The first Hawaii Grant Summit—organized by Vicinity and featuring experts from Learn, Design, Apply, Inc. and LGS Tech Consulting—covered a wide array of grants newly available or opening soon and provided advice on how to build a successful application.
With proper preparation, collaboration, and the right partners, organizations can successfully navigate the application process and put substantial funding to impactful use.
With funding coming soon from various federal agencies, there are opportunities to secure grants for school safety, broadband infrastructure, and more. Here are some key takeaways:
School Safety Grants
School safety is a top priority, and grants are available to improve safety measures. The COPS School Violence Prevention Program provides up to $500,000 to increase security equipment, implement safety programs, and coordinate with law enforcement. The STOP School Violence grant offers up to $1 million for mental health services, communication platforms, and more. Following guidelines like those provided by the Partner Alliance for Safer Schools (PASS) ensures applications clearly convey needs and desired outcomes.
Broadband Expansion Grants
Hawaii has been allocated $150 million to expand broadband access per the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The funding will become available in 2024 after the state’s proposals have been approved. Hawaii also received over $500,000 to create a digital equity plan to accompany the infrastructure funding. The grants can cover various expenses like cybersecurity tools and workforce development. Entities interested in applying should review the initial state proposals and offer feedback during public comment periods.
Additional Opportunities
Various other agencies offer grants that could benefit Hawaii organizations. For example, the USDA’s Rural Utility Service has grants to fund distance learning and telemedicine programs in rural areas. The Department of Education and EPA provide funding for school programs and improvements. And other resources like the Economic Development Administration and Department of Labor have grants related to facilities, job training programs, and more.
Strategies for Success
A few key strategies can position organizations to secure grants:
- Focus on understanding the problem or need, then find funding to address it. Grants back projects, not just products.
- Develop relationships with government representatives who may sponsor earmarks for specific recipients.
- Assemble a team to work on the application and implementation if funded. Involve personnel who can handle required follow-up like reporting.
- Align applications to serve the grant program’s priorities and intended recipients. Follow all guidelines closely.
Recording
Here is the recorded video of the main presentations by Learn, Design, Apply, Inc. and LGS Tech Consulting, with closed-captioning:
Slide Deck
Here are the slides presented at the Hawaii Grant Summit:
Links and Acknowledgements
- Presented by Vicinity
- Featuring Learn, Design, Apply, Inc. and LGS Tech Consulting
- Venue Sponsors: Hub Coworking Hawaii, Entrepreneurs Sandbox, HTDC
- Sponsored by: Neat
Transcript
Zachary Sheets: Yeah, so I’m Zachary Sheets, principal at Waipahu High School.
Misti Pali-Oriol: I’m Misti Pali-Oriol. I’m an institutional analyst, I do grants for the department.
Zachary Sheets: So, so I’ll just go over kind of how it all started and actually do not remember. It was very painless, actually. But I somehow get in contact with Ryan and, you know, talk a lot about different technologies. And then for us the opportunity to work with this is called a COPS grant. I actually don’t know what that acronym stands for
Misti Pali-Oriol: Community oriented policing,
Zachary Sheets: There we go. So and it was funding to help secure our campus. And for us, as you know, within a high school, we are 2,500 students, we’re the second largest high school in the state of Hawaii. So doing something to secure our campus was very important. And finding funds to do that was obviously even more important because in doing so, we worked in I think, for this COPS grant, no one in the state of Hawaii for the State of Hawaii has not applied for it, for the funding has never been used it for the Department of Education in the State of Hawaii. So that was one unique factor. And also the way our state dynamics work is we’re one school system in case you didn’t know that. And the funds actually go to a school district. So that’s why I had to involve Misti. And then luckily, I taught… Luckily, I was a principal for kids in elementary middle school. So when I reached out to Misti, she was able to work it out with us. And then so we met, got came up with some ideas. It really was a pain… I’m, I’m being honest. So they were they were very helpful. All the technical sides, we had, we had meetings that were set up, where we just gave the data that was needed. And so we got a team from school and the data that was needed. And the grant writers that the rest. Funding for the grant writer was through Misti, so thank you, Misti. And really was just meeting a couple times, I don’t even know how to do that maybe four or five times to make sure everything was finalized. And then we worked with Michael where’s Michael, to get some of the to get the product and the costs kind of laid out. But all those details were done with the help of and Mike, and Misti was very pretty painless process. So we’re still waiting to see if we get it. But we looked at secure like doing perimeter fencing, to really make it look a little bit nicer. And then we have a back area on our campus that some individuals hang out. But we do not wish them to call on campus. I guess I could say it that way. So we wanted to we wanted something that was a little more secure and durable than what we have now. And then there’s other systems that we might look at, like the protection and things of that nature that that we kind of threw in there at the end. But yeah, it’s pretty painless process. I don’t know, Misti, you wanna add anything?
Misti Pali-Oriol: I’m just on my side, you know, so we have the funding. My office is the policy innovation Planning and Evaluation Branch of the Department of Education under our strategy office. And one of the things that we do is we try to get schools and offices to apply for federal funding, right. We were able to provide him money for a grant writer, but I don’t know where to start looking for the right grant writer. That’s where LDA came in. So I you know, so I met with LDA, they were able to give me a list of recommended grant writers who specialized in that grant. So not only did he write the grant, but he kind of advised us along the way. This, you know, sounds like something that would have a better chance of getting funding, we should frame it this way. And then they really just like he said, they just we met one hour a week with the school staff. Everything else got done by the grant writer that you know, that he was so competent, his team, that even for me, it was a very painless process, I need to get superintendents approval, and, you know, he was able to write the grant in record time, and I was able to get the approvals. He knows how it goes try and get.
Zachary Sheets: If you’re like me, when you hear grant, you just think of like a lot of strings attached. And if I had that I already kind of wanted to change it. So luckily, I asked him today, and I’m like, “Oh, we have people to do that.” No, I’m just kidding. There’s only certain things you can do. But of course, but still, like you don’t even now along the way. And I know with grants, you have to expend the funds for exactly what you said. So with that whole process, I think they’re gonna help us out with that as well to make sure that the reports that are needed are completed and we do all that because I can’t know about I’m gonna, I’m not gonna be able to do that. So Have them support and miss these help and help me.
Misti Pali-Oriol: What we really need is schools who are who are interested in trying to go after grants. You know, might seem obvious that everyone would want a grant but it that’s not the case, right. It’s difficult. It’s additional work for folks who are already overworked. But I swear we make it easy.
Unknown Speaker: —
Misti Pali-Oriol: We are and because we’ve never applied I would imagine we we sort of have better chance, right? All these other states have been able to pull down billions and millions of dollars. And Hawaii hasn’t. So for me just for parity sake, we’re due some money.
Zachary Sheets: Oh, for the COPS screen, I believe that is…
Dana Satterwhite: This particular grant… not eligible. And there are other programs that are that similar thing. In addition to Misti’s point, at that point, there are resources that will hopefully connect you with that exploration with you to talk through what your options are depending on what type of organization…
Unknown Speaker: —
Zachary Sheets: Because even with even with like with that type of thing we… the DOE for us, even though we went through this process, like when we received the funds, and we still have to go through the procurement process, and all the rules are still in place. So but there we’re working with… there was a lot of ideas for grants. That could have been another possibility. But when you said to go with the COPS grant, but there’s a lot of avenues for funding that I didn’t really realize. And then Misti, even though Misti is in our own department, like she works with a lot of grants that I didn’t even realize as well. So, but security was one of them, but we already had that project going. So she had a question
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: We can speak to it a little bit depending on what falls under the Department of Ed in terms of early childhood education.
Misti Pali-Oriol: Yeah, so um, I believe anything below kindergarten is not the DOE’s under the DOE’s purview. So that would be the Office of Early Learning, the executive officer, the executive office on early learning. And then after school programs, we actually handle a lot of those through our community engagement branch.
Unknown Speaker: A two parter. What’s the timeline kind of look like in terms of awarding and setting the money by without applying and then if and when awarded the grant will we go through an RFI RFP process to procure particular vendors.
Misti Pali-Oriol: For the school safety grant in particular, it’s a three year project term. We have to go through state procurement, that’s an that’s a federal requirement as well as the state requirement and anytime the federal government gives money we have to procure it using whatever procurement regulations there are in place so we will utilize some procurement method that the state is okay with.
Zachary Sheets: Phil I think the school district for sure like I think that’s a Misti’s uh, Misti’s role would be to find those partners within the DOE. I don’t want to just, I mean, maybe I could, I don’t want to take all the funds, all the grants. That’s why we try to shoot, she’s pretty been pretty good about funding certain schools where maybe we can pilot certain things. But yeah, but for me personally, like for our school, yeah, it opened up my eyes to like, different possibilities. So I didn’t realize there was that much money out there for certain, like, you know, I guess advancing certain causes and such. Yeah, it was really eye opening for me.
Misti Pali-Oriol: And I think, overall, when when I first heard of school safety funding, I thought it was for schools in Chicago, where they have all these violence. But really, there there are. So there are safety needs across our state that we don’t realize are covered by these grants. You know, it’s not just for metal detectors in cafeterias. It’s for a bunch of different things. And so just sort of educating our school leaders on what the funds can be used for. And then they start thinking, Oh, I could use, you know, a new fence or some cameras or some, you know, whatever it is that they, they kind of come up with that that makes sense for their so
Zachary Sheets: I think the hardest part for us was I was just talking to someone back there. But for us for for the high school, like we’re such a huge, big campus. When you look at solutions and other places have it’s there’s only one entry. I think, for us what’s really difficult if, if there’s solutions for like, all of our doors open to outside, you know, the whole campus is wide open to the outside. So for us, it’s more than Security Camera System, as opposed to like having a lot of different other mechanisms. But I know there’s like an intercom systems that we looked at. We didn’t go down that avenue, because we are now just getting like a security system. And we do we use our own funding for that. So we didn’t use that route. But there are a lot of things that are out there and a lot of technologies that could make our open air.
Misti Pali-Oriol: Our campuses are structured, very different to right the campuses elsewhere. And the open nature, I think of it creates a lot of challenges that don’t exist in schools across the country. So there’s a particular need for certain things here, because of the way our campuses are meant to be open spaces inviting spaces. But we still have to secure those because there’s still folks that want to do bad things.
Unknown Speaker: Are you using hazard assessment… office?
Zachary Sheets: Yes, yes.
Unknown Speaker: —
Zachary Sheets: We, yeah, we for this spot? Well, yeah, we do use that from the assessments, Where are areas that we could bolster security, for us, have insecurities. We don’t want it. So for us… For this grant, there were a lot of vulnerable areas. The back the back of campus, we call it the jungle. So for us to secure that area that was very, very important, which sort of funny,
Unknown Speaker: So is that’s your starting point by using…
Zachary Sheets: Oh, no, we use theirs, but for this week, I think it is for you when you’re there, and you’re seeing what areas to come. It’s just what they put in the grant process we can. So we get evidence of things that we’re doing. So we incorporated that, but we didn’t use it.
Misti Pali-Oriol: So it can actually be used both ways. So for for Waipahu’s grant, we used it as justification for need of need, right? I’m working with a couple of other schools where we’re starting with their threat assessments, we’re saying let’s look at the vulnerabilities on your campus. And let’s address those through these grants. I think this one was a little different because he had this great idea that he needed to find funding for it. You know, the school violence prevention grant was probably the closest fit for what he wanted to do. Where now that we have you know, we’ve tried it we understand the process we can go to schools and and use the vulnerability and threat assessments to help build our program.
Zachary Sheets: Like our perimeter is pretty big. So that’s that’s noticable. But there’s no front gate. There’s basically there was no front. There’s like a wide open gate. We can just walk in anytime it’s a shorter fence, bout four feet. So adding color…
Dana Satterwhite: Presumably we’re all here today because we’re curious about grants and funding. And to Zach’s point, you hear grant, and it might seem overwhelming, confusing, more work that you’re about to take on. And so hopefully the takeaway from today is that by connecting with groups like Ryan,, and our organization that to understand there are resources, there are people that specialize in finding these funding programs and figuring out what is the right fit for you, hearing that specific example is so helpful. And to Misti’s point, our goal is to sort of explain where there is funding. But more than that, it helps us to start having conversations hearing about your specific needs. When you mentioned early childhood education, there are programs specifically for that, the very last thing we would ever encourage you to do is say, “Oh, well, this is the grant. So you have to try and figure out how to fit into this grant application.” That’s never the recipe for success. So our goal is to give you a little bit of understanding of there’s lots of funding out there but more as an invitation to engage with resources. People like Missy who are here to help connect you to resources and information and then we kind of figure out where are the right funding sources for you what you’re trying to accomplish. We’re, we kind of broke this out into different areas of focus at our organization Learn Design Apply, we’re a grants consulting and management firm, our job is to kind of understand funding at a high level. But also we focus on different areas, different buckets of funding, different agencies, different types of technology, just so that we can kind of specialize in certain areas and direct you to the right resources around the right programs. Ryan, if you don’t mind driving slides, thank you, we can kind of skip through the first few. Like I said, we’ve broken this up. So today, Megan and I are going to tackle just a couple of the first topics and then we’ll pause and answer questions. And then we’ll shift to some colleagues also with our organization with some other types of funding to explore and think about. Generally, as I mentioned, we’re grants consulting and management firm, our job is to monitor funding, become as much of experts as we can to help connect people to the right resources and information to make sure you’re looking at the right grant programs, understanding what you might be responsible for, for Misti and Zach to kind of help alleviate some of the fear of going after a grant and take some of the heavy lifting off of your plates and make sure that that funding is going to the organizations that it’s intended to support and help actually make those grant programs successful, both at the federal or state agency level, but also for your organization’s in align with what you’re trying to accomplish. So just at a very high level, if you’re new to grants funding and funding in general, and kind of with some of the questions I was hearing about the cops programs, specifically, there are different types of funding. And we’ll talk a little bit about that. But they come in all different shapes and flavors. And understanding that is sort of the first place to start just so you know, where you might want to start looking for funding. There are allocations. And that are those are funds that are sent directly to whether it’s the state or specific agencies within the state that trickle down into sort of different categories with different priorities. Those are not competitive, you don’t have to submit a competitive application like the cops grant to get access to those funds. However, you still have to meet certain priorities, and be within the boundaries of what those funds are intended to do. Then, as we’re all familiar with stimulus funding, because we all just went through COVID together and saw a lot of those funds come through. Even understanding how those are supposed to be used is kind of a different animal in that you still have to use them for the purpose that they’re designed for. They’re still in some cases allocated, but there were also some competitive funds that came through those relief programs. So understanding that language, those requirements is important to note. And then discretionary funding is sort of that traditional grant, when you think of the word grant, you fill out an application, you wait to find out if you’re funded and somebody’s question earlier, you’re competing, whether it’s across the country, across the region across the state, you’re you’re kind of seeing how your grant compares to others. And if you’re at the top of whatever their Scoring Matrix is you in theory get funded. So those are kind of just at a very high level. Here’s what the different buckets of funding look like. We have a little saying at our company that says we always kind of say projects, not products, we tend to specialize in funding as a technology flay some sort of way that technology can help solve for Challenges, funding follows problems. So wherever you see a challenge, whether it’s across our country or across Hawaii, that needs to be addressed. Usually there’s money to help address that. And maybe some kind of technology or perimeter fencing or cameras or access control. That might be what you need that budget to fund. But you have to have an idea of your project. So you hear Miss Misti talking about that threat assessment process and taking, okay, where are your vulnerabilities? Let’s figure out what we need. Let’s talk about our project and what would make it successful. And then let’s go find the right funding source to support that project. You start with the project, you’ll have much more success when you do find the right funding source to solve for those challenges you’re facing. And again, one grants not going to solve all your needs. So sometimes it’s about building a funding strategy. That’s where groups like ours can come in and help walk you through that process. What is your strategy? What are your long term goals? What are your short term goals in which grants are going to help meet you along the way. And then again, the biggest takeaway is that resources like us, like Ryan, and Misti and Zack, and people that have done this before, exist, and that we’re here to help walk you through this process. And then as mentioned, the whole goal of today is yes, to give you a little bit of this information, but also to connect with you after this hear about your individual needs your organization’s and hopefully have a conversation that leads to more conversations about where we can find funding.
My job today is just to give you a little bit of a an example of one upcoming grant program that I have done for a very long time… and I have done this grant together for almost 20 years. It is one that is due to come out really soon. And it’s also one that’s very underutilized in the State of Hawaii. You heard Misti referenced the COPS grant is also one of those programs that Hawaii just hasn’t received this funding for a variety of reasons. This is one of those programs that Hawaii has high eligibility in certain areas. And it could be a really amazing program if it’s something that sort of speaks to you. So I’ll give a quick overview of this program. And then I’d love to talk with you if this is a grant that sort of sparked some interest in what you might be trying to do. This is a grant through the Department of Agriculture. It’s called the RUS DLT which stands for Rural Utility Services, Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant. So it is a technology grant supporting all things related to distance learning and telemedicine hardware software, the technology kind of those cap x purchases that will give you the technology that you need in order to do distance learning or telemedicine activities as long as you’re benefiting the most rural and underserved communities. That key rural and underserved. There are different measurements that we can kind of walk you through if your locations are eligible or kind of what it might look like for your project design. But one thing I just want to sort of emphasize. Distance Learning can mean all kinds of things. It doesn’t just mean K-12 schools or higher education. It can mean firefighter training, it can mean workforce development training initiatives between community colleges and industry employers that want to kind of build up a specific workforce or health care providers that are also working with health care professions. Education is programming. So distance learning really means education. It could be anything related to education, as long as you’re serving a rural and underserved community, by way of technology. Similarly for telemedicine, it does not just mean telemedicine hospital, health clinic, it could be telemedicine into schools, bringing in resources like mental health professionals remotely into K-12 schools that don’t have somebody full time staff for those K-12 students, or those higher ed students. So think outside the box for this grant because it is Department of Agriculture, not Department of Ed, it is very open to kind of your definition of are you using technology for training and education in rural areas, and a story that that will make you competitive for this grant. It funds up to a million dollars, there is a 15% match. And like I said it is due out pretty soon. So if you go to the next slide, Ryan, I think I put a little map on here. So if you look at this map of Hawaii, what you’ll see is anything that is yellow, which isn’t a ton, is what’s considered urban by this grants definition. So anything outside of the yellow is kind of eligible. That is not to say that if you are in the yellow like we are here in Honolulu, you could not be that applicant or that hub where maybe you have resources like more of the healthcare professionals or more of the instructors and you want to do outreach to some of the non yellow areas. This would be a good fit for this program. I also wanted to call out this list at the top here is since actually before 2010 that is all of the funded application since I can’t remember when OHA was because it was before 2010. But on the website, they only went to 2010. But honestly, that’s not very many since 2010. So again, to my point, this is undersubscribed in the state.
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: Oh my gosh, I can’t I will say anywhere from probably about 180 to 100 are probably funded in the last few years across the country. And that’s probably about right, fewer in probably five years prior just because there was less total funding available. But to give you a reference point, if you know across the country every year, you’re getting anywhere from 80 to 100 funded and this is Hawaii’s list since before 2010. So there’s a lot that you could do if again, if this grant sort of speaks to some of the details I’ve shared about what it could do. If it’s something of interest, it’s definitely to Misti’s point. When when you’re undersubscribed in a program, it’s it’s usually something that you can use to your advantage in an application. So again, my job here was just to kind of give you a little bit of a highlight on this particular grant. But the bigger picture, too is again, and you’ll hear from Megan about some of the other funding that’s available is there is so much funding, and it’s usually designed for a very specific purpose. And so the more we know about what you’re trying to do, what you’re trying to accomplish, who you’re trying to reach and serve, the more we can help finding the correct funding sources for you to pursue and how to do that. Yes.
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: Yes, it does. Absolutely. Micronesia. Guam. Absolutely. So it’s a federal grant. So it does have to be within the United States. But territories? Absolutely. Yes.
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: No good question. They still have to be in the rural areas. But again, you could in theory, like if you haven’t correctional facility that falls within the urban areas. In theory, they might have access to more resources at that facility than some of the locations that might be rural, they could be a hub, where you might have, say telemedicine from that location delivered out to those rural sites or education. So we’ve done a lot with like state departments of corrections, where they partner with their community college districts for education, or they partner with their local health providers for telemedicine. Some of those are in non rural areas, but because they have access to the people, they’ll come to that hub location and serve those rural sites. So they’re still eligible. And they can absolutely still receive funding, as long as you’re primarily benefiting those rural sites that don’t have access to those resources locally.
I think we’ll move on to digital equity and broad… Oh, this is just sort of a visual, I’m not going to read all of these. But this is just again, an example of some of the other funding programs. These are the ones that really speak to Hawaii specifically. There are lots and lots of programs like Misti and Zack talks about under school safety that are large federal programs. But again, these are just sort of to give you an idea of sort of the different types of programs that we work on that we’ve seen lots of really cool projects under. Alright, I’m gonna pass it to my colleague, Megan, and she’ll Oh, yes.
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: Yes.
Zachary Sheets: …a certain percent of a population you have to have?
Dana Satterwhite: Yes. So usually, for anything under sort of native Hawaiian education, you have to have a designation. So a lot of those will be like higher education institutions that have a designation. And then you can apply there are some that if you can demonstrate percentage that you would still qualify and be eligible for for most of these, you will have like native Hawaiian serving Institutions status. But we can explore that. And usually with some of those larger ones, you will also see some for K-12 also and that would be more based on percentage of student population.
Unknown Speaker: —
Dana Satterwhite: Yes. I would I would imagine Yeah. All right. And I think a jump up with more questions to after we talk with Megan but but let’s talk about broadband and digital equity.
Megan Beresford: I’m gonna echo I think what everyone has said, and thank you all for coming. We’re really excited to be here and talk about what we do day in and day out because we’re passionate about it and hopefully connect what we know with what you’re looking to do. I am Megan, I am our director of broadband programs. So everything that you’re going to hear discussed today can’t happen without you. The work that I, myself and my team and many of you are doing right, these technologies can’t work if you don’t have connectivity. And this has been obviously recognized by everyone in federal government. And so we had in 2021, the infrastructure investment and jobs act, which gave $42 billion to the NTIA and the National Telecommunications and Information Agency to distribute to the states to build broadband infrastructure into areas that don’t have it. They have done this by dividing up in a very long complicated formula, how much each state gets. And so there’s a lot of steps for this before the states can even get their money. So what we’ve listed here for Hawaii, Hawaii has been allocated almost $150 million to build broadband in the state. To get there, there’s these steps. So a five year action plan, this has been completed. So you can find this online, the state has published their five year action plan, this outlines in five years what they’re hoping to achieve in terms of digital economic equity, and in terms of connectivity. The next step here are these initial proposals. So initial proposal volume one that is currently been submitted to the NTIA. NTIAA is taking a look through it, they’ll give some feedback to the state, and then the state is going to open it for public comment. So both of these, these Volume One and Volume Two needs to be approved by NTIA, and they need to be open for public comment. So I absolutely encourage everyone to take a look when these come out. You know, sometimes they’re long, but they do provide a summary on the first page. But it’s a lot of what’s going to be prioritized, right? And so people in the community, everyone here, you guys know a lot of these priorities. So the state wants your feedback. They’ve been doing a lot of outreach for the past year, they’ve been having a lot of in person meetings, a lot of virtual meetings. That’s all part of these required steps. So once we get to this, this volume to submit it, there’s a challenge process. This challenge process means the state is going to identify every unserved location and underserved location in the state. So unserved is an area that does not get 25 megabits over three megabits internet service. So when you’re thinking anything really DSL, you’re not going to be getting that type of service. underserved is 100 megabits over 20 megabytes. So even if you’re getting that NTIA for that are below NTIA says you’re not being you’re not being served. The state is then taking further action and determinations. So I anticipate Hawaii will follow the lead and say that anything that is DSL is automatically underserved. So you know, historically, you’ve had a lot of very big providers that the cable companies come in, and they challenged and they won’t let people build internet and areas that really need it, because they say they meet these requirements. And it’s very old technology, and it doesn’t meet today’s needs of internet. So we anticipate state, recognizing this, again, it’s going to be in those initial proposals. Once all of that is approved, the state will then get their $150 million and open it up to grants in the state. And so these grants will then be available for different kinds of entities to apply for to build broadband infrastructure. So you can go to the next slide. I made some things really small because they’re not as unusual in terms of abroad and grant usually things that are eligible is construction, the building of internet is is you know, doing the engineering plans. But with this, there’s some interesting things that have been included as eligible uses of funds. And so these are the ones that are in a bigger font, want to point out, obviously a lot to do with cybersecurity. So this is you know, it’s you know, there’s a lot of cyber incidents and, and the government is recognizing that, you know, this is a big risk and if we are investing in this kind of infrastructure, we should also invest in cybersecurity. So you can use funds from this for cybersecurity. You can use it for training for cybersecurity. You can use it for workforce development for apprenticeships, community colleges, vocational training to lay broadband infrastructure. It’s much more expansive than we have seen broadband programs in the past. So I highlighted these because it’s very exciting that this is going to be an eligible use of these funds. It’s not just construction, and this is the NTIA recognizing that it’s not just broadband right the same goes they call it the BED funds. BEAD without equity is just BAD is what we hear. Okay, so a lot of these, these points here are addressing that equity component. So even though this is an infrastructure grant, there are non infrastructure components to it. So, on the bottom there, you’ll see that there’s a 25% match required for getting these funds. Next slide. So the other part that came with this infrastructure investment and jobs app from 2021. Within that was the digital Equity Act. And so this digital equity money is also going to the NTIA, and they are going to have three uses for it. So the first part has already been delivered. That’s that state digital equity planning grant program. So the state of Hawaii got about 570k that they’ve already received. And they built and did a whole bunch of work and put together a state’s digital equity plan is currently open for comment, you can find it again, I really encourage folks to take a look. They did a lot of hard work putting this together. And it outlines kind of the state’s plan of how they’re going to address digital equity in the state. Oh, yes. Oh, okay.
Unknown Speaker: As far as…
Megan Beresford: Sorry, I didn’t hear your question.
Unknown Speaker: —
Megan Beresford: Absolutely, I mean, if you have some sort of artificial intelligence that addresses any of that it is eligible. Right. So especially when we’re talking cyber security, in the guidance right now, and of course, the state is going to put together their own program, which will have a little more clarity, you know, on on what they consider, but right now, it’s cybersecurity solutions. So if you have an AI cybersecurity solution, or anything AI related that fits in these terms, and yes, it’s it’s absolutely I mean, they I think with this one in particular kept some of these categories, particularly vague or open to allow a lot of new innovative technologies that they just don’t know yet. Like, I mean, that’s our the whole industry, right? Like that’s, many of our friends here, who would have been, I would have add a little meat where I try not to look at myself too much. But yeah, so that that absolutely could be eligible. So it’s very broad. So anyway, we have the digital equity plan here, which again, is open for public comment. The other two parts of this funding of the $2.75 billion, part of it $1.44 billion is going to the digital equity capacity building grant program. So this is also money that’s going to go to the states, they have not yet released how much money each state is going to get. We know the formula, which has a bunch of percentages that compares percentages in Hawaii to percentages across the other states. And it’s pretty complicated, but they are supposed to soon announce how much each state is going to get. These funds are then going to be used to open up grant programs. So there’ll be a grant program run by the state for digital equity. And my next slide, which we’ll get to, will show that but I want to touch on this last one, which is also very similar. It’s $1.25 billion, but this is a federal program. So it’s going to be very similar to the one that the state will be putting on. The legislation that brought this program to life says that this national one has to open within 30 days of states. So they will be on a similar timeline. Because that’s what the law says. But so it’ll be a lot to focus on, and which is why, you know, Dana and my colleagues are here, because now is the time to think about your grant strategy. And there’s a lot of overlapping programs like this. And as Dana pointed out earlier, it is a strategy and it’s oftentimes more than one great, but if you go to the next slide, we have the eligible uses. Again, I did my little thing because there’s a lot here, make many things small, but the big one to point out there is to develop and implement digital inclusion activities. That is very broad, right. They recognize that digital inclusion digital equity means so many things, right? As Dana said earlier, We’re all about projects and not products. And that’s what these grants are going to be looking for. They want to see an issue a problem and what your solution is. So not just the technology, but what are going to be the benefits, what are the ancillary things that are going to come from this? So it is really a wide variety, when you think about how much of our life is digital? Almost everything, right? And so when you’re thinking about what does digital equity meet, what does that mean for the elder generation? What does that mean for individuals who have been recently incarcerated? What is it mean for English as a second language speakers? So these covered populations, right, there’s a very long definition for each state of what they deem a covered population, along with what the federal government thinks, a covered population, so that again, elders, veterans, incarcerated individual, young people, old people, how is technology impact all of them? And how are they receiving those benefits? And how will your project there is then some little details at the bottom who can use 10% of these funds for administrative costs, which, as you know, are critical to actually making projects come to life, a four year implementation period. And right now, the rule is that the federal share being not exceed 90%, which means you need a 10% match. It might sound intimidating, but oftentimes, grants and I think these ones will reflect that allow any kind of contributions. So this means anything that you can provide input value to that is related to the program, you can count as a financial contribution. So you can cover staff hours and meet that entire 10% of your income. So don’t be scared away when they talk about smash opponents, because a lot can be put towards that you don’t need necessarily to have the financial capital to put forward. So I think that one more slide. Yes, actually, I have two more slides, important dates. So these are our important dates for Hawaii. So again, money is going all across the country, but Hawaii has let us know they’re important dates for both bead and the digital equity funding. So right now, again, I have the picture there, the digital equity plan has this public comment period, that’ll be at the end of the month closes. So if you haven’t yet submitted your comments, let them know, we can say I support this great work, you can give feedback, they want to hear from you. Then November 1st to the 30th, they are going to open that initial proposal that I talked about earlier, it’s gonna lay out all of their plans of how they’re going to use their clients. That is then again, open for public common for 30 days, and then NTIA will approve it. So they have to by November 30, submit their digital equity plan. So they have a month after this period of comments to finalize and incorporate feedback, and then submit that digital equity plan. December 27, is when these initial proposals need to be submitted. And so everything that has to do with that has to be done to the NTIA by December, December 27. January, that is when the state has said that they will have a broadband roadshow challenge process. So again, this is what I was describing. When you say yes, we agree with your determination of my housecleaning unserved, underserved, etc. They’re going to have a roadshow explaining to people how to do this challenge process. In these volume proposals, they will outline who is an eligible challenger. So there are a few more components to it. But that will be in January, and then from March to July is when they expect the challenge process to actually happen. So they’re they’re teaching then they’re going to open it and then after that, there’s not another box, but after that is when we think grant programs would open. So you’re looking at Fall 2024 for those infrastructure funds. These are Megan’s important anticipated dates. These are my best guesses, based on what we’ve been seen and what we know they do. The state digital equity grants are probably also going to be fall 2024. So the state is going to be very busy both with the digital equity funds they’re distributing and their infrastructure funds, but I’m doing to speak, I’m on and then also, as I said, within 30 days, the federal program has to open as well. So we’ll see that also probably follow up 2024 And again, the infrastructure lines fall winter 2024. So the end of next year will be a very busy time for your state broadband office, and should also be a great time for many of you who are looking to apply to be going after these funds. I think that’s it for my slide.
Unknown Speaker: —
Lori Griggs: So Aloha, and mahalo for having all of us here today. My name is Lori Griggs, and I am with LGS Tech Consulting. And we’re here to I’m here today with Learn Design Apply. I’ve been working in life safety, security and communication technologies for the past 30 years. And dating myself I know, I’m actually it’s a little more than that. But 30 sounds better than 35. Right Zach? Anyway, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of different manufacturers of technology with integrators, and specifically in life, safety and security. And over the last three years, I’ve had the privilege of being able to work with the Learn design a fly team, with schools all around the country, helping them find technology for safety and security. Because at the end of the day, who’s responsible for the safety of our children? We all are, mean, how many of you are parents, and aunt and uncle, an educator, a grandparent, there’s not a single person in here that is not impacted by the safety or can’t impact the safety of your child, right. That’s what we do. And that’s what we’re responsible for. So if you’ll flip to the next slide there, Ryan. These are just a few things that we’re going to take a look at, or I’m going to discuss with you today. The COPS grant is the one that I’ve been specifically geared involved in with learning design applies. We’ll talk a little bit about that. We’re also going to talk a little bit about PASS, if it’s something that you’re not familiar with, you should be it as it pertains to safety and security. We’re going to talk a little bit about those guidelines, the layered approach to security, what are some of the things that we do to help you build a successful application? And then we’ll look at a particular case study. All right. So the if you take a look on Congress passed the student teachers and officers prevention program, the act, in 2018. This came after the horrific incident in Florida at Marjory Stoneman High School, I think we’ve all heard about it. A lot of things changed in 2018, as it pertains to school safety and the federal government’s attention. And specifically, we saw a lot of parent groups step up and form organizations that have now impacted a lot of laws and are trying to impact even more around the country. And, you know, we saw monies become available. And that second bullet shows you that this act is guaranteed to fund at least 75 million cumulatively through 2028. So, as it pertains to the COPS SVPP, which we’ll talk about in a second, that applications have to be submitted by a state unit of local government, public agencies, public boards of education on behalf of K-12, right to fund projects for safety and security in the K-12 space. So we could we could apply like what we did with Zach through through the Board of Education, right? We can have the police department partnered with the school district that says, hey, we can help them with their threat assessments, we’ve identified all of these issues, and we want to apply on behalf of the school to get these monies to help the school district and this campus become more say. So there’s some leeway there. And you can go to the next slide, Ryan. So the COPS program in particular that we’ve been very successful with over the last three years, we’ll find that up to half a million dollars for safety and security equipment, and it will, it does require a 25% match. So the way the numbers fell out, we wind up with about $667,000 budget, and the goal is to increase and goal security on school grounds evidence-based programs technology, and I’ve listed here some of the technology that we’ve been successful in helping districts fund: intercoms, public address, access control, mass notification, Panic Button, you name it, fencing, we helped, you know, that was part of Zach’s application. And you also will fund coordinating with local law enforcement there on that last bullet. Okay, so I put this up and Zach, if you click one more time, that should animate for us a little bit more interesting. I’ve had an opportunity over the past several years to work with a lot of experts in school safety and Catherine is one of them, she is a 20 year FBI agent, retired now, but she now helps districts and and is widely expert when it comes to, you know, active shooting threat situations. And this quote of hers, to me is what it all boils down to safety isn’t about the odds of whether it will happen. Safety’s about being prepared, it does happen. And we can no longer live in a world where we think it won’t happen to us. Because we know things do happen all day, every day in all corners of our world. And none of us like this feeling of not being prepared. I mean, I don’t right now, I’m not prepared for Thanksgiving, and I’ve got a bunch of people that I’m going to be preparing for, and I’m starting to go, wow, I’ve got to get that you know, organized. We don’t like not being prepared in the classroom where we’re teaching children. We don’t like our children going to school without preparing their homework, why would we not be prepared from a safety perspective on the campuses where we’re educating our most vulnerable population, right, our children. So that moves me to PASS—the partner alliance for safer schools. This organization came out several years ago, and it’s volunteer group of experts from all around the industry, you’re going to have people that were involved in followed by you’re going to have technology folks here, you’re going to have mental health resources and experts, but they came together and have put together the most comprehensive best practices for School Safety and Security school facilities that I believe exist. And we use this working with districts, because you need to know what you don’t know, in like you guys were saying earlier, you can’t just say, Well, I’m going to add a bunch of technology kits, I think, would be more say, There’s got to be a reason behind what we’re doing. paths can really help with that. So flip to the next slide, Brian, there’s if you go to their website past or you will see a plethora of information, you’ll see so many things that are helpful. But this is what I believe it really boils down to. And they coined this. And I live by it with every single school that I’ve ever talked with. And as I’m working with integrators that are talking with schools every day,
We have to do things in a lighter approach, we can’t assume because we put up a few video cameras that were set, we can’t assume that just because we got that perimeter fence that we’re safe and nobody’s going to cross it, we can’t assume that our access control is always going to be what it needs to be. We have to look within each layer that impacts our campuses. What is the technology I’m using now? How is that working? And what do I need to do to enhance it? And so it starts before it even gets to your school? Right? What’s going on in the community? What are threats just yesterday in in Maine to schools had to be locked down, right? If you probably all saw it on the news, because of something that was going on in the community. How did those schools get that message? And how did they implement it quickly to make sure that nothing broached their perimeter? Right? So what’s going on district wide within my community? Now, let’s assume something has gotten onto my property perimeter. What do I have in place that’s going to tell me something has broken that, that perimeter, how am I going to handle that? Now let’s assume it’s in the parking lot. Right. Now it’s moving toward my building toward my doors, right? What do I have in place at those doors and those egress points. And now let’s say that it got in and you’ve already got it, right. It got in the door, and now it’s inside the school. Now I really got an issue and what am I going to do about it? And none of this is meant to be. It’s dark content for you guys. It really is, if we all want to believe that nothing is going to happen, but we just simply need to be prepared for if it does, and looking at these layers, and looking at the technology that are within these layers will help us get to a point where we can then sit down and say, All right, let’s put together a plan for funding. How are we going to go about getting money to pay for this? So if you’ll flip to the next slide, Ryan, I, you know, building these applications, it really starts with that analysis point. And I think that’s where those past guidelines are so important. What is your current situation? What is our current situation? Like, right now, look at this filming? What’s our current situation here? Well, we got a locked door over there. But we don’t have a locked door here. Right? Just think and look at your surroundings and try to think about your current situation, and then help that build you into, okay, in a perfect world. This is my desired situation, this is what I want to work toward. Now, we’ve got to start articulating that building our story around it. Why are we going after these monies? What is it we want to do with them? Where are we going to put them? Right? How are we going to integrate all of the technologies together? So nothing is siloed? Right? And are we going to have to do this in phases. And most likely, most school security projects are done in phases. They don’t all just happen overnight. So then we’ve answered all of that starting to build that story, build that application, and then we got to look at, okay, you can put all the technology you want in any building that you’re in. If the people in that building don’t know how to use it, you might as well not have it, because no one knows what to do with it. So how are we going to train our population to use that technology? We’re going to train, we’re going to practice, we’re going to retrain and we’re going to practice again, we’re going to evaluate, we’re going to measure we’re going to continue to improve, and how are we going to do that and support it and sustain it? Because that’s an important part of the of the application. Right? It’s what are you going to do with this? How’s it going to work and how you’re going to support it. And all of this goes right along with your threat assessments, your climate surveys, all of those things that help us build into that. So this is a particular case study. One, we’ve worked with it Tennessee, this particular district have 11 schools, they had had some incidents, you know, they’d had a gunman near campus that was obviously very disconcerting. They have a police checks in the neighborhood that was headed toward their campus, right. The Fugitive was actively firing shots as it is moving toward a campus. At the same time, they were getting social media threats on their campus. So they had two things going on at once. Plus with back that this was kind of a whirl area. And their response time for first responders could sometimes exceed 30 minutes. That’s a problem. So all of that helped us build into, you know, their current situation we looked at, obviously work with, you know, looking at threat assessments, site surveys, climate surveys, all of that goes into it. So then, if you couple that with the fact their intercom and public address system didn’t work in multiple areas, they had no outdoor coverage. All right. So they had no ability to do centralized lockdown, they really didn’t have a good process for that. Their emergency messaging was done through an app on cell phones. Why is that problematic? Why is that problematic? Absolutely. coverage issues. I just did a dead spot. Oh, wait, where’s my phone? Where did I leave it? My husband does it all the time. He can’t find his phone. Where is it? Is it charged? Right? In the crime right now took every one of your cell numbers have sent you a message and told you we need to evacuate the building with you all at the same time. No, it comes in, it throttles. Right especially when you have a panic situation. So that was problematic. They had no signage to reinforce any of the messaging. What do you do for the child who can’t hear that’s in the hallway when something’s going on. And they don’t know that there’s an emergency, no strobes, no signage, and there was no screening at entry points, no ingress screen so, so a lot of things there that are not desirable. So what we tried to do was to pull together several technologies that would assist and get them to their desired situation, we did a upgrade on their, their some of the Republic addresses since we’re actually working, okay, we were able to do some integrations, we were able to pull in video feeds, we got their batch notification, you know, working seamlessly. So a lot of things we were able to do to help with that. And we made sure that all those technologies were pulled together that we’re working in playing together, because you’ve got video cameras, and you’ve got an active situation on your campus, and you can’t live see what’s going on, those video cameras are going to do one thing, what is that historical, you’re going to be able to look back at what happened. So pull all of that together, integrate your locking system to make sure it’s all playing together. So it kind of boils down to in the group that I worked with, if we’ve used a lot of constraints Telecorps coined this and I actually took it from them. They’re actually their public address and mass notification provider, but they kind of coined, you got to be able to initiate, you’ve got to be able to visualize, right, get that message out there. And then you got to know that that message was received. I just attended yesterday, a a presentation, an online presentation done by a guy actually out of Seattle, his name is Jesus with Crisis Reality. And he’s a 30 year veteran, a brilliant man, and he spent a lot of time in school safety. And he actually in this whole presentation, that first line was his communication is your first line of defense when anything happens, you’ve got to have that public address mass notification communication piece has to be solid, because otherwise, no one knows. Or only a small group knows. And it all needs to be seamless. It needs to be pre programmed, it needs to be I have tried, in fact, yesterday it was it was really surprising to me, the recommendation now is not just to have that one central command locked down, it’s actually to have multiple throughout your school. And there’s actually schools that are now training children, school children on what to do in the event, there is an incident, how do you engage? That’s kind of where we are. So anyway, I thought that this This to me is very valuable. And those, once again, goes back to the layers. And Ryan, I think there’s one more in there that you’re and then I’m gonna pass this over to Andy.
So I just wanted to throw these up, you probably are aware of them. But if you’re not, there are so many resources out there now to help with school safety and security, how helping you with digital threat assessments, the mental health component, drug prevention, and I did a three day there was actually you know, October Safe Schools month across the United States. So the second group safe and sound schools was founded by Michelle gay, she’s a parent who lost a child in Sandy Hook, Connecticut years ago, and she’s taking something bad and try to turn it around and help. And her organization is really spearheading a lot in this school safety arena. But they had a three day webinar series last week. And I listened to speakers from some of these groups and I was totally overwhelmed with the information that they had. You can go online to these sites and pull down so much information the make our schools safe is Ulisses law. It’s a group that came out in March we stolen it is a law now that’s passed in six states and pending in about another four and actually being in at the federal level there’s a consideration making it as of now national law which requires every school every classroom to have a panic button and to be able to send an emergency signal throughout your school facility so I highlighted that down at the bottom if you haven’t heard about elicits law, it’s coming the I love you guys foundation is standard response protocol. Another valuable one tall cop says stop this person no is more about drug violence and intervention programs than anyone I’ve ever listened to. And one of the shocking takeaways from him is that the drugs that are threatening our children, even permis, young, as you know, second and third grade, many of them are bought in convenience stores that we pass all day, every day, legally over the counter, they’re disguised, and we just don’t recognize it. So he’s got some amazing content on that site that you could download and listen to share it with your district cop and with your parents, things that are just very valuable. And then from a federal level, that last bullet, oh, my goodness, there’s so many resources, you guys to help with all of this. And so I encourage you to take a look at there’s many, many more, this is just a sampling. And I was able to listen to a few of them last week, and it was very valuable. So with that said, Any questions at all? I can. Andy’s going to continue this because there’s more money outside of just the COPS program. And he’s going to speak to that. That is there anything before Andy pops up in questions? Well, thank you very much.
Andrew Henshaw: Actually, you want to go back one slide, you said a couple of things to say on this, the last two bullet points here. So as we’re noticing more and more federal regulation, or state regulation bubbling up to federal, anything standard. There is kind of this friction between regulation and maybe a limited amount of funding that that you guys receive in order to implement those regulations. That’s where grant funding has come in very well, for us to have those conversations about becoming compliant. Building further on compliance is really just kind of be ethical, more the student considerations that you guys should take into account of what you should be doing on top of just what’s required. So it’s just really something to keep in mind. As these things become more federal law. There is this opportunity to look toward grant funding, and I’ll have mentioned later earmarks has the possibility of getting things that was funded to maintain compliance, of course, to make your schools and other organizations safer. So this is the largest board I’ve ever presented. So excuse me. That’s my eyesight is not. So looking at a really good complement to the COPS School Violence Prevention Program. This stop school violence grant was funded in tandem through that stop school violence act 2018. For the next 10 years, or up until 2020, you can receive up to a million dollars with 0% match to fund programs that are again just very good complements to the target gardening aspects of the school violence prevention program. This is looking more so at the programmatic efforts. So mental health, violence prevention from a support services and intervention teams building better communication, you know, there’s there’s some overlap with the cops Glamis prevention program in the efficacy and, you know, ability to communicate with schools within your district. And then also, with law enforcement and other first responders might be able to prevent the situation from occurring, or mitigating situation accidents. And so what they really want to go for here is the development of interventions. So we’ve seen great success over the last couple of years of helping to develop US intervention teams, again, based on school districts needs, but it’s a common ones with the medical it’s right next to shooter shooting, or creating those personnel that really know exactly what to do to contact the responsibilities and roles and what they’re really assigned and promising to do. And if it’s an incident like that, first, that could also be for mental health crisis as well and other funding opportunities that come up this one as well. And we’ll see how this can continue with funding is going to create this a bit of a spiderweb of funding that you guys can get together and knowledgeable at school districts or other organizations. Also the key aspects here, again, just talking about complement to the school violence prevention program. This is for non target karmic aspects. It can include things like intercom systems, mass notification, back to the compliance opportunities here. If you have an old timeline in the system and upgraded to something where you don’t have to dial nine In order to get out to, to be able to battle, the one that is something to consider, you can focus on the project, but move toward the products that would be able to allow you to maintain your clients there. And then the last one looking at funds coordination before working with law enforcement in a more effective way, and you have approximate relationships with law enforcement department, this can entice is better outlined their roles and responsibilities and the action times, potentially also get additional personnel to support those conversations. And then I think is eventually through all of these opportunities to broadband, of course, with the 10% administration coverage. This would allow you to add additional personnel to coordinate take one hulless job that you’re signing up for through a grant and actually hire somebody to to administer and report on this random slide. So this is just a pig slide of pictures. I plan on talking to each one of these and it’s really again, it’s trying to fold in how many different funding opportunities are out there for various organizations, how intertwined, these things could be started with EDA. Looking at recent events with the wildfires that happened in Maui, there’s an opportunity to economic development administration works to rebuild facilities. I heard somebody mentioning over here about UX designers. The ability to create a brick and mortar location where people haven’t been trained on technology, you can purchase a technologist you can even build a building with that. The only thing they don’t really find is personnel. Anything else you consider that bolts to the ground or it’s heavy and difficult to move, they’ll probably fund it. You can get up to around two and a half million dollars to support your programs that you need to work to implement that. One good example of that was an advanced manufacturing initiatives. There is a company that works on North Carolina A&T campus in Greensboro. They doubled the size the facility and included each P 3D printers, injection molding equipment, and basically doubled their business able to hire another 30 to 35 individuals from NCAT’s engineering program, pre jobs, facilitate private investment from brands like Toyota, Honda, Husqvarna, all recognizable names. And again, it just spurs that gradual economic development in area. The department of housing and urban development, community development block grants just investments not just in housing, but the ability to invest in parks services make your community brighter, poor and more accessible. See Department of Education. So the school based mental health services again tying back to stop school violence, mental health is a pretty big component of making sure that students feel supported safe. And potentially you’re going to get the crisis correctly. The Environmental Protection Agency is a bit of an offbeat path. But looking at indirect ways in which you can use funds from the federal government to offset your budgets, which are all being constrained and look more after Esser and state local fiscal relief funds are expiring. You can purchase a bunch of electric buses by renovating your fleets, you can get like $10 million, or electric school buses that you can spend elsewhere frees up some money in your budgets. We talked about Department of Justice, although there are some additional grants through their Department of Labor, there’s workforce development and apprenticeship opportunities and the Department of Energy, so renew America’s schools. This can provide up to $15 million for school districts to invest in HVAC, really do anything that’s going to improve energy savings retrofits from allergen or CFL lighting to LED building envelope replacing windows which can also bolster school safety and security. So there are really a lot of unique opportunities here that all hold together to just unlock a couple million bucks for one school, school district community. Hopefully that gives you an idea of just I mean, this is just like, less than ever since the funding that’s out there. Next slide, please. So now the weird topic of earmarks, show of hands who here has heard about earmarks congressional spending, not from the… So this was, I don’t know if abolished is the right word, but it was sunsetted, about 10, 15 years ago, considered to be a bit of like the pork barrel politics, we do this, for me put in some funding for a bridge or something like that build the bridge goes nowhere, you know, kind of seen as you know, not the most efficient use of funds. So that’s reopens through the Biden administration to hopefully, preach more handshakes across the aisle. I don’t know how well that’s working, we’re just noticing that there are a lot of great opportunities here to basically open up new funding opportunities that are not competitive in nature. So if you have good political ties, you can read the definition here, which I think is pretty heavily jargon based. Iraq is a provision inserted into a discretionary spending appropriations bill. That means the federal building gets approved every year, to direct funds to a specific recipient, while circumventing the merit based additive funds allocation process. Really, it means you get a grant application, where you’re the only applicant. So it’s basically an invite to get money. And if you have political support, the show of hands, does anybody have a tie to a state representative or senator?
Yeah, maybe what we can do is work on developing a project, finding the applicable grant program, and some of these only exists to get marks process. And then really, the biggest point here is you just harass your senator for like six months, hopefully they get to that, that ends the federal bill, and they send you an invite the next school year. So these can be up to $15, $20 million. So the next slide, please, I think there’s one in particular that I wanted to showcase here, actually sector this is just all the different areas in which they plan to funds. So toward the bottom, it gets a little bit less applicable. I tried to bold some of the areas that have never been paid for interest here. But rural development. As we noted, a majority of the Iowans have large swaths of land that qualify as rural community facilities. It’s one that we haven’t talked about yet, but I’m sure as we start picking up with with beers and food, definitely get into the meat of that Justice Force, stop school violence, commerce, brought inside Edward Byrne, along the horsemen, and then looking at Labor, Health and Human Services, Education HERSA for health care in person has a really strong presence in rural areas. And as you plan to build out a digital Community Health Initiatives, especially through schools, that’s going to be a helpful one. But the one that was most interesting to me, and next slide, this is looking at this COPS technology and equipment grant. So this does not exist as a competitive program that you can receive up to $5 million. That’s the largest afford that we’ve seen so far. Potentially for district or community wide communications. The reason I bring this up is looking at I was I was watching the news about the Maui wildfires. And I thought this quote from a representative who was speaking was was pretty applicable here. The head of the Maui Emergency Management Agency defended their decision to not sound the sirens to notify everybody of the fires that were occurring, because that can typically just be used for tsunamis, and that sends people to the hills. Fires go very rapidly up those they had to make a decision on whether to you know, alert people on the fires potentially send them in to give even worse situation. But what you can do here is find something like a multipurpose alarm system work the same way it’s the school district with they just have a fire alarm. Reaction to the fire next. There is an ability to get $5 million or maybe more for some sort of district or community-wide communications system through this. And all it takes is a three page executive summary and or asking your senator. Next slide. I think the main point for earmarks is it’s a team effort and getting your conversation started very quickly. This it’ll start happening typically November December timeframe. When you want to add your conversations and outreach to anybody with political weight support, anybody you can get conversation started. And then just make sure you are prioritizing your needs. Your total list of stakeholders are listing one through what you guys want to focus on. Hopefully those kind of line up one another, you can fit that into a single earmark request or potentially multiple. I think there’s a lot of people in this room that will have conversations today about how they could work together, but something of merit and potentially unlocking quite a few million dollars. And just as we’ve been discussing, similar to grants, Hawaii has not really much their weight. So I think there’s an opportunity to really reach out, demonstrate that that, you know, there’s an opportunity here to kind of make good on a fair share. That’s due to why. And next slide. So. This is really just an open invitation. We have business cards, materials that we printed out. I think the main takeaway here are everybody who’s spoken today, as long as the sponsors of the event and guess what happens here. We’re all open to help. We all know each other pretty well in capacity to the right person to the, to the right person to answer your question. That’s technology. That’s knowledge about grants. That’s though, you know, just developing that funding strategy, meeting people and helping them work through like, who needs to be hard conversations or get to be so with that? Any questions? It’s a lot to get through in about 10 minutes here. Yep.
Unknown Speaker: Okay, I came in a little bit later. I don’t know if you talked about SBIR grants, but it…
Andrew Henshaw: It wasn’t. It wasn’t.
Unknown Speaker: Are you familiar?
Andrew Henshaw: I could try.
Unknown Speaker: I’ll come up to you after.
Andrew Henshaw: NSF National Science Foundation SBIR?
Unknown Speaker: I believe so.
Andrew Henshaw: Okay. Go for it.
Unknown Speaker: Oh, okay. Well, I mean, so I’m a part of the blue startups cohort had created a technology that basically removes servers from communication. It’s peer to peer directly peer to peer, but through the direct peer to peer, meaning your data isn’t stored on some cloud, And we wanted to explore SBIR grant funding. I don’t know the process for that, familiarizing myself, but I do know that I was directed to reach out to Federal SBIR in regards to my grant writing. I don’t know if you could…
Andrew Henshaw: Sure. Are you speaking to like research and development? Like, do you need startup costs? Correct? That’s what I know of to start with is the NSF C fund. Have you been taking a look at that? Yeah. Okay. $250,000 in zero equity, equity stake, just free money for good ideas. And they have like 60 different categories that you can you can work under. You know, I’ve helped with a few of those. It’s, it starts with the project pitch. Maybe it’s 1,500 words. So you have to be really choosy about how you demonstrate that it’s going to be strictly research and development, not elaborating on something you’ve already created. Okay, so you can submit it any time. Okay. So they have four cycles every year. And so depending on where you land with your project pitch being submitted, they’ll give you a timeline and a kind of a deadline, each quarter where you can, you can submit, I think you have to fall into that next quarters deadline in order to be still eligible. Otherwise, you have to wait a full year in order to submit again. So you have to really make sure that once you get the pinch in, you’re ready to go for that full grant. That’s NSF so National Science Foundation Seed Fund.
Unknown Speaker: Thank you so much.
Andrew Henshaw: Sure, yeah.