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HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT:
Implementing the OMB Uniform Grant Guidelines Refresher
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
SPEAKERS
Robin Booth
Tracy Fields
PRESENTATION
Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the
Implementing the OMB Uniform Grant conference call. At this time all
participants in a listen-only mode. Later, there will be an opportunity for
questions. Instructions will be given at that time. [Operator instructions].
As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Tracy Fields. Please go
ahead.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
Page 2
Robin Hello, this is Robin Booth actually, not Tracy Fields, and we’ll be
facilitating the call today. We wanted to first apologize for the delay. We
had technical difficulties in beginning the webinar. Unfortunately, will
not be able to see your online questions through the chat box, however,
you will have other opportunities to ask questions. We thank you for your
patience, and once again, we apologize for the delay.
As the moderator said, all lines are currently on mute. This audio will be
available for this conference call, however, after the conference call.
You’ll be able to go to the HUD exchange to this particular link, and both
the transcript and the PowerPoint will be available generally in two
business days, or 48 hours. The actual list, this OHC Listserv will be sent
out when the archives are posted, so you will be notified once the archives
are posted. However, during this presentation the lines are muted.
Due to the technical difficulties you may or may not have received the
actual presentation prior to the webinar as we historically do. If not, once
again, we’ll ask that HUD will send it to all participants subsequent to this
call so you can have the presentation in PDF format if you have not
already received it, or you can go to the HUD exchange approximately 48
hours after the webinar to retrieve the information.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
Page 3
As far as questions, unfortunately, we will not be able to take the online
chat questions due to the technical difficulties, however, during the call I
will stop and I’ll ask if there are any questions. If you hit, I want to say
star zero, the moderator, she’ll give you directions on how to go into the
queue for a call, we will take calls during the presentation.
After the presentation, if you have questions and we weren’t able to
answer them during the presentation, you can always send them to
[email protected] and include the webinar topic in the
subject line item to make the responses easier to identify. Once again,
unfortunately, the other option of being able to enter a question into the
chat box during the webinar is not currently available.
The moderator has muted the lines for you, but if for some reason your
line isn’t muted, you should be able to hit star six to also mute your line.
Subsequent to the webinar you will be asked to complete a brief survey,
and these surveys are very important. We use those surveys to try to
improve and enhance the webinar training, and to identify potential
webinar training topics.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
Page 4
As far as a certificate of training, if you logged into the webinar, you will
receive a thank you for attending, and that in fact is your certificate. If
you did not log in you will not receive any other type of notification of
participation in a training. The email is the actual certificate; there will
not be an attachment, nor will there be a subsequent email with any
training certificate. We recommend that you either print out and save the
email or save it electronically so you can have this information available.
As we indicated earlier, if you need additional housing counseling
information, please feel free to access the HUD exchange,
www.hudexchange.info\program\housing.counseling and you’ll be able to
get additional information about this and other programs, as well as
training and events. Subsequent to this call, you have the opportunity to
ask any other questions that you have relative to this training. We simply
ask that you send it to [email protected] and include
Implementing the Uniform Grant Guidance Refresher in the subject line
item.
Once again, thank you for participating and attending, and more
importantly, thank you for your patience as we worked through the
technical difficulties.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
Page 5
We do still anticipate completing this training within no more than ten
minutes probably after the 3:00 hour. I know it was scheduled for 2:00 to
3:00 Eastern Standard Time, so we’ll still be able to get through the
training. This training, Implementing the Uniform Grant Guidance
Refresher, is designed to remind you of all of these various new
requirements that became effective with the full implementation of the
Uniform Grant Guidance under the Office of Management and Budget. A
lot of you may have been participating in the various trainings and
implementations to get you ready for the actual uniform grant guidance,
and at this point all grants are subject to these new requirements. A lot of
what we’ll discuss here is more involved in some of the tools and
resources that HUD is also making available to assist you in ensuring that
you fully implemented the requirements.
My name is Robin Booth, our firm, Booth Management Consulting, LLC
is the quality audit and technical assistance contractor for the Office of
Housing Counseling, specifically for the Comprehensive Housing
Counseling Grant. In addition to preparing and performing the training
and the webinars, we also perform the actual financial and administrative
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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reviews, provide technical assistance, and action plans all through the
request and through the guidance of the Office of Housing Counseling.
Purposes, we want to review the key areas of change based on the new
guidance, really go over some of the proposed resources that HUD is
making available to you to assist you, and implementing the new guidance
while minimizing your administrative burdens in implementing these
requirements. That includes various tool kits and guides, a lot of which
are in process, really about 70% to 80% complete, that which we hope to
have available to you sooner rather than later.
Specifically, some of the proposed implementation materials that we’re
working on with HUD, a financial disclosure and certification checklist,
and each of these proposed materials address a specific area of the new
requirements. It’s specifically those things that were not previously
required under the old OMB circulars. For all of those key areas, we are
proposing or are in the final stages of developing either a checklist, or a
toolkit, or a guide, and other resources to make available to you, as I said,
to minimize the administrative burden of having to fully implement the
requirements.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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On this slide, we give you a summary of where we are, and then
throughout this presentation we’ll review in more in depth on what each of
these proposed materials will include, and which areas of the new
guidance they will be addressing.
We have a financial disclosures and certification checklist. Notice that
yes, everything is in HUD review and anticipated status. We have various
calls and meetings set up to review these reference and sources prior to
making them available in HUD exchange.
Another one would be implementing the 10% de minimis rate. We
recognize that this is really new under the grant guidance, and this guide
will provide you with the kind of information that you need so you can
understand how to properly compute the 10% de minimis rate if in fact
your organization is eligible, and meet the criteria for actually taking
advantage or electing to use this rate, and then what you need to make sure
you have in place to assure you comply with the implementation of this
rate.
We have a more extensive sub-grantee award and monitoring toolkit that’s
designed for international intermediaries, some FHFAs and as a parent
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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[ph]. That’s very specific to those types of organizations, however, if you
are a sub-grantee, it’s also valuable to use so that you have an
understanding of what the increase or the enhanced requirements are as it
relates to sub-grantee award and monitoring. It adds value for you as well.
Updating the personnel activity report guide, that previously was issued by
HUD. Implementing, or making available, or understanding the financial
statements guide, this one is more geared towards once again,
intermediaries and parents because it provides you with the basics for
understanding how to read financial statements submitted and prepared on
behalf of non-profit organizations and government institutes. If you are a
non-profit, it still provides value to you because it gives you an indication
of what type of financial benchmarks and other financial information that
the government, HUD will be using when they evaluate your application,
and that intermediaries will be using when they’re evaluating the financial
capability of sub-grantees.
And now, we’re working on a full financial and administrative review
training course for intermediaries who are required to perform oversight
and monitoring of the various sub-grantees. This is really geared towards
showing you and teaching you how to perform the financial and
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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administrative reviews of your sub-grantees to meet the requirements and
the mandates under the new grant guidance.
Beginning with financial disclosures and certification, under the new
guidance, whether you’re LHCA, or you’re a pass-through, there are
certain required certifications that your company or your organization has
to self-certify to. They have to deal with financial management,
specifically, your accounting system, whether you have an accounting
system that properly accumulates and charges and invoices time to the
federal government. This including specifically your policies and
procedures. There’s a new requirement for more internal controls, more
consistent with the industry standards for having an effective internal
control system. Under this guidance, it tells you that you have to assert
that you have internal controls in place.
If you’re a non-major non-profit, meaning you have to certify to whether
you are a non-major non-profit, and non-major being that you do $10
million or less or you receive $10 million or less of funding. Then, to a
conflict of interest, that’s probably not very familiar to many of you,
because you have certain conflict of interest requirements now, especially
on the performance review side, but the guidance has made it even more
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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clear that you have to certify that you have these things in place. The
language for the certification comes straight from the uniform grant
guidance.
If you look at number 4, 5, and 6, just some of the things that you’re
certifying to as it relates to your financial management system, which was
the first set of certifications we discussed. That you have effective control
over and accountability for all funds, that you have written procedures to
implement requirements for payment, that you have a comparison of
expenditures with budget amounts from each federal award. Actually,
under the reporting section of your HUD Grant Agreement where you’re
now required to show actual versus budgeted results on a quarterly basis,
this in fact assists you in making sure that you’re in compliance with these
financial disclosure requirements.
You have to have, number 7 here, written procedures for determining the
allowability of costs. If we go back and look at number 1 and 2,
identification in its account of all federal awards received and extended in
the federal program under which they were received. These are all things
that when we perform the financial and administrative reviews, we verify
that they exist. But as a part of the awarding process, and when you’re
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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submitting your application, these are the certifications that HUD will
have you do, and if you are a parent organization, that you should have
your sub-grantees do, asserting that yes, we understand that these are the
requirements and we’re certifying that these things are in place. For this
checklist, we actually designed these more to be a certification that can be
signed off on by the organization and submitted to, whether it’s a parent or
to HUD, verifying that they’ve met these requirements.
The next section 200-303 internal controls, there is much more mandate
here on internal controls. In fact, if you look under A in this section, near
the end, it basically says these internal controls should be in compliance of
guidance and standards for internal control in the federal government
issued by the Comptroller General of the United States. They are putting a
much higher requirement on internal controls, so as a part of your
certification, especially during the application and award process, the
government and parents and working with pass-throughs, they have to
have the assurance that you’re aware of these requirements, and in fact
that you have those types of controls in place.
Section 415, another required certification by non-profit organizations, is
as appropriate that did not meet the definition of a major. You have to
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Host: Kristen Villalvazo
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certify that you don’t meet a definition of a major non-profit organization.
Most LHCAs are not. If you’re not, then you need to certify to that either
way.
Then the conflict of interest, you must certify that you have policies and
procedures in place for a conflict of interest mitigation plan. The reason
why we’re asking for these certifications up front is generally, especially
for these types of grants, the government and/or the pass-through entity,
they’re not able or in a position to go out and verify that you have these
things in place by doing on-site reviews of your accounting system, or a
full review of your conflict of interest system, or do an analysis or an
assessment of your internal controls. It’s your responsibility through the
self-certification process to say not only do we have this in place, but
we’re aware that this is a federal requirement.
The 10% de minimis rate, the guide that we’ve developed, we tried to
keep it simple and give various scenarios to show you how to compute this
10% de minimis rate. It starts with whether your organization actually
meets the criteria for electing that rate. Just as a reminder, main criteria is
you could never have received a negotiated, indirect cost rate.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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The challenge here is that if you have a 100-year organization, you have to
verify internally whether they’ve ever had a NICRA. It may be that from
your perspective or from your knowledge that doesn’t exist, but you need
to verify with accounting and with management there’s never been a
NICRA. Part of the certification is you’re certifying—and one of the
things we put in the guide is an example of the type of certification—
you’re certifying that you meet this eligibility requirement.
Then HUD and/or the parent organization is relying on your certification
and your due diligence that you can verify that you’ve never had a
negotiated indirect rate. You have to use this rate indefinitely, you have to
still comply with factors dealing with allowability of cost, and that goes
into how you compute the 10%. That allowability of cost principle deals
with how you come up with what’s the modified total direct cost amount
is to compute it. And the guide, we actually tell you. We tried to make it
very simple and really designed for this grant and how the funds are
primarily used under this grant, but to be able to compute what your
modified total direct cost is.
Then once elected, you have to consistently use it for all awards. On the
front end, you self-certify that yes, we’ve met all of this criteria. Then the
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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government and/or the intermediary or parent organization, they’ll accept
your certification. However, on the back end, when we conduct financial
and administrative reviews, we verify that you’ve met this criteria, and
that you were in fact entitled to elect this rate.
What we’ve done, as I said OHC’s done with is we’re developing this
guide that we’ll make available to you. You’re going to have to self-
certify that you comply with the various eligibility criteria to determine if
you’re eligible for that 10% de minimis rate. Then when we do our
financial administrative review, we’re going to verify one, that you met
the eligibility requirements, but also that you correctly determined what
the modified total direct costs are. If you don’t determine that correctly,
then you’ll be applying that 10% to the wrong base or to the wrong
dollars. So we verify that whatever you’ve included in your modified total
direct cost dollars that meets the cost principles and are in compliance
with Sub Part E [ph] that has to deal with the cost principles.
Then we’re also working with HUD staff on how to review your indirect
cost rate submission to make sure in fact, that you have computed the
modified total direct cost correctly. The guide really, as I said, breaks that
down into very clear and precise language, and it deals with the types of
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
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costs that are specific to the HUD grant like labor and salaries, and travel
and training, those predominant costs that we see when we’re looking at
this particular grant.
Some of the frequently asked questions about this 10% rate, what do we
do if some grant contracts do not provide for any indirect costs? The
government or any federal grant, they are forced to allow you to elect the
10% de minimis rate, if in fact, you meet the requirements. If not, you
must have a negotiated indirect cost rate agreement. Those agreements are
negotiated by the agency with which you have the largest dollar amount of
funding. Each agency has its own group or its own review and approval
process that’s usually done by a certain group within the agency that
handles the negotiated and indirect cost rate, but the whole concept of
using the 10% de minimis rate at least, is that the government has to allow
you to use that rate if in fact you meet the minimum criteria.
What agency approves and negotiates the rate? As the circular said,
negotiation approval is done with the agency with which you have the
largest dollar value of federal award. Within HUD, actually if you go
online, you can find who’s responsible for a negotiated indirect cost rate.
Please note that if you’re electing the 10% rate, there’s no negotiations
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
Host: Kristen Villalvazo
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available. That’s an election that you can make and it doesn’t have to get
approved or go through any kind of an approval process relative to the
10% de minimis rate. This only applies if you are attempting to negotiate
an indirect cost rate that’s not that elected 10%.
Does HUD negotiate indirect cost rates? As I said, they have an
agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services where they
can negotiate. If you look on their website you can find that information.
I’ve actually seen it several times.
Then, if you want to negotiate a rate, if you don’t want this whole 10% de
minimis rate and you want to negotiate a rate, you should reach out to
your HUD POC and have them work with you. If you’re going to attempt
to negotiate an indirect cost rate, all of the information relative to the 10%
de minimis rate doesn’t apply. This is only if you’re going to elect to use
that 10% de minimis rate. Then, in fact the guide that we’re working on
will assist you in making sure you’re computing it correctly and consistent
with the requirements.
If we accept the de minimis rate under this grant, would we now have to
accept the rate for all? Yes, you definitely do. It’s very clear that once
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Host: Kristen Villalvazo
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you elect the 10% de minimis rate you have to continue to use the 10% de
minimis rate across federal awards.
If you subsequently decide that hey, we want to go ahead and get a
negotiated indirect cost rate, then you can go negotiate an indirect cost
rate. Once approved, that then would become your rate that you would
use with all federal agencies. You cannot use the 10% de minimis rate
with one agency and then another negotiated rate, whether it be through a
formal negotiated indirect cost rate agreement or via approval of your
budget, with another agency. Once you use that 10%, you have to
continue to use that 10% unless and until you get a negotiated indirect cost
rate agreement.
Can grantees charge insurance equipment or similar costs as direct cost?
This gets into the issue of making sure that you’re not attempting to
include costs that generally are not allowable or are not direct costs in
your budget, and then also ask for the 10% de minimis rate. Although
there’s no defined set of costs that are always direct costs, generally
insurance or similar costs are treated as an indirect expense. What that
means is if you elect a 10% de minimis rate, unless you can clearly show
how the insurance or a similar cost is a direct cost specifically for this
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
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grant. For instance maybe the grant—I can’t see it under the housing
counseling grant, but under another grant—they say that you have to
maintain a certain specific insurance for that grant, or even performance
bonding—which is a type of insurance—and you’re only incurring it for
that grant, and if in fact you don’t have that grant that insurance goes
away. That’s what a direct charge for insurance would be.
Otherwise, if costs like insurance and rent and those other costs, they’re
generally considered indirect costs. If you’re electing the 10% de minimis
rate, that 10% is really incorporating that grant’s share of those costs. If a
cost is in fact indirect, and you’re electing a 10% indirect rate, that’s
where you’re really getting reimbursed for it. You can attempt to include
it in the budget as a direct cost, but then also it’s one of those costs that
really is an indirect cost that you’re really asking the government to
reimburse you for through the 10% de minimis rate.
That’s why the guide we think is really helpful, too, because it makes it
clear on which costs fall where, and how you can make sure you’re not
duplicating, or what we call double-charging or improper payment or
improper charge for costs, both as a direct cost, and then again in that 10%
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de minimis rate that you’re being allowed to charge, which is really an
indirect cost rate.
The next question, can the amount of sub awards be included in the
modified total direct cost? Yes they can, but only up to $25,000 of each
sub award. I think this is one of the areas that we spend a lot of time on in
the guide as far as different examples of showing you how to come up
with how much you can include in your modified total direct cost base for
a sub award. Yes you can, but only up to $25,000 per sub-recipient or per
sub award, which his critical. You have to look at each sub award, and
then determine to what extent they exceed $25,000 and exclude any
amounts over $25,000.
Can sub-grantee elect to use the 10%? If so, does the pass-through agency
have to accept? Yes to both questions. Yes, the sub-grantee can elect the
10%; and yes, the pass-through agency has to accept it. They cannot tell
you we’re not accepting the 10% de minimis rate. The regulation that’s
cited here made it clear that the parent, the pass-through, does in fact have
to accept any sub awards request or election to elect that 10% de minimis
rate.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
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What this pass-through agency may want to do, and that’s part of our
whole certification packet or toolkit, is require that sub awardee to certify
that they meet the eligibility requirement for electing that 10%, therefore
putting the burden on them to show that hey, we know what the
requirements are, we meet those requirements, and so in fact that’s why
we’re requesting or electing that 10% de minimis rate.
Personal activity reporting, which is probably the biggest area everybody’s
concerned with. Under the new uniform grants guidance, you are no
longer required to do a personnel activity report as a separate report or
document that you have to maintain in addition to your timekeeping and
your case management system. However, you still have to maintain
sufficient information regarding personnel activity to determine if in fact
the cost, or whatever the charge or the time was, was consistent with cost
principle requirements.
Think about it this way, you no longer have to have a separate report,
however, there has to be sufficient information for us to determine if the
time being charged by that person is for activities awarded and consistent
or in compliance with the grant agreement. You still have to keep
personnel activity reporting information, the question becomes how do
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you maintain this. For those of you who’ve been doing PARS for the last
decade, we strongly encourage you, unless it’s some type of administrative
burden, to continue doing what you’re doing; if it’s not broke then don’t
fix it. You’ll definitely be meeting the requirements.
For others, we looked at potentially modifying, especially if you’re using a
manual time sheet, modifying your time sheet to use activity codes as
cited here, where you’re using activity in the work performed. You may
have narrative, but we’re actually recommending that you set up almost
like activity-based reporting where you have a certain legend. You say
activity 001, that’s direct counseling; activity 002, that’s administrative or
back-end work. Whatever activity codes coincide with the work you’re
performing under the grant, that, too, meets the requirement for personnel
activity reporting.
One of the things we are doing though, is we’re updating the personnel
activity guide that was issued by HUD several years ago to comply with
the new requirements, and to give you various options on how you can
maintain personnel activity reporting now that you don’t have to maintain
this defined personnel activity report.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
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The goal is to streamline it, to give you various options or scenarios where
you’re meeting the requirements. However, you don’t have to maintain
that separate report, and to provide you with information to make an
informed decision on how you can best meet the requirements within your
organization, and minimize the administrative burden of having to
maintain this type of information.
However, I will say once again if you’re not having any problems with
personnel activity reports now and you’ve been doing them, you can
continue to do them. If you haven’t or you’re new, you may want to look
at how can I maintain the type of documentation that I’m going to need to,
to make sure I’m showing activity so that we can verify during our
compliance review that that activity performed by that person is in
compliance with the grant agreement and regulations.
Part of that, too, all of that though, whatever it is, it has to be documented
in your policies and procedures for personnel activity reporting. This is a
part of that whole internal control requirement. There’s even more
emphasis on policies and procedures because of course, policies and
procedures should be documented and communicated to your staff. This
provides a lot higher level internal control that the various mandates and
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policies are being distributed and communicated to the staff and ultimately
being enforced to ensure that the staff are performing consistent with the
policies and procedures. In fact, one of the things that you have to make
sure is you have a good policy and procedure.
Another key area that this federal grantee award and monitoring toolkit
that we’ve been talking about is an extensive tool kit, and yes, this is
designed primarily for pass-through entities. However, if you are a sub
award or maybe you’re considering becoming a pass-through entity, this is
a very good resource for you to understand what the various requirements
are as they have been cited in these particular sections of the uniform grant
guidance. What we did with the toolkit, is using the guidance and the
requirements, we actually tried to give you templates and forms and
checklists that you can use internally to make sure you’re meeting those
requirements.
For instance, under sub-par 200.331, it’s clear what your requirements are
for monitoring. You have to evaluate the sub-grantee’s risk of non-
compliance. That means you have to do a risk assessment. In the toolkit
we actually give you the most common risk factors, and a template for
how you could do your risk assessments.
HUD-US DEPT OF HOUSING & URBAN DEVELOPMENT
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What are your imposing specific sub award conditions upon your sub-
grantee agreement? We give you recommendations for making sure
certain requirements are in agreement. Looking at if you’re doing—what
type of monitoring are you doing? Are you doing desk reviews, are you
doing on-site, are you doing full reviews? That, along with our full
training program to show pass-through personnel—preferably accounting
personnel—on how to perform these financial reviews, that’s all in the
toolkit. Then, do you have the required enforcement action? So in the
toolkit we make recommendations for the enforcement actions.
The toolkit; we give you guidance, we’re giving you tools from risk
assessments to what has to be in your awarding documents, to then how
you’re going to do your monitoring and oversight. The way that is
organized is we start with of course, your sub-grantee pre-award. That
guide, that’s the first section of it. Then we look at risk assessment. Then
we give you a desk review template. Then if you’re doing an on-site
review. Then a quarterly report template, so that as you’re getting these
quarterly reports from your sub-grantees, if you want to give them more
guidance and instruction on how to standardize it we give you
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recommendations for what kind of template you can submit to your sub-
grantees, as well as an invoice template for when they’re billing you.
Like I said, that’s almost like a workbook. It’ll be made available both
electronically and in hard copy, but it’s not just instructions or a guide.
It’s actually giving you the templates, in Excel and Word, in formats that
you can use and implement and customize to your organization.
What the process has been for the sub-grantee award and monitoring
toolkit, is generally, if you are a pass-through entity and you want
assistance with the award and monitoring, there’s a request sent to Gail
Osgood or Tracy Fields. We then do an assessment of your entire sub-
grantee awarding and monitoring. We’re going to look at the tools that
you’ve been using, what you’ve been doing, and then we’re going to
modify the toolkit to ensure that whatever tools that you have are in
compliance and whatever areas you’re not in compliance, to assist you in
bringing all of the areas of your sub-grantee in compliance, including
potentially doing a full-day training on how to do financial and
administrative reviews. This is for your staff or for whomever you
identify that will be performing that type of monitoring on your behalf for
the pass-through.
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Other issues, just to make you aware, this becomes very important to pass-
throughs once again that effective for all audits beginning June 1, 2017,
there is an increase in the single audit requirement to $750,000. Now, it’s
whether they’ve been awarded and incurred costs of $750,000 on any
federal grant. There’s now this general procurement standard that all non-
federal entities must use its own documented procurement procedures
which reflect applicable state, local, and tribal. Historically, we only
really dealt with procurement procedures for any purchases of $25,000 or
more.
Now, based under this new guidance all non-federal entities must have
documented its own—and it emphasizes its own—and not just say we
accept the federal acquisition regulations, or we use the same standard as
XY&Z. Even if that is the case, you still have to identify those standards
in your own format, and then verity that that information has been shared
with all the parties that are somehow involved in the procurement process.
That’s another major area of change in the uniform grant guidance.
With that said, I will ask the monitor if there are any questions in the
queue. I think you have to hit star one.
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Moderator [Operator instructions].
Robin Unfortunately, as I said, due to technical difficulties we do not have access
to the online chat. However, after the call you still can send questions to
[email protected]. Just be sure to include Implementing
Uniform Grant Guidance Refresher in the subject line item. It just makes
it easier to address and to respond to your questions.
Tracy Robin, it’s Tracy. I do want to add one thing. Everyone, I am filling in
for the person that normally gets our trainings together, they’re out.
Someone did ask a question about the handout. I’m not sure if you all are
able to see that I did attach it on. If not, then we will have that team send
it out to everyone. I think they may send it out in advance, I’m not sure,
but we’ll make sure that everyone gets the handout. That’s it.
Robin Are there any questions in the queue?
Moderator No one has queued up.
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October 4, 2016/2:00 p.m. EDT
Page 28
Robin Okay, well once again thank you for your time, thank you for your
patience with us as we dealt with the technical difficulties. Please
complete the brief survey after the call, and if you have any other
questions feel free to send them to [email protected]. Thank
you for your time today.
Moderator Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today.
Thank you for your participation, and for using AT&T Executive
TeleConference Service. You may now disconnect.