Three Weeks Left in the 2011 PEP Application Period!

2011 PEP applications are due three weeks from tomorrow. How are you doing? Where are you at in your proposal development process? Maybe you’re wondering where you should be at by this point. As long as you submit by 4:30pm Washington, DC time on May 13^th, it doesn’t matter terribly what your process looked like for getting to that point, but if you’re looking for direction, here’s an idea of what you should be doing in the final three weeks.

 

At this point, you should have already:

• Created a grants.gov account for the applicant agency or updated the existing account. If you haven’t done this yet, go to http://grants.gov/applicants/get_registered.jsp today. Account set-up can take one day or several weeks, and submission through this system is required in 2011.
• Gathered data and information to substantiate the need for your proposed project. Need information must include but should not be limited to School Health Index (SHI) scores for Modules 1-4 for each school/building participating in your project if you are a local educational agency (LEA) applicant or a community-based organization (CBO) with a school partner. If you are a CBO with no partnering school, you need to conduct another formal need assessment and include those results in your application.
• Met with key project team members and stakeholders to determine the direction your project will take in order to address needs identified.
• Made at least an initial contact with any project partners.
• Begun collecting sales quotes and other cost information and started assembling your budget narrative.
• Downloaded the grants.gov application package, familiarized yourself with how it works and what you will need to do to load the package, and begun filling out the required federal forms.

*Any tasks above not yet completed should be taken care of immediately.

 

This week you should:

• Gather any outstanding need data.
• Finalize your project design, including determining your project timeline.
• Finalize your management plan. Ensure adequate time will be committed to overseeing the implementation of the project!
• Finalize your partnerships and request any signed partnership agreements or letters needed.
• Gather any outstanding budget information and complete a full draft of the budget. Check to see that your proposed match meets the matching requirement. (For information on the matching requirement and calculating match, see pages 21 and 22 of the RFP.)
• Full draft your narrative.
• Continue working on federal forms and assurances and draft the required national evaluation participation commitment letter. Print completed items and obtain superintendent or executive director signatures. Scan them in and upload them to your grant package. Even though grants.gov provides an electronic signature, the actual signatures are also required per the RFP.
• Request any appendices items needed from others such as job descriptions, resumes, and the indirect cost rate proof.

 

Next week you should:

• Collect any outstanding appendices items and load them on to your grant package.
• Meet with key team members to review the budget and make any need budget revisions. Finalize your budget by week’s end so that you have time to fill out the federal 524 budget form, enter budget numbers in the federal 424 form on the grants.gov package, and complete your narrative ensuring it fully justifies all items in your budget.
• Collect any outstanding letters, partnership agreements, forms, and assurances with signatures and load them on to your grant package.
• Revise your narrative.
• Write an abstract.

 

The final week you should:

• Have another person read your narrative to ensure clarity, then finalize your narrative. Remember the narrative is limited to 25 double-spaced pages using 11- or 12-point Times New Roman, Courier, Courier New, or Arial font with one-inch margins. (Arial Narrow and Times Roman are no longer allowed.)
• Complete the Screening Form included on page 113 of the RFP and load it on to your grant package.
• Load all remaining documents to your grants.gov package. Remember only PDF files will be accepted.
• Submit your grant early. If you can submit two or more days before the deadline, that is ideal. Grants.gov has a multi-step process for accepting applications that involves applicant receipt of a total of four confirmation emails. It can take up to two days to receive all four emails. If all emails are not received, or an email is received stating there is a problem with the application, you will only be able to go in and fix and resubmit the application if the deadline has not yet passed. Hence, you should aim to submit two or more days early if at all possible.

 

Good luck!!