this year. And I wanted to be able to work in the intersections of education and justice and propose that we should inform prisons and colleges about these hidden barriers that they may not be aware of.

The other thing that I found myself challenged by was the imposter syndrome. I never felt comfortable enough calling myself an expert. And that's partly because the people that I look as titans in the field, I don't match up to them. But that didn't necessarily mean that I, myself, relative to the general population, am not an expert. And I also was discounting the fact that 10, 12 years inside corrections is years of experience, just like years of experience outside of corrections, just like years of experience being an advocate and a member of a formerly incarcerated-led organization. And that's how I undid that mental barrier. And finally, I had the doubt that I could not put together and research and write a narrative for a novel project proposal within the time that I had because of all my other responsibilities and workload in my full-time job at the time. And what came to me was the fact that I had been volunteering on an effort of access to higher education for about a year. And I realized I didn't need a month, or two months, or three months to put together a narrative because I already had off the top of my head a lot of the data, the research, the arguments that I was able to put together in what I would call probably an entire week. But I would also say it was many sleepless nights. But to me, it was worth it. It was worth it because whether I get it or not, I have this saying, we win some and learn some. And if you do, you lose none.

Now, I want to wrap up by just after—now, that I've shared with you how some of the intimidating barriers that I encountered with my application, I want to wrap up with some of the benefits or at least two primary benefits that I'm taking from this fellowship. One is I would tell you that two law schools that turned me down before have now accepted me, and that's Harvard and Yale, to pursue an advance law degree on mass incarceration. So to me, I think this fellowship will give you credibility. It can be transformative in how it shapes your future. And personally and close to my heart, the other thing I got from this fellowship is how it has connected me with the broader community of formerly incarcerated leaders that I did not know despite knowing many in the voting rights and civil rights area. I got to now not only get connected to but become very close friends with many formerly incarcerated leaders who are working in the higher education space. And so, for that reason, I really encourage you to think about applying for this. And whether or not you get it, take it as an opportunity to just start building out a project, allow yourself to flesh it out, and you either get this and win, or if you don't, you learn from this and shop your ideas to places that might still have opportunities. I'll stick around for potential questions at the end, but I'll turn it back to Tenzing now.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you Angel so much for sharing your experience and for providing helpful tips to our audience. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much again. And we will be posting a couple of examples of BJA Fellow Program Narratives sometime this week on our website, so you can go and check out those as well. All right, moving ahead. Next, we will go over the Eligibility and Application Requirements. All right. So in terms of eligibility, the following entities are eligible to apply: city and township governments, county governments, state governments, Native American tribal governments (those are federally recognized), Native American tribal organization (other than federally recognized tribal governments), nonprofit having 501(c)(3) status, nonprofits that do not 501(c)(3) status other than institutions of higher education, for-profit organizations other than small businesses, private institutions of higher education, public- or state-controlled institutions of higher education, and public housing authorities and Indian housing authorities. And just a note, organizations seeking to place an employee or a representative as a fellow under this program will not have programmatic oversight of that staff person for those activities conducted as a part of fellowship. So next slide.

Next is Program Requirements. Each fellow will have a set of deliverables that will address critical, chronic, and emerging issues in the criminal justice field and build capacity to address the chosen area of focus. The BJA fellowship program is built to benefit both BJA and the fellows. The fellow will work closely with assigned policy team and is expected to participate in a wide range of collegial activities with the BJA directors, BJA staff members, provide monthly briefings, participate in high-level policy discussion that will inform practice. So the idea is that this is a two-way knowledge sharing that you as a fellow would have access to expertise and resources of BJA and that we will also benefit and the field will benefit from your experience and expertise. And the deliverables are listed on page 10. And BJA focus areas are discussed further on page 11 of the solicitation. Next slide.

Now we are going to dive into six anticipated areas of focus for BJA fellows. So the first area is the Researcher-Practitioner Partnership Fellowship To Reduce Substance Use-Related Crime and Overdose. And I'm happy to introduce Mallory O'Brien, who is a senior scientist with BJA, and she will review this topic area. So Mallory, I'll pass it on to you.

MALLORY O'BRIEN: Thanks, Tenzing. And just to reiterate Angel and Tenzing's comments, this is an absolutely marvelous opportunity. And I too encourage you to submit an application. For this researcher-practitioner partnership fellowship looking at substance use-related crime and overdose, you'll be working with the COSSUP team, the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program team, where we're focusing on reducing substance use-related crime and overdose. The fellow will focus on identifying and documenting COSSUP-funded promising and [emerging] practices that leverage data and research to enhance responses to crime associated with substance use disorders and drug overdoses and fatalities. The fellow will work in coordination with the BJA staff, with the grantees, with the training and technical assistance partners to scan the field for promising and effective research partnerships with local practitioners that advance our understanding of strategies to reduce overdose and substance use disorder and related crime. This includes identifying tools to support the field. The fellow will have direct experience in criminal justice and behavioral health or public health research and will bring their knowledge to the field to support the national COSSUP efforts. And as I mentioned before, you'll be working with the COSSUP team within BJA's Courts, Communities, and Strategic Partnerships Team. Tenzing, I pass it back to you.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you so much, Mallory. Next up is Enhancing Support of and Reducing Stigma for Persons with Criminal Justice Involvement Who Are in Recovery Fellowship. And I'm happy to introduce Courtney Stewart, Policy Advisor with BJA.

COURTNEY STEWART: Thank you, Tenzing, and good luck to everyone who decides to apply. It is definitely a great opportunity. If you participate in our department, you will be working with the COSSUP team, Adult Treatment Court and Veterans Treatment Court programs. We are seeking up to three fellows with lived experience and knowledge of substance use recovery as well as criminal justice involvement at one or more intercept points of the criminal justice system. The fellow will utilize their experience and relationships with national organizations and the field to support BJA's behavioral health portfolio, notably the peer recovery support--supportive service initiative in COSSUP, the Adult Treatment Court Grant Program, and the Veterans Treatment Court Grant Program. You would utilize data-driven strategies and your expertise to promote peer-to-peer engagement to support recovery and reduce recidivism. You will also develop strategies and tools to reflect lived experience and research strategies for how peer recovery strategies can assist in overcoming stigma, strengthening prosocial attitudes and beliefs, and enhancing active coping strategies to prepare for successful reentry. You will support the analysis of need and treatment court data for the COSSUP, Adult Treatment Court Grant Program, Veterans Treatment Court Grant Program, and Tribal Healing to Wellness Court models to explore barriers and enhance access for underserved and historically marginalized populations. You will also get to work with BJA staff, grantees, TTA partners, and recovery community organizations to bring the knowledge to the field to support peer recovery programming. You will also work with BJA Courts, Community, and Strategic Partnerships Team or the Behavioral Health and Justice Systems Team.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you so much, Courtney. Next, we have the Improving Corrections and Reintegration Under the Second Chance Act Fellowship. And I'd like to introduce Andre Bethea, Senior Policy Advisor at BJA.

ANDRE BETHEA: Thank you, Tenzing. And again, I want to reiterate what has already been said by my colleagues, including Angel Sanchez, that this is really a worthwhile opportunity. So the Improving Corrections and Reintegration Under the Second Chance Act Fellowship, the fellow will possess significant reentry policy and practice experience and have substantial expertise as a policy advocate, legal or social services provider, or academic focusing on the successful reintegration of people returning home to their communities after incarceration. The fellow must be an individual who was formerly incarcerated and will bring a valuable perspective of the justice system and community reintegration to this role. Potential fellows are strongly encouraged to propose specific strategies that build upon BJA's investment in reentry and reintegration.

BJA strongly encourages applicants to submit innovative proposals to complement BJA's current national efforts related to promoting successful reintegration of the incarcerated population and reducing recidivism and/or assist BJA in identifying and defining new and emerging reentry challenges as well as defining efficient and effective methods to address them. The individual may also have opportunities to provide strategic guidance related to corrections and reentry to the BJA Director and OJP's leadership and to inform federal interagency policy efforts to remove barriers to successful reintegration. The fellow will work with BJA's Corrections, Reentry and Justice Reform Team.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you so much, Andre. Next, we have the Enhancing the Upholding the Rule of Law and Preventing Wrongful Conviction Program Fellowship. And I'd like to introduce Kathy Browning, who is also a Senior Policy Advisor here at BJA.

KATHY BROWNING: Thank you, Tenzing. This fellow will support, as Tenzing said, our wrongful conviction (for short) program. We’re looking for someone who has expertise and experience in representing individuals who have been wrongfully convicted. And we're looking for this person to initiate a project that would look at needs and risks and innovations that would enhance this program and improve the integrity of the criminal justice process. The fellow can focus on arrest- and pretrial-related considerations, including to and effectiveness of counsel and court capacity to manage serious and violent crime. The fellow would work with BJA's Courts, Communities, and Strategic Partnerships Team. We also work closely with the Post-conviction DNA Team in our Forensics Division, so you would be working with both of these. Thank you.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Kathy. And next, we have Advancing Strategies To Prevent and Respond to Hate Crimes Fellowship. And our presenter for this focus area is BJA Policy Advisor Olivia Schnitzer.

OLIVIA SCHNITZER: Thank you so much, Tenzing, and thank you all so much for joining the webinar today. I really hope that you'll consider applying for one of these fellowships. So for this particular subject matter, the exciting thing about this is that BJA is really starting to build a broad portfolio supporting the efforts of state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution agencies and community-based and civil rights organizations’ work to prevent and address hate crimes. So this fellow would really be working on building out that information. That work is going to be focused on doing things like conducting environmental scans or literature reviews of promising practices, really getting down and talking with and having dialog with our grantees and with the field more broadly on what approaches they have to addressing hate crime. The fellow will work with our grantees to elevate their work to identify new and exciting things that they're doing and to promote these examples in a wide variety of ways so that we can really promote examples not only of preventing and addressing hate crimes currently but also historic and cold cases. The fellow will focus on the rise in hate speech and hate incidents, things that may escalate to violence in the future, and really work to identify and elevate community-based approaches that really focus on prevention and trying to prevent speech from escalating into violence. And the fellow will really be focused on engaging with a broad range of stakeholders. So for this particular fellow, we're looking for someone who's comfortable working with law enforcement, with a diverse range of community-led organizations, with culturally specific organizations or service-providing organizations. And they should have some comfort in navigating complex or maybe challenging topics in a group setting. This fellow will work with BJA's Courts, Communities, and Strategic Partnerships Team. Back to you, Tenzing.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Sunny. And our last focus area is Enhancing Strategies for Addressing Violent Crimes in Tribal Communities Fellowship. And I'd like to introduce BJA Policy Advisor Trish Thackston.

TRISH THACKSTON: Hello. And thank you, Tenzing. Thanks for joining us today, everyone. And as my colleagues have already said, I hope that you will take the opportunity to apply for one of these fellowship opportunities. The Enhancing Strategies for Addressing Violent Crime in Tribal Communities Fellowship will be working with the BJA Tribal Team. We actually are across a number of different teams in different focus areas. This fellow will be particularly working on addressing violent crime and will support the BJA-funded Training and Technical Assistance Program in the Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation. And you can learn more about that in the solicitation itself. We do have links in there. The work is focused on advancing tribally driven, culturally appropriate efforts to effectively prosecute and otherwise address violent crime in tribal communities, including investigating missing or murdered indigenous persons. It definitely will be valuable to have a background in and an understanding of tribal law in particular and the prosecution aspects of tribal law. The fellow will have direct experience in tribal courts and tribal responses to violent crime, must have a proven ability to use their experience and knowledge to support the field and promote innovative approaches. Legal education and experience, as I mentioned, are very beneficial. The fellow will work in coordination with the BJA staff and tribal TTA providers to advance BJA's efforts to effectively support tribes facing increases in violent crime. And the fellow will work with the BJA Courts, Communities, and Strategic Partnerships Team.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you so much, Trish. I do appreciate you being on this call. I know you were out of office today, so thank you so much.

TRISH THACKSTON: You bet.

TENZING LAHDON: All right. Thank you. So the next one is Award Information. As I mentioned, we are expecting and I will—I saw one of the questions that came in under Q&A is around—so we are expecting to make eight awards under this solicitation focusing on six focus areas. So one of the focus areas, which is enhancing support of and reducing stigma of persons with criminal justice involvement who are in recovery fellowships, is taking three fellows in the second focus area. So that's where, other than that, all other focus areas will allow for one fellow—will take only one fellow. The maximum award amount is 350K for the entire performance period of 24 months or 2 years. And the start date of the award will be October 1st, 2023. Next slide, please.

Here are 11 application sections. I'll go through a few of these in more detail in the following slides. And then, in addition to those sections, there are additional attachments that are required to be included in your applications and they will include timeline, resumes, job description, letter of support, MOUs. The most important thing here is to note the required sections, so please make sure that your application includes all those sections that are marked as required. Next.

So I think I covered a few of this in earlier slides, but for the timeline, it should be for 24 months and it should outline the goals and objectives, summarize major activities, expected date of completion for things, detailed resume for BJA fellows, attaching a letter of support or MOU that highlights, if you have other partners or, you know, that they are supporting your application or organizations supporting fellows, you know, that it should outline details as in the type of support and how it will work out, scheduling doing residency periods or things like that. And we will go more in detail. I know I saw a few questions on residency, so we will get to that as well. Next slide, please.

The Abstract. So the abstract is short, no more than 400 words, summarizing the proposed project. It needs to include, obviously, the applicant's name, fellow's name, project period, the total funds requested. It needs to include the focus area—one of those six focus areas that you're applying for, an explanation of proposed period of residency at BJA, as well as summary of applicant’s criminal justice or any other relevant experience, summary of project that includes goals, objectives, deliverables, and a short statement why you want to be a fellow with BJA.

One of the questions that I saw that came in was around, "Can you apply for more than one focus area?" The answer is yes, but it needs to be a separate application. So if you are interested in applying for say focus area two and three, so that needs to be a separate application for focus area two and a separate application for focus area three. You cannot do one application and put in request for two focus areas. All right.

Up next is Proposal Narrative. So this line not only outlines different sections of the proposal narrative but also how those different sections will be weighted in scoring of the application. So you have Description of Issue for 20%, Program Design and Implementation for 30%, Capability and Competency for 35 [percent], Plan for Data Collection 5 [percent], and then in addition, a budget component which is about 10% of the application. There are a description of what should be included in each of these sections and proposal. And this section should not exceed 15 pages and it should be submitted as an attachment. Next slide, please.

The Budget and Budget Narrative, each—so for—in budget and budget narrative, you should plan…the personnel section should include salary or costs for the BJA fellow, and there should not be any other person—the funding is to support BJA fellow and their associated costs with being a fellow. So you might have a small set-aside to…for support staff, but that's an exception. But usually, for an organization, if organization is supporting your fellowship, then they can request in their cost rate related to this grant that will allow them to do reporting requirements and providing the support around grants management pieces. And make sure that your budget worksheet and budget narrative is detailing all the budget line items in detail.

The travel can include any travel associated with fellowship duties, you might have to accompany BJA Director to a site visit or be a part of a conference/presenting at a conference. So those kind of things can be included in your travel. I know it's a little too early to project all the travel upfront, but those changes can happen down the road too, but you will have to work with your assigned policy team to figure out what those travel…but you can plan for some travel that you already know of that you already want to do as a part of your budget and travel to and from the fellow's home to BJA and back to attend meetings and training can be part of your budget. I think…don't include anything like equipment, materials, or supplies because I think BJA will provide necessary equipment and supplies for your fellowship.

I think we covered itemize each item for each year. If you're planning to host conference, meeting, and any other training-related costs, prior approval might be needed. But I don't foresee that to be happening. But I think we just added that just-in-case kind of language. Next slide, please.

So Residency Requirement: the BJA fellow or the fellowship is for the 24-month period and it includes a residency period of nine to twelve months. During the residency, the fellow is expected to commit a significant portion of their time to the fellowship—that is 75 to 100 percent of their time during the residency. And for this residency period, BJA will provide necessary workspace, equipment, and access required to the system and internet.

The BJA fellow will have an opportunity to work closely with their assigned BJA policy team. They will participate in meetings and different activities. BJA does offer a flexible work environment that supports virtual and in-person work options through a combination of telework and travel to DC as needed. Applicants should allocate time before and after their residency period at BJA to begin the proposed fellowship work and complete deliverables. The total fellowship, including the pre- and the post-work and the residency period should not be more than 24 months. And during this period, during the non-residency period, it is estimated that about 30% of your time will be devoted to collaborative work with BJA staff and leadership that complements the planned projects described in the fellowship agreement.

So basically, you have 24 months of your fellowship. Nine to twelve months of residency period, where you would be dedicating 75 percent to 100 percent of your time as a BJA fellow. And then, there are some…we will consider some residency that are less than nine months or full-time or even part-time schedule doing 50/50, but that is something that will be done on case-by-case basis as long as, you know, you are continuing to achieve all the goals and objectives of the solicitation. Next slide, please. All right. Thank you, Kathy. Kathy will take over.

KATHY BROWNING: Hi, everybody. Thanks, Tenzing. So as I get into talking about the resources that are available to you all, I just want to remind you that this slide presentation will be available online to you all, because I'm going to refer to a lot of hyperlinks, so you'll have those. So, next slide.

So OJP and BJA have made a lot of strides, I think, over the last few years in putting more information up on the website to assist you with how to build an application of our systems and also, I'm going to go through some of these here pretty briefly for now. So, we’ve got on here the solicitation webpage where you can find out more about other funding that we have. And then we’ve also got a link, which I assume you all probably already have, is to the Visiting Fellows solicitation. Next slide.

Here is just a snapshot of one of our resources on our website, which we've got the link there. And this is sort of what I was talking about in terms of just kind of a step by step of how to apply, what are we looking for in the different sections, so it goes into a lot of detail. So I encourage you to make use of this webpage. Next slide.

Oh, it looks like somebody is having trouble hearing me. So I will hold this up a little more closely. Again, another website, this is to provide resources and information about our JustGrants system. So if you've never applied or even if it's just been a couple years since you've applied, this is the system that we have moved to to handle all of our applications and grant monitoring. So I encourage you to learn about that as well. Next slide.

So these are all listed in the application as well. I encourage you to take advantage of the help lines that we have. It's just that we have several different ones. So depending on what you're having challenges with, you would go to a particular help line. So here for Grants.gov, if you have any trouble with that, they've got a Customer Support Hotline. There is a JustGrants Technical Support [INAUDIBLE] if you who have any trouble there. Next slide.

So this one—here are just some places for you to subscribe to get more information about our different resources that we have and grant opportunities. Next slide.

We encourage you to stay connected on social media. And here are the ways that you can do that.

And here…the final resource help center that you'll want to make use of. So if you have any questions, if you’re like me, as soon as the webinar is over, that's when all my questions come up, then this is where you will want to send an email to. You're not going to email us, specifically, we have the Response Center, and they handle these—they contact us, though, when there are questions. So that is how we do this. We need to have a record of all of your questions and all, but please take advantage of this to get additional information if you have questions.

And I think that might be…oh, a reminder of the two-step process. Tenzing went over this very well earlier, but just a reminder, there are these two steps, and if you don't do step one, you won't be able to do step two. So the Grants.gov step one deadline is June the 13th and the step two for JustGrants deadline is June the 20th. And one thing to note, especially if you have applied before, is that our deadline times have changed, it used to be midnight, now they are 8:59 p.m. Eastern Time.

And this is just all the things, I think that I have talked to you about, just the key things put in one slide for you. So the technical assistance numbers and emails for you. Okay. I think we are ready for the Q&A. Daryl, it's up to you—over to you.

TENZING LAHDON: I can take it, Kathy.

KATHY BROWNING: Okay.

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you. So thank you, everyone. Thank you, all the presenters, for your time. One thing I want to emphasize is, we are prioritizing applicants with lived experience in all the focus areas. So that's one thing that I wanted to make sure everyone knew, and Angel nudged me about it.

The other question we have is around what is allowable/what is not allowable expense? So I have in the chat provided, hopefully you can see, the DOJ Financial Guide that outlines allowable and unallowable costs.

I think there was a question whether for-profit organizations can apply? Yes. The answer is yes, as long as all recipients and subrecipients, including any for-profit organizations, must forgo any profit or management fee. So that's the caveat, but yes. An individual cannot apply, I think, we are looking at ways to—down in future to add options of doing that, but we want the BJA fellows to be able to, as soon as they start, focus on substantive part of the fellowship. And even for organizations that have been doing grants, federal grant requirements and grant processes can be really cumbersome and confusing. So that's why we wanted fellows to partner or be part/associated with organizations, so organizations or entities that they are coming from are able to help with that grant management and other grants management aspects of the fellowship.

Daryl, please free to let me know if I'm missing—I think we went over the residency aspects of the fellowship. So I think a question was, can I continue to work full-time if accepted into this program? I think that would be a little hard to continue to work full-time and do fellowship because, especially during the residency period, we require that 75% to 100% of your time be focused on the fellowship itself.

And I think there was a question around residency requirements in Washington, DC. We have—we allow for flexible telework options, but that is something that, you know, that would need to be talked…that you would need to explain further. But we do provide an option—residency does not necessarily mean that you have to be—that during the residency period, you have to be in DC. It can be—it means that you should be doing 75% to 100% of your time focused on fellowship. That can mean that you have to come to DC to attend meetings, to do conferences, or to present your findings or things like that. But that is something that—we will work with you to the residency period.

“Does the 350K total budget include indirect costs?” So it can, I think it's up to the organization if they want to include indirect cost rate and if they have an approved indirect cost rate, your entity has an indirect cost rate, they can to help you with the grants management pieces.

And I know we are at 4:01, but we have a lot of questions and we are running out of time. So what we will do is to respond to all the questions that have come in today, we will respond to all those questions directly. And then also, if you have any questions that you think of in the next week, in the next few weeks, please send them to OJP Response Center at [email protected] and they will be able—you will get a response from them as soon as—very shortly.

And Taylor, we will get a response to your questions that came in through Q&A either sometime this week or early next week if that's okay. All right. I think that's all from my end. I want to thank all the presenters and all the attendees who are on call today. And I do appreciate your time, and feel free to send us any questions that you have at OJP Response Center. Daryl, I'll hand it back over to you.

DARYL FOX: Wonderful. So on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and our panelists, we want to thank you for joining today's webinar. This will end today's presentation.