Funding Opportunities for Your Community in 2024: Community Based Organizations

Transcript also available as PDF.

DARYL FOX: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, “Funding Opportunities For Your Community in 2024: Community Based Organizations,” hosted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance. At this time, it's my pleasure to introduce Michelle Garcia, Deputy Director for Programs within BJA, to begin the presentation. Michelle?

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Daryl. Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar. As Daryl said, my name's Michelle Garcia and I serve as our Deputy Director at the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and I'm joined today with my colleague, Tenzing Lahdon, who is a Senior Policy Advisor, and whom you will meet shortly. Next slide, please.

So, today, we will provide an overview of the Office of Justice Programs and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. We are going to cover planned solicitations for which community-based organizations are eligible applicants. We'll also provide you with some resources that might assist you while you're considering applying or working on an application. And then we've also built in time at the end of our presentation to answer any questions you may have.

As Daryl mentioned, we encourage you to enter questions as we go through the presentation in the Q&A section, and we'll also try and answer questions there as we go through. Next slide, please.

Before we start, we would like to get a little bit more of a sense of you and your experience in applying for federal funding, and particularly BJA funding. So using the polling feature, please tell us, “Have you ever previously applied for federal funding?” We know that many community-based organizations have a varying degree of experience in applying for funding from the federal government, and this is for any federal agency. So not just the Department of Justice, this could also include the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, or any federal agency. I'll give you just a few more seconds. And Daryl, could you close the poll, please? And Daryl, could you please share the polling results? There we go. Thank you so much. So it looks like we have varying experience amongst the participants. For those of you that answered, it looks like most of you have had experience applying for federal funding previously but a significant number of you have not. And so as I said, we'll give some resources at the end that might help you in considering whether federal funding is right for you.

Our next question is, “Have you previously applied for funding specifically from the Bureau of Justice Assistance previously?” At BJA, we fund a wide variety of purpose areas related to the criminal justice system and other systems and supports that touch the criminal justice system. So we're curious if you have applied for funding from us previously. We'll give that one more second. And Daryl, could you go ahead and close the poll, please? Thank you. All right.

Very similar, we have a range. For those of you that answered, it looks like about twice as many of you have not applied for federal funding for funding specifically from BJA than have. So we're very excited to have you here so we can tell you more about the funding that we have that might be able to assist you.

Lastly, we'd like to know, “Have you been successful in your applications?” So if you have submitted an application to BJA previously, did you receive a BJA award? And if you've not applied to us previously, please select "not applicable."

One of the things that I will note is that for the majority of our solicitations, which are competitive, and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment, we receive many, many more applications than we have the ability to fund. And so if you have previously applied and have not received an award, that is not necessarily an indication about your program, the work that you do, or even necessarily about your application, it's just a recognition that often we have to make very difficult decisions. All right. Daryl, could you close that poll, please? Okay.

And again, we have some mixed results. About twice as many of you have actually been successful when you've submitted an application and have received funding. So great to have some either current or former grantees back here with us, and we hope we can give you some new ideas and opportunities for additional funding. Next slide, please.

So, many of you indicated you had not applied for funding from the federal government or from the Bureau of Justice Assistance previously, so I want to provide a little bit of an overview of the Office of Justice Programs, or OJP. OJP, along with our sister agencies, the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, are the grant-making arms of the Department of Justice. OJP is comprised of six program offices, all of which provide grant fundings. That includes our office, BJA, as well as the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, the Office for Victims of Crime, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking. Next slide.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. We were established in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our nation's criminal justice system, and that still guides our work today under the leadership of Karhlton Moore.

Our work focuses in three primary areas. Investments, so providing grant funding, supporting diverse activities and goals all across the nation. Sharing knowledge, so identifying promising practices, innovative responses, creating guidance for the field, providing training and technical assistance in order to assist you in the work that you do. And then lastly, engagement. Engagement with organizations like yours, national, state, local entities to understand from you what is it that you are seeing in your communities and what needs can we help support.

This year, BJA has over 80 planned solicitations. And I would like to note just where we are in our funding cycle, and also in relation to having an annual budget that currently, because we're operating under a continuing resolution, want to note that there may be changes to the solicitations that we're going to talk about today based on any final legislation or appropriations. Regardless, this should give you some indication of the types of activities and solicitations we will have and we hope that we'll be able to put all of these out.

So, two resources that are incredibly valuable. If nothing else, bookmark these two websites on your computer. On the left is the BJA web page where we will post all of our available funding. We are just in the process of starting to release solicitations. We have, I believe, it's three that are currently open, and we'll be releasing more solicitations every day. So some of the solicitations we're going to talk about today are not yet live, and so there may be some specific questions we're not able to answer, but many of our solicitations are very similar from year to year, and so there can be value in looking at last year's solicitation to get some guidance.

But as we release solicitations, you'll find them on this available funding page, and one of the features of this page is a search ability. You can go in and you can enter in a keyword related to the type of work you're looking to support. So if your program is focused on reentry, you can enter "reentry" into the keyword search and it'll bring up all the solicitations that may support reentry programs and services. Similarly, if you're looking for, say, crisis response intervention teams or any other type of work. Similarly, on the right is the Department of Justice Grants Program Plan where you can do the same type of search, but it includes all of the planned solicitations, not just for BJA, but for all of the Office of Justice Programs offices, as well as OVW and COPS. Again, I will note that these are planned solicitations and they could change or be cancelled as we get our final legislation and appropriations. Next slide.

So within BJA, we have typically two types of grants, formula and discretionary. With formula grants, these are typically administered by a state-administering agency and dollars are often passed through to local entities. More often than not, these funds are distributed on a non-competitive basis based on a formula that is often based on population as well as crime data. For formula funds, if applicants submit an application, they will likely receive those dollars. Discretionary actually makes up the majority of the solicitations we will be releasing. In this case, you will apply directly to the Bureau of Justice Assistance. As I mentioned earlier, we often receive more applications than we're able to fund, so decisions are based on pre-set criteria. These are awards that will go directly to you and that you would then be responsible for administering. Next slide.

So, I want to highlight just a couple of our formula grants. As I mentioned, often these will go to a state-administering agency who will then distribute those funds in their state. So I encourage you, if you do not already have a relationship with the state-administering agency in your state, develop one. We'll put a link in the chat where you can find the information on your SAA.
Our largest formula program, and really our flagship program for funding criminal justice and related efforts, is the Edward Byrne Memorial JAG Assistance Grant. And you'll see there's nine very diverse purpose areas under which JAG funding supports. Again, we ask that you look at your state-administering agency for more information about how to access Byrne JAG funds in your state. Across the nation, we see that states and local units of government are using these awards very broadly. Next slide.

Last year, the Bureau of Justice Assistance awarded 56 awards to states totaling over $209 million, and to date, 949 awards to local units of government totaling over $96 million. The solicitations for Byrne JAG, we anticipate release in the summer for fiscal year 2024.

The second formula program I like to mention is a relatively new program called the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program. Byrne SCIP was established by the bipartisan Safer Communities Act which was signed into law in 2022, and it provides five years of funding, $150 million each year, to provide states with funds to implement state crisis intervention court proceedings and related programs or initiatives focused on reducing gun violence and preventing suicides and homicides. Again, states are receiving these funds and then passing them through to local entities. So again, reach out to your SAA to see how they are using the funds in your state. With that, I am going to turn it over to my colleague Tenzing, who is going to talk about some of our discretionary grants. Tenzing?

TENZING LAHDON: Thank you, Michelle. Next, I'll cover discretionary grants. As Michelle mentioned, these are typically competitive. Selection criteria are included in the solicitation and it follows a formal review process, including a peer review piece. All right.

So, here are some of the examples of programs that support community-based organizations and we will be going over these programs in the next few slides. And before I move to the next slide, I want to note that BJA encourages organizations to partner, so even if your organization is not directly eligible to apply for a particular solicitation, you could explore a partnership with an eligible entity for which you could receive a subaward. So you might want to look at the link that Michelle shared earlier of planned solicitations for fiscal year 2024 and start planning and/or partnership outreach effort, you can start working on that.

The first one here is the Community Based Approaches to Prevent and Address Hate Crimes. This program provides funding for community-based approaches to prevent and address hate crimes that promote community awareness, increase victim reporting, and improve responses to hate crimes. Examples of strategies or activities that can be funded include supporting individual organizations seeking to pilot prevention strategies and facilitate dialogs and community healing, establishing effective outreach and education and engagement strategies that meet the needs of the group or population being served, developing a dissemination plan for materials to local organizations across the country, or establishing practices or activities aimed to reduce the frequency and impact of hate speech, hate incidents, and hate crime. These are just some of the examples. Eligible applicants as noted here are Native American tribal organizations, nonprofit, private institution of higher education, and public and state-controlled institution of higher education. The funding per award varies by purpose area you're applying for, but the maximum award amount is up to $1 million.

OJP Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative seeks to prevent and reduce violent crimes and communities by supporting comprehensive evidence-based violence intervention and prevention programs based on partnership among community residents, local government agencies, victim service providers, community-based organizations, law enforcement, hospitals, researchers, and other community stakeholders. Some of the examples of strategies or activities that you can include are developing, implementing, expanding and/or enhancing comprehensive CVI, Community Violence Intervention strategies to maximize existing or new resources, conduct needs and gap assessments, build a new or strengthening existing multidisciplinary working groups to serve as CVIPI team members, do up and implement a data-driven violence reduction strategic plan, enhance a state's capacity to lead a proactive CVI strategy, or deliver training on technical assistance and sub-award to sub-recipients community-based organization to implement and lead some of the CVI strategies. And on the right, the map with the dots reflects the CVIPI project sites that were funded in fiscal year 2023 and '22. OJP has made nearly $200 million worth of CVIPI awards. And the link to the map is included in the chat section. Thank you, Daryl. So you can have a closer look at the project sites in your area.

Next, we have Field-Initiated: Encouraging Innovation Program, which supports new and innovative strategy for preventing and reducing crime, enhancing the criminal justice system through innovative approaches that accelerate justice by identifying, defining, and responding to emerging and/or chronic crime problems and systemic issues. We are looking for new approaches that address gaps in responses, build or translate research knowledge or build capacity. Some of the examples of activities can include responding to a specific increase in crime, including violent crime and improve system capacity to track and respond to increase in these types of crimes, addressing substance use disorder and/or efforts to prevent or respond to drug overdoses and fatalities, improving outcomes for justice-involved individuals, including those who are currently or were formally incarcerated, responding to increase in hate crime and/or increase in access to justice and supportive services. So those are some of the examples. And in FY 24, we are projecting, and projecting being the word here, we are projecting to fund up to 10 awards, for up to $1 million each under the two categories, one, funding state, local, tribal, and regional strategies, and the second focusing on the national strategies.

Improving Adult and Juvenile Crisis Stabilization and Community Reentry Program. This program seeks to enhance or implement services to improve reentry, reduce recidivism, address the treatment and recovery needs of people with mental health, substance use, or co-occurring disorders who are currently or were formally involved in the criminal justice system. And some of the examples of activities that can be funded under this program include screening and assessments, clinical treatments and recovery services, continuous care coordination, planning, and other wraparound services, so those are examples. And eligible entities are state, county, city, township governments, federally-recognized Native American tribal governments, and community-based nonprofits and behavioral healthcare providers with the funding amount of up to $750,000 per award.

Next, we have the Kevin and Avonte Program: Reducing Injury and Death of Missing Individuals with Dementia and Developmental Disabilities. This program seeks to develop a comprehensive approach that responds to and prevents the wandering of individuals with forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease, or children with developmental disabilities, such as autism, as well as to increase individuals' safety and facilitate rescues of individuals with dementia and the developmental disabilities. Some of the activities that can be funded include a locally-based proactive program, a tracking technology, public awareness for missing person prevention and responsive information, community partnerships, alerts or notification system of some sort. Eligible applicants include law enforcement and other public safety agencies, healthcare agencies and nonprofits working in the field. The maximum award is up to $150,000 per award under this program.

Reimagining Justice: Testing New Models of Community Safety. This program focuses on development and testing of new and innovative approaches to improving community safety interest. That is an alternative to traditional enforcement mechanism for neighborhoods that can be funded include creating an innovative strategies or models to improve community safety, focus on economically-disadvantaged neighborhood where crimes are persistent and concentrated, engaging residents and leaders in the target area in development and implementation of the safety model, working with research partners to assess the need, document implementation, and develop tools to support the field, or build capacity of local resources and institutions that have ability to reduce and prevent crime. And lastly, fund and administer subawards and provide training and technical assistance. So these are just some examples. Maximum funding per award is up to $2 million. And eligible entities include federally-recognized Native American tribal governments and tribal organizations, nonprofits, private, public, and state-controlled institution of higher education, and local non-law enforcement government agencies.

Next we have the Second Chance Act Community-based Reentry Program. The comprehensive community-based adult reentry program provides an opportunity for nonprofit service providers and federally-recognized tribal governments to implement or expand the reentry program that demonstrates strong partnership with corrections, parole, probation, and other reentry service providers to provide critical, transitional services as individuals return from incarceration back into their communities. And some of the examples of activities that can be funded through this program are service coordination and tracking, gender specific and trauma-informed programming and services, individual or group mentoring, peer support, educational literacy and vocational services, substance use and mental health disorder treatment and recovery services, connection to physical healthcare services to support family reunification and restoration, assisting in securing safe and affordable housing, civil legal assistance services, staff training to improve competency in working with, and supporting the needs of individuals who are or have been incarcerated.

While this program provides a direct funding to nonprofit organizations and federally-recognized tribes, there are other reentry solicitations that may be directed towards state, localities, and tribes as eligible applicants where nonprofits could partner with them as a subgrantee under other solicitations, for example, partnering with state and local as subgrantee in order to provide more comprehensive community services. For this solicitation, the maximum award is up to $750,000 per award.

The Second Chance Act Community-based Incubator Initiative. So community and faith-based organizations provide critical reentry services for people returning from incarceration to their communities. However, many community-based organizations face a significant barrier directly accessing and managing federal grants. With this solicitation or this program, BJA seeks to fund an intermediary organization that will design and administer a competitive incubator initiative for community and faith-based reentry providers. These intermediary organizations will provide subawards, oversight, and comprehensive training and technical assistance services to help build capacity, capability, and sustainability among community-based sub-awardees to meet the needs of people returning home from incarceration and to apply for and manage private and public grant funding in the future. In collaboration with BJA, applicants will competitively select community-based organizations to receive subawards that can range from $50,000 to $150,000. And even if you don't end up applying for this grant directly we encourage you to please keep an eye out on award announcements for more information on some of these subawards also. The maximum award amount is up to $4 million to eligible nonprofits that will serve as intermediary organizations.

Second Chance Act: Improving Adult Reentry Education and Employment Outcome Program. This program supports correctional systems and nonprofit organization's ability to implement and expand education and employment programs that serve individuals during their incarceration and throughout their period of reentry into the community. And some of the examples of activities that can be funded under this program include screening and assessment tool, educational and vocational programming, including partnership with colleges and universities, activities supporting Federal Pell Grants, reinstatement for students who are incarcerated, career training programs, developing partnerships with local employers, conducting reentry career planning, subsidizing wages or other employment costs, transitional services, staff training, tracking on monitoring employment outcomes are some of the examples. Maximum award amount is up to $900,000 to eligible applicants, which are state, city, or township, county, and federally recognized Native American tribal government, public and state institution of higher education, independent school districts, nonprofits, for-profit organizations other than small businesses.

Improving Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Outcomes for Adults in Reentry Programs. So this program supports nonprofit organizations and state, county, local, and tribal government as they work to establish, expand, and improve treatment and recovery support services for people with substance use disorder or co-occurring substance use and mental health disorder during their incarceration and upon reentry into their communities. And some of the examples of activities that can be funded include implementation or expansion of substance use disorder or co-occurring substance use and mental health disorder, treatment services, recovery support services, hiring personnel, medication to support substance use disorder programming, harm reduction or reentry, transitional or recovery housing contract for in breach or continued treatment or recovery support services, information sharing, process and outcome evaluation. For this, the maximum award amount can be up to $1,125,000, which should include the no-cost training and technical assistance.

Smart Reentry: Housing Demonstration Project. This is a new proposed programming in fiscal year 2024. It's proposed, focusing on reentry housing, specifically providing funding to federally recognized Native American tribal government and nonprofits to help assess targeted jurisdiction’s reentry system, identify sense and gaps, and build capacity for improving housing options for adults released from prison or jail. This program was proposed based on feedback we received from the field, and the maximum award amount can be up to $1 million dollars per award.

The STOP School Violence Program equips students and educators with necessary resources to identify and prevent violence at school. The program provides funding to support threat assessment, mental health training, anti-bullying training, as well as developing technology-based solutions, such as anonymous reporting system to increase school safety. Our sister agency, COPS Office, administers a companion program that is focused on door locks, cameras, and other target hardening measures. Some of the examples of activities that can be funded through this program are developing and operating technology solutions, developing and implementing a multidisciplinary behavioral threat assessments, developing and implementing an intervention team, training school personnel on preventing school violence, educate students on how to prevent school violence, providing training for law enforcement, working in school setting, hiring school support personnel to prevent school violence, are some of the examples.

So, applicants can apply under two categories. Category one, eligible applicants are state government or public state controlled institution of higher education with a maximum or more award amount of up to $2 million per award. And under category two eligible applicants are local governments, city, township, county and federally recognized Native American tribal governments, as well as unit of local government, nonprofit independent school district and private institution of higher education. The maximum award amount is up to $1 million per award.

And the last one under the discretionary grants that I have here is the Visiting Fellow Program. The program invests in current and future leaders in criminal justice fields, and it brings talent and expertise from the field to BJA's informed policy and practices. And some of the strategies or activities that can be funded include reducing stigma for persons with substance use disorder and criminal justice involvement, enhancing support of or reducing stigma for persons with criminal justice involvement who are in recovery, improving corrections and reintegration under the Second Chance Act, advancing strategies to prevent and respond to hate crimes, enhancing strategies for addressing violent crimes in tribal communities, and building capacity of community violence intervention leaders to enhance community safety. So eligible applicants are listed here. So I'm not going to say that. We are specifically looking and encourage people with lived experience to bring their knowledge and perspective to BJA and to the field. And also agencies that have not received BJA funding before, we really strongly encourage them to apply. So with that, I'll pass it back to Michelle.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Thank you so much, Tenzing. In addition to the solicitations, we also wanted to highlight some resources that are available to you, whether you are a grantee or even if you are not a grantee. BJA supports training and technical assistance or TTA programs to meet the unique needs of grantees and other criminal justice practitioners and agencies. The objectives of our TTA is to provide information to grantees and criminal justice professionals and partners to replicate model programs and approaches, increase knowledge and use of best practices, emerging technologies and new models, and support agencies and jurisdictions to identify and address operational and programmatic needs. We support over a hundred training and technical assistance providers and the National Training and Technical Assistance Center or NTTAC is really the one stop shop for all of BJA's justice related training and technical assistance. So again, I want to stress that our TTA is available to you whether you are a grantee or not. So please check out the resources that we have available through NTTAC. Next slide.

And as I said when we started, we want to give you some tools and resources, and tips that can help you as you're thinking about applying or starting to work on applications. One other piece I want to mention is that we're in the process of starting to release solicitations. Typically, solicitations will be open for 60 days from when they are released, and I encourage you to spend some time with it and also recognize that many of these solicitations are repeated from year to year, sometimes with slight adjustments or changes. But you can also think about planning over the course of the next year to apply next year. And so if you're not quite ready yet, if you're not going to be able to have all the pieces in place this time around, you can spend the next 12 months planning for the next time a solicitation is released. Next slide.

And I wanted to mention that for every solicitation we release, we will post it on our web page. And on that web page, it'll include the basic information, an overview, a link where you can download the solicitation, but it will also include a solicitation overview for most of our solicitations.
This is a document I recommend that you start with. It is a one page document that talks about who is eligible to apply for the funds, why would you consider applying, how much money is available, if there's any priority areas that we have, and some examples of strategies or activities that could be supported. This is a great way to try and assess initially, is this the right solicitation for me and for what I'm looking for funding for. And if you think it is, then download the solicitation. Spend time reading through it. Our solicitations tend to be lengthy documents, but that's because they include all the information that'll help you in preparing and submitting your application. Next slide.

For almost every solicitation that we release, we also host a webinar that will go through the solicitation and the requirements, talk about the types of things that can be supported, but it's really also an opportunity to answer any questions you might have about that specific solicitation. All of those webinars get recorded and posted to our website. So even if you're not able to attend at the time that it's held, you can go back, look at the materials and view the recordings. We're also hosting a series on all of our FY 24 funding opportunities. This webinar is the second in that series. We kicked it off yesterday with a webinar focused on funding opportunities to support behavioral health services and activities. We have several more coming up over the next few weeks, and I specifically want to highlight the federal funding process: first steps to applying, how to prepare now, and other considerations, particularly for any organizations that have never applied for federal funding before, never applied to an Office of Justice programs or OVW or COPS because it'll go through some of the things to think about, the steps that you'll need to take, and also introduce in greater detail the systems that you would be working in. Again, all of that is available on our website and the links are available.

So, I want to mention that I've actually spent most of my career in the nonprofit sector, and I spent a lot of time applying for federal funding and for OJP funding, sometimes successfully, sometimes not successfully. But one resource that I found to be the one that I always went to first was this: the OJP Grant Application Resource Guide. This is really the start to finish guide on all elements of the application and application process. If I have a question, if I was unclear on something, if I was trying to get more detail, this is a great place to start because there's a great likelihood that you can find the response to your question there. If not, we'll tell you where else you can ask those questions. Next slide.

One of the things we often get asked by potential applicants, or perhaps applicants who did apply but did not receive an award, is, “Can we see an example of an application that was successful?” And so we've actually started to work with grantees who have been successful, who've been willing to share their applications, to be able to make those available to you, so you can see what did a successful application look like. We're continuing to add to this regularly, and we encourage you as you're putting together an application to see what some examples of successful applications are available for solicitation that you're interested in. Next slide.

Now, when you apply for funding at the Office of Justice Programs, our applications are actually a two-step process. There is an element in which you submit part of your application in Grants.gov and then you'll submit the largest part of your application in our electronic grants system called JustGrants. So, JustGrants is actually not only where you would apply for funding but also if you are successful and receive an award where you manage that award. Assistance in both of these systems is available by phone or by email. And as you run into any issues or challenges or questions, please reach out to Grants.gov and to JustGrants to get additional support. I will also note that JustGrants, we host many, many trainings themselves. And Tenzing, can you actually go back to the previous slide? Thank you. That if you want to learn more about JustGrants, if you want to view videos for how to work within it, there are job guides. You can see frequently asked questions and you can connect directly with someone for individualized user support. There are weekly sessions on different topics. And so lots of resources available to help you in navigating JustGrants. Next slide. Next slide please.

And then, if you are successful and you do receive an award, there are numerous resources also available to help you in managing those awards. At the application stage or even while you're thinking about applying, I think it could be really helpful to look at some of these resources because it'll give you a sense of what is going to be required of you as a grantee. So looking at the DOJ Grants Financial Guide to understand what sorts of financial policies or procedures are you needing to have in place, understanding what sort of performance measurements you're going to have to be collecting and reporting. It's good to get a sense of that upfront as you're considering applying. Next slide.

And as I mentioned, we are starting to release our solicitations and more will be coming out every week. And how do you stay notified? Well, there's a couple different ways. You can actually subscribe to the OJP funding alert and this will not only give you alerts of when new solicitations are released but it'll also provide application tips. If you go to the website ojp.gov/subscribe, you can subscribe there. Or you can also text your email address to 468-311 and that will subscribe you to those alerts. And if you follow us on social media, you can also get notified of when we release solicitations, announcements about when solicitations are posted or shared on Facebook and on X, and you can find additional information about the Bureau of Justice Assistance on our YouTube page. And as I mentioned, we also post all of our solicitations on our website.

And then lastly as you're working on an application, if you were not able to find an answer to your question anyplace else, please contact the OJP Response Center, either by email or phone and they should be able to assist you with any questions you might have. With that, we are going to turn it over to you and to see what questions you have.

I know many people have already been entering questions into the Q&A and we have been attempting to answer those. And so we'll go through some of those now, so folks have an opportunity to hear the questions and the answers.

“Can one organization submit more than one proposal?”
So, an organization can submit multiple applications for different solicitations. So you can submit an application to the Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevent solicitation. You could submit an application to Field Initiator or Community Approaches to Prevent and Address Hate Crimes. However, typically, it's not allowed or we do not recommend that you submit multiple applications under a single solicitation. We really want you to put forward your best proposal and one proposal.

“Where can I find formula grants?”
So, if specifically you are asking about the Byrne JAG or the Byrne SCIP formula grants that we talked about earlier, the links to those I put in the question. And so you can find more information on those websites.

“How do we find out who the state administering agency is?”
Daryl posted the link to the page that provides that information in the chat and I also posted it in the Q&A response.

“The hate crimes funding, would it be for responding to crimes only or preventing as well?”
So, the name of the solicitation is actually the Community Based Approaches to Prevent and Address Hate Crimes. This solicitation hasn't been released yet but we do anticipate that prevention would be included, again, noting that things could change as we're waiting for final legislation and appropriations. You can look at previous years' solicitations to see the types of activities that were allowable under those solicitations. As I mentioned previously, often the solicitations are very similar from year to year.

“Would this include funding to become a halfway house facility?”
So, I'm not sure specifically which solicitation that was being asked about. However, what I will say is given that most of these solicitations have not yet been released, there are some very specific questions that we're not able to answer yet. But if you subscribe to get alerted of when solicitations are released, you should then be able to look into the solicitation to see if that kind of activity would be supported.

“Do BJA grants support reentry through the arts programs?”
Again, I would say it depends. As Tenzing mentioned, we have a really large portfolio of programs and solicitations that support reentry activities. And so reentry through the arts may be an eligible activity under one of those solicitations. But again, when the solicitation is released, please review it to see if it would actually be allowable.

“Will we get a copy of this information?”
I saw a couple people asked about that. So the recording, transcript, and PowerPoint slides will be posted to the BJA website. And an email will go out to everyone who registered for this webinar when those become available.

It was asked, “Where can we find more information on the Second Chance Act?”
And so I added a link to a BJA page that has more information on the Second Chance Act. You can also just go to the BJA website and in our search bar, put in Second Chance Act and it'll point you to multiple resources on SCA.

Question was asked, “I work for a for-profit organization that carries out project management for a county government's anti-violence program. Since we're neither a nonprofit nor technically a governmental agency, would we still be eligible for any of these grants?”
We actually do have several solicitations under which for-profit organizations and small businesses are eligible. So again, starting with those solicitation overview one-pagers to see who is eligible is a great starting point.

But also I want to highlight, Tenzing mentioned this earlier, solicitations where your organization may not be eligible to directly apply, you could also still partner with an organization that is eligible under which you could receive a subaward.

“If we wanted to partner with a community college and a pure support agency to provide support for people getting out of jail, which of the Second Chance Act grants would be the best to apply for?”
So again, because these solicitations have not yet been released, can't specifically answer at this time. Would encourage you to go and look at the previous years' solicitations to see where it might be the best fit, so that when the solicitation is released, to see if that is something that would still apply.

“Regarding the school safety opportunity, are youth afterschool community-based facilities, i.e., boys and girls clubs eligible to apply?”
So, I know nonprofit organizations have been eligible applicants under the STOP School Violence Program. And once again, since this solicitation hasn't been released, look at the previous years' solicitations to provide perhaps some guidance. And when it is released, definitely check out that solicitation overview to see if something like a boys and girls club is eligible.

“I don't see the February 26 webinar applied on the site.”
We are still posting registrations as we get closer to the date, so check back, I would say either end of this week or next week and the registration for that should be available on our website.

“Are awards ever made to two nonprofits coming together for submission with one as a prime and as other as a sub?”
Absolutely. And we highly encourage these types of partnerships and collaborations.

“What is the number to text and sign up again?”
That number is 468-311.

“How many years are these grants usually for and can you re-apply?”
It varies by grant program. I would say more often than not they are three years or 36 months. And some cases, they may be a little bit longer. Some cases two years. But 36 months tends to be the most common length of time. Depending on the program, you might be able to apply. Some of them are structured in such a way that they have categories where the first category might be planning and development and then a second category might be implementation, so really encouraging an application at one point in time to do that planning work and then to apply again subsequently to do the implementation work. In some cases, there is an ability to apply to enhance things that have already been happening with previous funding. It will really depend on the program itself and that information is typically available in the solicitation. And I think that is our last question. Daryl, are you seeing any that I did not get to?

DARYL FOX: Actually, one came in the chat, Michelle. I think it's very relevant and a great question. And it asked, “After receiving award, is there a checklist for awardees to follow? They're new to federal funding but there seems to be so mandatory steps in the systems. It'd be nice if there's a checklist.”

And what I'll do is I'm going to enter the DOJ application submission checklist into the chat for everybody to access. That's going to get you the how-to as far as the systems, the process, and what you'll need to do in applying. And as Michelle have mentioned, the February 26th webinar will go into more detail on that process, so that'll be a good resource to come in handy prior to participating.

MICHELLE GARCIA: Yeah. And Tenzing, if you could go back to slide 39. So that is the resources that I mentioned that are really geared towards grantees. And so it's not specifically a checklist but it is a good overview of the types of things that grantees should be aware of and need to know in terms of managing an OJP or federal award. And I would start here. And then if you have specific questions, please don't hesitate to reach out. All right.

With that, if you do have additional questions after this webinar concludes, as we mentioned, the slides will be sent out to everyone. They include mine and Tenzing's contact information. Don't hesitate to reach out if you have additional questions. And perhaps we'll see you at another webinar in the series. We thank you all so much for your time and wish you all the best of luck in your applications. Thank you, everyone.

DARYL FOX: 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.