FY24 Hate Crimes Prevention and Investigation Funding Opportunities

Sunny Schnitzer: Thank you all so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you jumping on to learn a little bit about BJA’s Hate Crimes funding opportunities. So just a quick roundup of our agenda for today. Today you’ll be hearing a little bit about the Office of Justice Programs and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. We’ll talk to you a little bit about some of the programs at BJA that can support work to prevent and address hate crimes. And then you’ll hear more about the process for applying for grant funding from BJA under these programs.

So I’ll start today by discussing the Office of Justice Programs. So the Office of Justice Programs is one of three grant-making components of the U.S. Department of Justice, along with the Office on Violence Against Women and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. The Office of Justice Programs, or OJP, provides grant funding, training, research, and statistics to the criminal justice community. OJP is made up of several different offices, program offices, including the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which you’ll hear a little bit more about today.

The Bureau of Justice Assistance is led by Director Karhlton Moore, who was appointed by President Biden in 2022. BJA’s mission is to provide leadership and services in grant administration and criminal justice policy development to support state, local, and tribal justice strategies to achieve safer communities. BJA works with a host of different stakeholder groups, including communities, governments, nonprofit organizations, and more, to reduce crime and recidivism and unnecessary confinement and to promote a safe and fair criminal justice system. So there are several ways that BJA supports the criminal justice field. The first is investments. You’ll hear a little bit about that today, and this really is providing diverse funding streams and funding mechanisms to support state, local, and tribal as well as community organizations through grant funding and cooperative agreements.

We also share knowledge. So as some of you on this call may know, BJA produces lots of publications, research, best practice guides, and more. And so we do this to get information out to the field and to help build capacity to improve outcomes. And finally, we support the field through engagement. So that may be hosting convenings, connecting organizations, facilitating peer exchanges between folks that are doing complementary work in the field. As I mentioned today, you’re going to hear a little bit about our strategy for investments specifically focused on hate crimes prevention and response. All right, I’m going to turn it back over to Adam to talk through our first poll question.

Adam Cambria: Thank you, Sunny. So we are utilizing Poll Everywhere for this poll question this afternoon, and you may join the poll by one of two ways. So either from your web browser or via a text message. To join via the browser, you can go to pollev.com/hatecrimestta, all one word as shown on the screen. You’ll then be prompted to respond to the poll. To join via text message, you can text HateCrimesTTA to 22333. And again, you’ll receive a response that you’ve successfully joined and you can input your response. So moving to the poll question, you can also join by QR code as well. Has your organization been awarded federal grants in the past? And we have four options there. We’ll give it a minute for responses to come in.

Sunny Schnitzer: Okay, great. So it looks like we have a broad range. We have a few folks that have extensive experience with federal grants and a few folks that are interested in learning more. So excited to have all of you on the call today to talk through some of our hate crimes programs.

So very quickly I wanted to provide a very quick overview of the entire Hate Crimes portfolio at the Bureau of Justice Assistance. So OJP overall and the Department of Justice--one of our primary goals and one of the really kind of key priorities of the Attorney General and of the Department is to address hate crimes and bias crimes. This includes a focus on addressing the harm caused by hate incidents as well. At BJA, we have a growing portfolio of grant programs that support a variety of activities to prevent and address hate crimes.

This portfolio is made up of three different grant programs that I’ll discuss with you today. All of these grant programs are currently accepting applications for funding, and we’ll talk a little bit more about what that funding looks like and then you’ll hear from one of my colleagues in just a bit on the application process.

So I will start with the Emmett Till Cold Case Investigations Program. The Emmett Till Cold Case Investigations Program supports state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution agencies to investigate and prosecute unsolved homicide cold case murders suspected of having been racially motivated. This also includes support for victims’ families, for stakeholders, for entire communities impacted by these cases. Part of what makes this program so unique is that actually it focuses on cases that occurred prior to 1980. We know that these cases can impact entire communities for decades. These cases can leave a scar and can really be damaging and have a heavy legacy of harm in communities. So this program is really used to help facilitate community healing and reconciliation and resolution. And a few examples that I’ll share of currently funded programs are programs that seek to address the harms caused by lynchings. We have programs that are funded to address the harms caused by race massacres. We have a few sites that are working cases that maybe occurred in the ’70s and didn’t receive adequate investigation at that time, and so they’re being reopened for the first time.

We have sites that are doing cases--that are investigating cases, even going back to the 1800s and again, working in partnership with community organizations, with historical societies, with other stakeholder groups to ensure that these cases are made public, that they’re shared, but also that communities are healing from the harm caused. So as I mentioned, this program is currently accepting applications, so the solicitation or the notice of funding availability was released earlier this spring in March, and we are currently accepting applications through June 25, 2024.

So as you’ll hear from my colleague later, this program has a two-step--all of our grant funding programs have a two-step application process. So the grants.gov, that will be the initial application process, which is really just those initial forms, is June 25. Full application narratives and proposals will be due on July 2. So BJA expects to make approximately three awards under this program. The estimated maximum amount for an award is $750,000. Grants awarded under the FY24 Emmett Till Program would have a grant start date of October 1 of this year and a performance period of 3 years or 36 months. Under this program, BJA will make awards as grants.

Next program. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Program supports efforts again by state, local, and tribal law enforcement and prosecution agencies and their partners in conducting outreach, educating practitioners and the public, enhancing victim reporting tools, and investigating and prosecuting hate crimes committed on the basis of a victim’s perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. This program is a little bit more flexible in terms of the dates that cases can be looked at. So this program, pardon me, was released earlier this spring in April. We will be accepting those initial applications through July 18 of this year. Full applications will be due July 25. For this program, I’ll flag a few examples of ways that the program funding has been used in the past. So several organizations or agencies that have Shepard Byrd Grant awards use funding to support victim advocates, to support local nonprofit organizations in partnering, to develop training on identifying hate crimes, to assist with accurate, there we go, data reporting on hate crimes and hate incidents.

Several programs focus on building up investigative capacity, but really one of the biggest focuses for this program, the Shepard Byrd Program, is on focusing on outreach and improving justice agencies’ ability to connect with victims, to protect victims, to identify hate crimes, and to ensure that justice is served.

Under this program, BJA expects to make approximately 15 awards. There are three different categories under this program. And so for the different categories, category 1 is for demonstration programs in a single jurisdiction. That could be a city or municipality, but one single jurisdiction. Those programs, a maximum award amount is $725,000. For category 2, this focuses on state or regional approaches. This could include county agencies that perhaps serve multiple municipalities or townships. This could include state agencies that serve multiple jurisdictions within their state. And under that program, awards are expected to be made up to $2 million. And then finally, category 3 is really focused on building out a strategic plan and focusing on developing a needs assessment and a plan for addressing hate going forward.

These programs or awards made under category 3 would have a maximum of $125,000. Categories 1 and 2, the performance period would be 48 months or 4 years. For category three, developing a strategic plan, there are two, pardon me, it is a 2-year performance period or 24 months. As with the Emmett Till program, BJA expects to make awards under this solicitation as grants. And the grant starting period is October 1 of this year.

The final program that I’ll highlight today that is also accepting funding to prevent and address hate crimes is our Community-based Approaches to Prevent and Address Hate Crimes. Here at BJA, we know that public safety is co-produced and led by a community. This program is really designed to leverage the unique convening power and leadership power of community-based organizations and civil rights organizations to help really focus on preparedness, prevention, identification--increasing opportunities for victims to report what happened to them, perhaps if they’re not comfortable talking to law enforcement, and to just overall improve responses to hate crimes. This could include conflict resolution, restorative justice, healing activities, victim services, but also general outreach and public awareness and education.

As I mentioned, this program is also currently accepting applications. This program opened on March 11 of this year. We will be accepting that first initial part of the application on grants.gov through June 25 and the full applications and proposals will be due in JustGrants on July 2 of this year.

Under this program, BJA has two different categories. So the two categories are: category 1 focuses on individual organizations that are looking to do work either in their communities or serving a specific community. These awards will be made in the amount of $400,000. BJA expects to make a total number or a total of 13 awards under this program. And category 2 focuses on a national model that would support hate crimes prevention and response efforts in multiple jurisdictions or an intermediary model. So an organization that would serve as the fiscal sponsor for a larger grant award, this $2 million, that would then partner with smaller organizations with sub-awards or micro-grants to support their efforts. The total amount available for this program is $8,400,000. The period of performance for this program is 36 months. As with the first two, BJA expects to make awards under this solicitation as grants. Okay, I’m going to turn it over now to my colleague Nico Taylor to talk a little bit more about the application process. Nico.

Nico Taylor: Thank you, Sunny. So on the next slides I’ll be talking about the eligibility and application requirements. The eligible applicants for Emmett Till are state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, including prosecutor’s offices. An applicant entity may submit more than one application if each application proposes a different project in response to the solicitation. Also, an entity may be proposed as a sub-recipient, known as a sub-grantee, in more than one application. To increase their chances for success, applicants are encouraged to employ unique partnerships with researchers, historians, forensic scientists, community partners, and local and national civil rights organizations to complete this work.

Eligible applicants for the Shepard Byrd Program are state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, including prosecutor’s offices. An applicant entity may submit more than one application if each application proposes a different project in response to the solicitation. Also, an entity may be proposed as a sub-recipient, known as a sub-grantee, in more than one application. To increase their chances for success, applicants are encouraged to employ unique partnerships with researchers, community partners, and local and national civil rights organizations to complete this work.

And the eligible applicants for the Community-based Approaches are Native American tribal organizations, other than federally recognized tribal governments; nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education; nonprofits that do not have a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education; private institutions of higher education; public and state-controlled institutions of higher education; and other--this includes community-based organizations and civil rights organizations that are tribal, nonprofit, for profit, and academic. The application sections require a SF-424 form; the proposal abstract; the proposal narrative; budget detail worksheet and budget narrative; indirect cost rate agreement, if applicable; tribal authorizing resolution, if applicable; financial management and system of internal controls questionnaire; disclosure of lobbying activities, also known as the SF-LLL form; and additional attachments.

Application sections, additional attachments. This includes: the time task plan, which includes outline goal and objectives, the summary of major activities and expected dates of completion, and responsible agencies; resumes and job descriptions of key staff for all staff to be funded under the grant; letters of support and/or MOUs for key partners; the applicant disclosure of proposed sub-recipients, which will entail attaching a list of proposed sub-recipients of grant funding if applicable--that includes their name, organizational affiliation, and location; applicant disclosure of pending applications; and research and evaluation independence and integrity form; and request and justification for employee compensation waiver, if applicable.

Proposal abstract. The proposal abstract will include the name of applicant, project’s focus area (location, type of cases), summary of project’s scope and activities, estimated number of cases to be investigated and prosecuted, list of key partners, a preliminary description of how community stakeholders will be engaged in the program, and if the applicant is seeking priority consideration.

The proposal narrative should be double-spaced using standard 12-point font with 1-inch margins. Number pages “1 of 15,” et cetera. Should not exceed 15 pages. Scoring is described as: the description of issue, worth 25%; the project design and implementation is worth 30%; the capabilities and competencies portion is worth 30%; the plan for collecting data required for performance measures is worth 5%; and the budget and budget worksheet is worth 10%.

Next, I’ll be discussing the application resources. Budget and budget narrative: Itemized budget for each year of the grant; there is no match required; prior approval, planning, and reporting of conference/meeting/training calls. If the applicant is seeking priority consideration under Priority 1(B), based on the identification of at least one proposed sub-recipient, as a culturally specific organization, the proposed funding for the sub-recipient and the web-based budget form must be a minimum of 40% of award funding. The budget narrative must also describe how the activities that will be funded with the minimum 40% of award funding provided to the sub-recipient specifically relate to the priority consideration requested under Priority 1(B) and described in the Capabilities and Competencies section of the application.

DOJ hate crime resources. These are our list of resources that you can go to for a program overview, information on the FBI’s hate crimes work, information on Community Relations Service, and for other DOJ hate crime resources. You can visit these particular websites for this information.

Application resources. This page talks about resources that will help you respond to the solicitation. It has application elements and formatting instructions. It provides you resources on proposal abstract, how to prepare your application attachments, financial information. So it has a list of resources that you can go to for application purposes if you need assistance on anything that’s on the right-hand side of this page.

This slide talks about learning about the Department of Justice grants and payment management systems. You have JustGrants, training, frequently asked questions, user support, more resources, and news and updates. And you can go to these particular links that will provide you information on the particular information listed on the right.

On this slide, you have application assistance. So this slide talks about providing technical assistance with submitting the SF-424 and the SF-LLL; customer support hotline--and gives you the telephone number for that, which you can reach 24 hours a day, 7 days a week; web and email information--there’s a link to that for support to grants.gov; and provides information on available federal funding opportunities for various federal agencies. And you have support side, which provides technical assistance to submitting the full application and DOJ’s Justice Grants system, also known as JustGrants. It has the customer support hotline and the web and email information for JustGrants support and Justice Grants also.

So this slide, Email Updates: text OJP your email address to subscribe, message and data rates apply. You can subscribe to stay connected for any of these resources that’s listed on the page. And to stay connected, we have Facebook; we have X, also known as Twitter; YouTube. You can use the QR code to subscribe to Justice Matters and News From BJA to receive the latest information from BJA and the field. For more information on funding opportunities, publications, and initiatives, visit the BJA’s website at www.bja.ojp.gov.

If you have additional questions, you can contact the OJP Response Center, the email that’s listed, there’s a toll-free number. And for the hearing impaired, there’s a number listed as well. The response center hours of operation are from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday.

As a reminder, there are dual deadlines. Applications must be submitted in a two-step process, each with its own deadline. Step 1 is to submit an SF-424 and an SF-LLL at grants.gov. Step 2 is to submit the full application with attachments at justgrants.usdoj.gov. And please note submission deadline times for both grants.gov and JustGrants are now 8:59 p.m., Eastern Time, and not 11:59 p.m., Eastern Time, as in past years. Read the solicitation fully and carefully for further guidance.

As a quick reference, important contacts for technical assistance and submitting the SF-424 and the SF-LLL, which is the lobbying form, into JustGrants and grants.gov: Call 1-800-518-4726, or 606-555-5035 24 hours a day. Or you can email the [email protected] email. For technical assistance in submitting the application in JustGrants, you can call the number listed 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday and 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on weekends and holidays. And their email is listed. And for technical assistance for programmatic requirements, call the OJP Resource Center at the number listed 10:00 AM through 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday or email [email protected].

This is where we address the questions and answers that’s entered in the Q&A box.

Sunny Schnitzer: So I think so far I’ve only seen one question come in, and that’s will participants receive a copy of this webinar? Just to answer that verbally as well. The webinar is being recorded and will be distributed to attendees as well as posted publicly on BJA’s website. But at this point, if there are any further questions, we are happy to answer any questions you may have about these programs or the application process.

Nico Taylor: I want to correct something I said. I think when I was going through the slides, I said that the SF-424 is the same as the SF-LLL and that’s incorrect. The SF-LLL is the same as the lobbying form. So I wanted to make that distinction and correction.

Sunny Schnitzer: Great, thank you. And actually, Nico, we do have a question about that: Are there two documents that are due on June 25? So for both the Emmett Till Program and the Community-based Program, those documents that Nico just mentioned, the SF-424 and the SF-LLL, those are both due on June 25. The full proposals, the written narratives, the abstracts, those kind of beefier sections, the budgets that Nico talked about, those are all due on July 2.

It looks like we have a question here on how long to get a response back if accepted. So great question. Typically, BJA attempts to make notifications of awards by October 1, so that would be October 1 of this year. That said, we sometimes run into some delays, so I would say expect a notification of whether you’ve received an award or not at some point early in the fall.

Let’s see. Great question here in the chat about the focus of the program. Is the focus solely on hate crimes or can hate incidents and speech be considered? So for both the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Program and the Community-based Program, both hate incidents, hate crimes, hate speech, anything kind of connected there or that causes community turmoil or fear can be focused on using this funding. I think the one exception that I would give is certainly any enforcement funded activities would be related to hate crimes, but certainly allowable to focus on hate incidents and speech, especially if we’re focusing on non-enforcement-related activities.

Can a community make an application to multiple programs? Would it be detrimental to getting an award? That’s a great question. We actually have several grantees that have, or I should say, communities that have awards in multiple of these programs. For example, nearly all of our Emmett Till grantees also applied and have a Shepard Byrd award. We also have multiple communities that are served both by the Shepard Byrd Program and the Community-based Program. The one flag I have for applications is that the, how do I want to put this, that the applications should not be duplicative of one another. And if you have submitted duplicative applications, you do need to disclose that as a part of the application process and that will be factored in during review of the application.

So great question here about, seems like there’s some overlap between the two non-Till programs. How do we know which is appropriate for us to apply based on our proposal? Great question. So the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Program focuses or the eligible applicants for that program are law enforcement and prosecution agencies. Now, those agencies may partner with nonprofit organizations or local community-based organizations, but those would be sub-recipients. So the primary applicant and the fiscal sponsor for that program needs to be a law enforcement or prosecution agency that is state, local, or tribal. And then the Community-based Program eligible applicants are nonprofit organizations, community-based organizations, civil rights organizations. So they would be the primary applicant and the fiscal sponsor under that program. So that’s the primary difference there.

Is the purchase of security equipment allowable as a part of a community project within the intent of preventing hate crimes? So what I will do is we can drop in the chat a link to the OJP Financial Guide, and the OJP Financial Guide should lay out for you what the allowable costs are for all of OJP. There are not specific restrictions in the Community-based Program that would restrict you from purchasing safety equipment or security equipment as long as it is in line with the OJP Financial Guide.

Okay, next question. Can education be the applicant for a Shepard Byrd award? So the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Program is authorized by the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Act. And so eligible applicants are actually laid out in statutory language. And so in that program, the eligible applicants are state, local, or tribal law enforcement or prosecution agencies. If your organization is a state or locally authorized or chartered law enforcement or prosecution agency, even if it’s associated with education, then they would be an eligible applicant. The other thing I will flag here is that there is actually a priority consideration for Shepard Byrd programs that partner with schools and colleges and universities. So it is definitely encouraged to incorporate education into applications, either if they’re an eligible applicant as the primary applicant or as a sub-recipient or partner.

Yes, the PowerPoint or the recording will be posted on our website and will be distributed to anyone who registered for this webinar. So we will be distributing that. Okay. A question here about a nonprofit that serves victims of crimes--for which program are they eligible? Nonprofit programs are going to be eligible to apply under the Community-based Program. And then has a community received more than one community-based award for a city or a multi-state region? Yes. Yes. I can think of several jurisdictions that have several awards and actually I’m going to ask, we have a few colleagues who are on the line who are doing the work for me and dropping some links in the chat.

So Sarah, thank you for that. If we can drop in a link to the OJP funding map, you can actually zoom in and look at your city of all of the OJP-funded awards in your jurisdiction, whether that’s a state or a city, for the past 3 years. And you can see jurisdictions that have multiple awards. Again, I think one thing I’ll flag there is that the jurisdictions that do have multiple community-based awardees, they are very distinct, but complementary programs. So none of them are duplicative of one another.

All right, well we really appreciate you sitting in and learning about the hate crimes prevention and investigation funding opportunities at BJA. We hope you’ll consider applying for one or multiple of these programs. As I mentioned, hate crimes is one of the top priorities of the Department of Justice and really empowering communities to focus on prevention and to focus on what works for each individual community is a priority of BJA. So thank you so much. We really appreciate it.