Webinar: Applying for DRL Funding

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) in the U.S. Department of State is pleased to share this webinar for organizations interested in applying for DRL funding. This session was offered via Zoom on March 3, 2023.

The session provides information on registration requirements for prospective applicants, including SAM.gov registration, as well as an overview of the technical process for submitting an application via SAMS Domestic.

Transcript

SPEAKER: So I will turn it over to her to provide some welcoming remarks.

ERIN BARCLAY: Super, Thanks, Chloe. Thanks, Lindsey. Hi everybody. My name is Erin Barclay, and as Chloe said, I have the privilege of serving as the acting Assistant Secretary of the Democracy and Human Rights Bureau, and we are really glad to be doing this webinar today to talk about applying for DRL funding. We are really grateful for your time and participation in today’s session, which will provide an overview of registration and application requirements for organizations that may be interested in applying for US Foreign assistance funding. We want to also we want to thank you for the critical work that your organizations do and to express the US government’s unwavering support to civil society organizations on the front lines around the world who are promoting democracy and protecting human rights. This is an important event for the DRL Bureau as it gives us the opportunity to share important details of our grants management process in coordination with our colleagues across the State Department. The promotion of democracy and human rights is central to the Biden administration’s foreign policy and to the US national security agenda. US leadership in promoting democracy and human rights is critical to global security, prosperity, and defending the international order. Within this broader framework, DRL’s mission is to advance human rights, bolster democratic institutions, empower civil society, and independent journalists, and uphold internationally recognized worker rights through bilateral and multilateral multilateral stakeholder engagement, public and private messaging, and, most relevant for today’s discussion, through foreign assistance programs. In addition, throughout all of our work, DRL champions the inclusion and equality of all people by leading Department of State efforts to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, persons with disabilities and indigenous persons and supporting initiatives to promote gender equality, racial equity, including through foreign assistance programming. DRL’s foreign assistance programs are centrally managed here in Washington, DC, in close coordination with all the Department of State bureaus and offices, as well as our embassies overseas. Also, we coordinate closely within the interagency of the United States government. Over the past six years, DRL’s appropriated assistance funds have tripled in amount, and today DRL manages over 1.6 billion U.S. dollars in active foreign assistance programs around the world. A majority of these programs, around 90%, take place in closed or closing societies. DRL does not provide direct assistance to governments, but instead funds programs implemented by civil society and democracy activists to protect and promote human rights and labor rights, build sustainable democratic institutions, and empower civil society. DRL focuses on expanding space for civil society actors, actors, and democratic reformers by building their capacity to work for positive change from within their own societies. Our funding, as many of you here already know, has helped NGO’s improve their long-term resilience and operate operationalize their own democratic goals and aspirations. In addition, DRL programs can quickly respond to human rights crises and democratic openings around the world as they occur. For those interested in learning more about DRL foreign assistance funding opportunities, please visit the Department of State website linked here, which I’m looking there we go, there’s the link. DRL, in coordination with our grants office, posts all open competitions publicly on this web page throughout the fiscal year. Over the course of the webinar today, you’ll hear more from our colleagues across the department about how to prepare for and submit an application for DRL foreign assistance funding online. Before I leave you, I want to take an opportunity to acknowledge the impressive work and dedication of all of you represented here today. It’s important that we work together to promote and defend democracy globally, including to counter democratic erosion, promote human rights, fight corruption, and meaningfully address diversity, equity, and inclusion as a core element of democratic governance. We will continue to support innovative, safe, and effective. Ways to deliver assistance to those who need and want it most. Thank you all very much for joining us today and I’ll turn it back over to Chloe. Thank you.

CHLOE O’KELLY: Thank you so much, acting Assistant Secretary Barclay, for the warm welcome and for kicking off today’s event. Just as a note up top, I want to share that our aim is to make this information as accessible as possible to all interested and eligible applicants, and so, as indicated in the public announcement and invitation, today’s session will be recorded, transcribed, and shared on the Department of State’s website for reference by potential applicants. One additional note before we get started, we appreciate the thoughtful feedback and questions that you each submitted prior to this session, and we will have time for our presenters to respond to a number of your comments at the end of our session today. Though we will not have time to address every question we received this morning, we have reviewed all of your feedback and questions in detail and will be taking your feedback into consideration across DRL’s processes to the extent possible. Now to review important registration requirements, including sam.gov we will turn it over to our colleagues from the Office of the Procurement Executive, Joe Debusk, to get us started. I’ll turn it over to you, Joe.

JOE DEBUSK: Good morning. Thank you so much. And I would just like to to let everyone know that first of all, thanks for coming has the assistant secretary said, but also let you know that the Department of State does not own sam.gov so while we are giving you some helpful tips in your workspace, whatever they’re asking you to do is what you need to do. So we’re giving you these helpful tips, but we don’t own these systems, so it’s just us trying to help you along from our perspective of trying to, you know, be good partners. So go to the next page please. So in April of 2022, DUNS went away and UEI was called, the unique Entity identifier became the… replace DUNS … and during this time anyone who had active registration prior to 2022, was given to UEI. But validations weren’t done, so now validations are being done. So when we say backlog, it’s not so much a backlog has sam.gov getting a handle on what the process is and also giving you the recipients good guidance. But it’s important to know that it could take up to 45 days to renew or get a new registration. And the biggest thing is up it’s up to you to track what’s happening to your application and your workspace and sam.gov. Next slide, please. So as of November of of 2022 and Cage or Cage was no longer needed unless you’re DoD recipient, so for us, when I say us, I mean you, don’t need a DUNS or, I’m sorry, don’t need an ncage anymore or cage anymore. And then the FAQ’s that are going to be handed out after this presentation on the website for DRL. It’ll tell you what you need to do to decouple your ncage if you’re having issues. So next slide please. So I’m just going to go over some best practices. First thing, so the first thing is validation which is also being called EVS which is entity validation service process takes normally about 14 days. And in this presentation will go over how to do escalations if they’re needed. Escalations were were needed more recently but now has the same backup understands or understand how to communicate the process to you, the recipients escalations have really, really decreased so that’s good news. So again, I would like to point out that the FAQs answer a lot of the I want probably answer a lot more of your questions that you would have. So I would make sure that you look over the FAQ’s very with a keen eye. The biggest thing I would like to recommend is that when you get to the process, it’s going to give you 3 to 4 addresses to pick from. If your exact match is there is not there, don’t pick something that’s similar. So pick no exact match and put in your exact address or name. So again, don’t pick something that’s similar. If it’s not an exact match, don’t pick it and you’ll be able to submit what is your correct address. Because all of your documents validation documents have to match what address you put in sam.gov. Thank you, next slide. So when you log into sam.gov you can see the landing page, and it’s going to ask you to have a you’re going to need to get a login.gov account. So next page please. So when the login.gov process is just an authentication method to make sure that you should have access to the system, it’s not, the final registration for sam.gov it’s just the way to access sam.gov. The next page please. So for the login.com, login.gov account, you do that once and that’s going to be the way that you authenticate that you have access to this. And it’s going to be the same address e-mail that you access for sam.gov for your login. You’re going to need to have a working tablet or a phone or something, because you’re going to need to have an authentication method that’s really important to the next page. So for the login.gov process. It’s your choice for your authentication method, but if you’re overseas, I highly recommend that you do an authentication app. You can pick whatever authentication app you want, but a lot of times if you pick the phone number if you’re overseas, since they text you the authentication code to get in, sometimes overseas phone numbers have issues, so that’s why now for overseas people suggesting the authentication app and you can put it there’s lots of different apps you can pick I’m not highlighting one over the other, but you pick whatever authentication app you worked for you. You might already have an authentication app. Next slide, please. So the login.gov is not the same thing as your sam.gov workspace, it just allows you access to your sam.gov workspace. So once you’re in it’s going to you’re going to have access to your sam.gov workspace and once you have access to your workspace you’re the one to keep that access. The next page please. Also, I will say this in our FAQ’s we have the reach out for the help for the login.gov and for FSD. So if you’re having a problem with login backup you can look at our FAQ. So the first thing that happens a lot of organizations is they think they needed tin which is a taxpayer identification number. If you’re overseas you don’t need a tin, a tin is only for US organizations because this sam.gov is is a government wide system anyone who wants to get money from the US government whether US based or foreign based needs to have a sam.gov registration. So it’s like a one catch all system so would you going through your workspace? It’ll sometimes say this is not necessary for overseas, so just pay careful attention to those issues. So tin is not something that you need has a foreign organization, next slide please. So the biggest thing is that sam.gov needs a yearly renewal, so if you plan to get money over and over or if you’re paying in a span more than one year at sam.gov. I’m sorry, span more than one year for the for DRL, you need to make sure that your sam.gov registration is active. There’s no fee to register in sam.gov. And the UEI now is assigned during your registration process. And the UEI is only given once. So once you do the UEI stuff, the registration stuff hopefully will be simpler than when you were new. Next slide, please. But again, I want to stress, if you’re getting your registration for the first time or if you’re renewing, please plan for at least 45, 30 to 45 days. So when you go to see sam.gov, you’re going to click on it and it’s going to ask you do you accept the terms and conditions, and that means the privacy terms and conditions, meaning you’re not going to give out your password and your username. And when you go in, you’re going to see your entity registrations. So if you if you have an entity, your entity will show up in your workspace. If you if you have, if this is your first time, you’re going to do starting a new entity registration. But if you’re going to update it once the organization will show in your workspace. Next slide, please. Now the way that you keep access to your organization or you get access to your organization again because after you complete your registration, your organization has 30 days to submit an entity administration letter. And because you are international, you would do template #3 and that means you’re not going to have U.S. banking. So template number when you do template #3. The template is going to guide you through what you need to put in the letter to submit to sam.gov. But in this letter template it says who you want to have access to to your sam.gov registration and when we say access, we really need entity so your entity information so more than one person can have access to the entity registration. But the entity admin has to be an employee of your organization. So maybe you have a third party contractor that you want to help you register, but the person who has to approve the final registration that that’s submitted and approves access request has to be an employee of your organization. And when we say notarize, it really means self-certified, so overseas notaries are not needed. You do a self-certification and then the template it tells you how you do the self-certification, so again for overseas, it’s self-certified now again. Sam.gov is used by the whole U.S. government and a lot of U.S. government is is US based that’s why they want notary if it’s US based but because you were overseas everything is self-certified and in the template #3 it explains how to do the self-certification. Next slide, please. So again, this is just going over what I explained that you do not have to have a notary. The person who signed yourself certification is someone from your organization, and we’ve given some examples here. Again, overseas organizations aren’t going to need EFT’s electronic funds transfer, it says that it’s not mandatory, it says it’s optional for non-us organizations. So don’t be confused when you when it’ll it’ll Sam.gov will pop up that it wants your EFT’s but if you read at the very top of the directions, it’ll say optional for non-us organizations, and since you were overseas you were non-us based. So you don’t need EFT and you do self certification. Next slide, please. So when you go in, you’re going to have to put that leather to entity administration letter into sam.gov through FSD. Now unfortunately, FSD has not changed calling the letter to NC Admin letter, they’re still calling it the notarized letter. So when you go into the drop downs for sam.gov for the FSD System, it’ll say that notarized letter, but it is really your entity designation letter, and that’s when you put it in your subject line, because that way when FSD see its self certified because it’s template #3, they’ll accept it. Next slide, please. We’re just going to go over renewals again, so once you register in sam.gov this is not the end for you, if you’re going to get money, which hopefully you do year after year or your payment span more than one year, you’re going to want to renew. The primary contact received reminders 30 and 60 days and 15 days prior to expiration. But again we’ve said that renewals or even new registrations could take anywhere from 30 to 45 days so please be sure that you, you start your renewal process before that. The reason why renewal is so important is because has you’re renewing your priority increases. So let’s say that you’re 30 days from from your renewal and you start your process because you’re very diligent, thank you very much. So when you get to like say 15 days, so on, on the 30 day that you’re, you’re, you’re new your priority status might be, I’m just going to make these up for illustration purposes, Level 3 so then as you’re going through the process, you started your 30 days before your your expire and so it’ll say, oh, now you’re only 15 days away, I’m going to hike your priority level to level 2. So the system is designed to not let you lapse so long as you start your renewal before you expire. So it’s very important to start before you expire and give yourself enough time to get through it. Next slide, please.

So I used to say that you know call in, but my recommendation is now to do an incident, create an incident or do live chat. So when you go to FSD and we have the website here and you log in and it’s the same login that you use for sam.gov it’s going to ask you, do you want to do live chat or create an incident? I like to do create an incident because when you do create an incident, you get an e-mail of exactly what you typed in an incident. When you do live chat, they do a transcript and it often takes a few days to get that transcript back, but if you do create an incident, you see what you have typed right away and there’s record of that, so I now recommend create an incident, but you can call in and you can do live chat. But the idea is that if you submit a ticket you need to come back in either your workspace or the FSC to check to see what the status of your ticket is, because oftentimes FSC will send an e-mail and tell you to check the status of your ticket because they have added a new comment. So while you will get an e-mail, you can still do you can still, it’s still uncommon upon yourself check because if you’re taking this open for five days, they’ll get your ticket can be open longer because sometimes the takes FSD a day or two to respond to you, but after FSD responds, they only give you 5 days before they close your ticket, so your ticket could be closed because you didn’t answer. And I understand that for some people overseas, 5 days is not a long time. But again, I don’t own the system, I’m just explaining to you what they do. Next slide, please. So let’s say you’ve tried everything and and you want to reach out for help. Please do so if you want to reach out to help, you’re going to reach out to your DLL program contact and what you’re going to give them is your organization’s name that was entered in sam.gov if you have an NCASE, and if you have UEI. If you don’t have an NCASE UEI, that’s fine. But you’re going to need to give us or or give the DRL contact your FSD EVS, and I just put NCASE in here because we used to have NCASE tickets, but we don’t anymore because NCASE as I explained to you, it’s not needed, but you need to have a live ticket open, so you need to give your contact whatever the live ticket is. When I say live, I mean open ticket, and a brief description of what your your issue is. Now your content may come back to you and ask you for more information, but this is the first step that we need to start investigating for you. Next slide, please. Before I turn it over to ILMS, ask I just my last recommendations are again is to read the FAQ’s that are going to be given to you, very keenly and if you have questions from the FAQ reach out to your DRL contact and they can reach out to me, and then just check your workspace every few days. And that’s where the authentication app is helpful because if you you can get key sent to you like code sent to you, but the codes are only 10 sent to you at a time. So that’s why I pushed the authentication app, because then you you’ll get it real time on your on your phone or your tablet or whatever method you’re choosing for because sometimes it’ll take a while, it’s not a one step process, you’ll go in and you, and especially if your address is is not an exact match EVS, which is the contractor that does the address match part, will write to you and your sam.gov workspace and so you’ll need to check your workspace more than once to make sure that you’ll you’ll go back and follow the steps they’ve asked you to do. So I’ll be the chat box to answer any additional questions while ILMS is talking, thank you so much over to ILMS. Or SAMS, that domestic. Sorry.

CHLOE O’KELLY: Thank you so much, Joe. We appreciate the really helpful overview and update on sam.gov timelines and requirements, especially given all of the changes in the past. Few months. So next we’ll turn to you, Jessica Baker, SAMS technical manager and trainer for an introduction to the SAMS Domestic system, as Joe noted. Over to you, Jessica.

JESSICA BAKER: Thank you, Chloe, hi everybody. It’s it’s a joy to be with you all today. I do also have a colleague with me, Maifawn to who’s going to help with your questions that you might have that you putting in the chat while I’m talking, I’ll also try to address them as I see them, but we will try and hit every, we’ll try and respond to every question at minimum in the chat and if I can, I’ll I’ll also add to it verbally. But what I wanted to do with you today is just give you some brief information about the State Assistance Management System, SAMS Domestic where you’re able to view and apply for DRL funding opportunities. So Chloe, if you can go to the next slide for me please. So what is SAMS domestic? So SAMS Domestic is a platform that is specific to the Department of State that is designed to help you manage your federal assistance funding as well as applying for funding through the Department of State, specifically with regards to the domestic bureaus at the Department of State. If you also apply for funding at any of our embassies and consulates that’s done separately and not through this system, so I just want to add that clarification, we had a question about that on Tuesday. In terms of what can you do in SAMS Domestic, you know, what benefits do you have? So within SAMS Domestic you are able to actually view and locate funding opportunities for your organization to apply to. Now this is separate to what you might see on grants.gov, another system where you’ll see funding opportunities throughout the federal government, but if there is a opportunity on grants.gov for Department of State, for a Federal assistance award, we would expect you to also find that opportunity for one of our domestic bureaus in the SAMS Domestic platform as well. So you kind so you have two places you’re able to see these funding opportunities. You’re also able to submit applications for these funding opportunities in SAMS Domestic directly. There is also ability for, the our domestic bureaus to invite you to submit an application to a more limited directed opportunity in our system. You’re able to share your applications that you are drafting in SAMS Domestic to allow you to collaborate with your organization but within your organization, but also it allows you to see applications that may have been submitted previously. We also have the ability for you to edit any application that you do submit while that funding opportunity is open. So for example, if you submit your application and you realize, oh, I uploaded the wrong version of the document, you’re able to edit that application and upload the correct version. So just some flexibility we have in the system for you. Now, should your organization receive funding from the Department of State, you’re actually we’re also able to manage your awards in the SAMS Domestic system. In particular, you’re able to get notifications when there’s an award or an amendment to an existing award that’s available for your review. You’ll also get notifications if an award is ready for your counter signature, your your authorized representatives counter signature. We also in SAMS Domestic have the ability on your awards for you to create what we call post award activities. And what these are used for is to help track your reporting requirements, milestones and a way for you to communicate with Department of State staff in the system regarding any award you might receive. And then throughout the system whether you’re applying for an opportunity in the system or if you do receive an award, or have a current award, you’re able to receive helpful reminders about any upcoming activities that you might have for an existing award. You’ll get, you’ll get notifications when you submit your applications etcetera. So it’s a very robust platform for you that you’re able to do a lot of things in terms of applying for and receiving Department of State funding. On the bottom of the slide, you will see that we included the link to the SAMS Domestic site so that you know where to go to look at the SAMS Domestic site and that leads me to my next topic is how do you register with SAMS Domestic and get an account in SAMS Domestic? So if you can go to the next slide please. So before I talk um specifically about the registration, as I was just saying, I do want to take a brief moment Joe just spent a number of Joe just spent a good amount of time talking to you about registering with sam.gov and so I wanted to take a minute to differentiate and distinguish that sam.gov is different from SAMS Domestic. They have very similar names, our name was first, I will say, which is fine. But please do not confuse them. So SAMS Domestic is the system that you’re going to use to apply for federal assistance, where you’re going to manage any awards that you receive from the Department of State. Whereas sam.gov is something that is what you register your organization with, so you can be eligible to receive federal assistance as was just described. Now we do get information in SAMS Domestic, about your organization, that comes from sam.gov so there is a connection between our systems, but they are very separate. OK. If you can go to the next slide, please. So when it comes to an account in SAMS Domestic, we actually don’t talk about accounts in terms of your organization. So what we have is we have individual user accounts in the system, all right? Your individual user account is what allows you to take an action in the system, whether it be applying for funding, viewing a funding opportunity or managing an existing award. Your organization does have a have a record in the SAMS Domestic system, but we use that record as more of a a way to control your visibility in the system and what you can do in the system. So they’re very different components to that. When you are registering in SAMS Domestic, there are three types of roles that you can receive. So when you register yourself as a user to SAMS Domestic, your default role that you’ll receive is what we call the recipient point of contact, and that’s that first role here. That is a role that every SAMS Domestic user will receive. What you can do with this role is actually a lot I know here it says that you’re able to create and edit and submit reports for post award activities. But I want to talk a minute about if you’re applying for funding. So when you get a SAMS Domestic user account and you get this default role, you’re already able to apply for funding and view funding opportunities with just this role and with just your initial registration, you do not need to be associated with that organization record that I mentioned to submit an application. OK, so I just want to make that, that’s a question we get a lot. So you just need to get an account to be able to apply, and receive this role. Now, if you are a person in your organization who would have the authority to bind your organization to a grant agreement, you will need to get the recipient signatory role added to your account. It is not something that’s automatically added. Furthermore, we have the ability to give you to give a person in your organization the ability to manage your accounts within your organization for your various users, and that’s the organization administrator role. Both the recipient signatory role and the organization administrator role is something that your DOS Grant or point of contact at a Bureau can assign to you. And if you’re an organization administrator, you can assign other persons to be your organization’s recipient signatory. But to receive that organization administrator role, you do need to speak with one of your Department of State grant or contacts, OK? I’m just gonna check the SAMS Domestic is not just for US organizations, so I do want to add that clarity, I see that in the chat right now. Um, so for SAMS Domestic users, basically you can be uh located overseas, your organization can be located overseas. Why it says domestic, which I know can be a little confusing and that might be why you think it’s for US organizations, domestic is really more signifying that this system is used by our our bureaus and our offices here in the Department of State locate locally… [NOISE] I’m gonna just take you here, thank you.. here locally in the United States, it’s those bureaus, it’s the embassies and consulates that are not using SAMS Domestic. So think of it more as you can use SAMS Domestic if you want to apply for DRL funding or any other Bureau within the Department of State. So I hope that answers that question. Um, go ahead and go to the next slide, please. So back to user new user accounts. So if you do not have an existing user account, SAMS Domestic, you’re going to need to create that account. Now I want to take a moment and talk a little bit about grants.gov, I mentioned that earlier. Grants.gov is another place where DRL funding opportunities would be posted. Your you may have an account with grants.gov that is a separate account to what you would need to have access to same domestic. They do not, they do not they’re not the same account, not the same login. So you do need a separate account for SAMS Domestic. When you’re creating a SAMS Domestic account, there is actually a create an account link and I’m going to demo this for you in just a little bit that you’re going to Click to actually create that SAMS Domestic account. If you can go ahead and go to the next slide. Alright, so when you are creating your account, you’re gonna actually see a form that you need to fill out. The form is going to ask you to provide your name. It’s going to ask you provide your title. It’s also going to have two fields for a field for you to put your organization’s name, but also your your organization’s unique entity identifier. And we do encourage you to enter your organizations unique entity identifier, um, if you have one at the time you’re creating your account. Because how that’s going to help or why that’s important is it’s going to help anyone who’s trying to associate you to that organization record that helps with accessibility. Know that, hey, this is the unique entity identifier for my organization so that they’re selecting the correct organization to assign you to. Um, you also can include an organization contact and what that does is it would notify that person that you’ve created a an account and would like to be associated to your organization, so for that accessibility that I mentioned earlier. You also have a field on the form where it asks you to identify any bureaus that you’re working with. So given that you’re here for a DRL opportunity, uh, what you can put there is you can put the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. So you can actually put DRL as that Bureau or that domestic Bureau there. OK, when you create your account there, you’re going to receive 2 emails after you create that account, the first e-mail is so you can confirm your account and basically confirm your e-mail. And then the second e-mail that you’ll get is is actually going to be with your login and a temporary password. Now just like Joe was talking about with sam.gov and registering an account through login.gov SAMS domestic also has a multifactor authentication requirement. So when you log in that first time, you are going to be prompted after you enter in your username and password to set up multifactor authentication. Now, if you’re already using a multi factor authentication application for login.gov and sam.gov, you can use that same application to set up a authenticator for SAMS Domestic. OK, so you don’t need to download a new a new software for that you can use the same type of authentication application. In SAMS Domestic, you have four different choices when it comes to a an MFA, a multifactor authentication application. You can use an authenticator for an iOS or Apple device, you can use an Android device Authenticator. We recommend the Google Authenticator for for my grants, but you can use like a Microsoft Authenticator, etcetera on those two devices. There’s also a way that you can use a Google Chrome type of authenticator that is authy is the name of that one. And then we also have an option to use a Windows Microsoft window, or I’m sorry, a Microsoft Windows yeah, a Microsoft Windows desktop type of authenticator. So those are your four MFA choices. I’m going to highlight for your resource on where you can see how to download and set up for those authenticator choices, but I wanted to mention it for you here. If you go to the next slide, slide please. So next what I want to do is I’m gonna, I wanna do some demonstrations for you. I want to show you how to create an account and the link I just mentioned is showing here at the top that mygrants.ServiceNowservices/MFA _ help.DO that actually will take you to a resource that will walk you through how to create an account. It will walk you through how to set up multi factor authentication for each of the four options that I just provided to you. So I recommend you using that resource when you set up your new account. I also want to show you how to apply for a funding opportunity and I’m going to show for you our resources page, but I just want to mention it here. When you log into SAMS Domestic there is going to be a support heading and you’re going to be able to see grantee training resources where you can pretty where you can find information about anything that you could want to do in the system, how to apply, how to view an award, etc. You will also be able to find recordings of our recipient webinars that we hold. We do have a recipient webinar coming up on March 7th, and at the bottom of this page you’ll see our the date and time for that as well as the login information. If you’d like a more robust training in SAMS Domestic, I encourage you to attend that training, um, but it covers some of what we’re talking about today, but also managing awards, should you receive one in SAMS Domestic. If you have specific questions about funding opportunity you’re applying for, you do want to reach out to your grant or point of contact on that opportunity, you can contact the support desk if you’re having an issue applying or an issue viewing an opportunity in the system, we can support you with those technical type of questions. So with that, Chloe, am I able to share my screen? Thank you. So for this demonstration portion that I’m going to show you today, I do want to let you know that I’m in our training environment. So the information that you see here is not real information, it’s just part of what we do for training opportunities. What you see is what you would see if you were logged into SAMS Domestic, it does mirror that. You might see it work a little slow and that’s because it’s a training environment our the SAMS Domestic production is what we call it environment will not work that slowly. So I just want to caveat that before I go into my demonstration. So the first thing I want to demonstrate for you is how to create a SAMS Domestic account if you’re a brand new user. So to do that, you’re going to click create an account. All right, please do not use these links down here at the bottom about creating an account. We want to make sure you get a SAMS Domestic account and that is this hyperlink up here called create an account. If you have questions or you want to see that resource that I just mentioned to you, you can actually click this how do I log in and create an account link? It will give you that same information but when I click create an account which is how I want to set up my account, I’m going to get taken to this form page that I mentioned and let me just make this slightly bigger. Ohh, actually I think we’re OK and you’re basically going to enter in your name. So again, this is an individual user account. You want to create one for yourself. You wanna enter in, are you working for a domestic, working with the Department of State Domestic Bureau or Embassy, Consulate. You can say yes, no. If you’re not sure, you can say that too, it’s a drop down. But we would say yes because we’re I’m going to assume that you are looking to apply for DRL funding and then what you’ll do is under Department of State, Domestic Bureau, you’re going to click that lock button, you’re gonna click search. And then you’re gonna look for and find the DRL’s Bureau information. It’s actually on page 2. So I’m going to look for and select Department of State, Democracy, Human Rights And Labor which will help, us know that, hey that’s that’s the Bureau that you’re looking to potentially partner with. You’re able to enter in your job title. Again, entering your organization’s name is helpful, especially if you don’t yet have a UEI number, but it helps us know, hey, this is what you need to be associated with when we’re associating your individual user account. And then if there’s someone that you want to be want to have contacted about your new account so they can associate you to your organization, you can include their e-mail here. And or name, but the e-mail address means they get the e-mail. For contact information, it’s important that you enter in your individual e-mail. We got a lot of questions on the support desk about about can I use a general e-mail for my organization? We don’t encourage you to do that because this is your individual account. It’s not something that you’re going to be sharing across an organization. And so we want to make sure that you’re getting notifications about things that you have the ability to perform. So especially if you’re an authorized representative, etcetera. So we do encourage you to use your personal e-mail address versus a more general e-mail address. Um, and I’m just going to enter in my an address and my country and with the country it’s just a drop down and you can search for for your country. And you can use like a letter if you want to have it kind of go to your country a little bit quicker versus scrolling all the way down. So once you’re done filling out the primary fields on this form and there are asterisk red asterisks on the fields that are required. I’m gonna go down and I’m going to review my Privacy Act statement, um, and I’m going to certify that I’ve read that that statement and accept those legal terms and conditions and I’m going to click the submit, button. And what happens then is. I did not use a really an e-mail address. I’ll get an error if I forgot to fill something out or did not fill something out correctly, so let me fix that. And I’m gonna Scroll down and hit submit again. And once I click submit, it shouldn’t do that, but it just in terms of logging out, that’s our training environment. But you should just be processed, redirected back to this home page, and what does happen is an e-mail is sent to you at that point to the e-mail address that you put on the account, and the e-mail is there for you to accept. And then once you accept and confirm through that e-mail, you’ll receive your username and password and you can set up your multifactor authentication. OK, so next I want to show you how to view a funding opportunity and submit an application. Again, I want to remind you that when you create your user account, you get the permission to look for funding opportunities and to apply for funding. You do not need to be associated to your organization to be able to view opportunities and apply. So I’m logging into our training environment because I’m in the training environment, it’s not going to ask me for that multi factor that I mentioned, but when you’re logging into the live environment or our production environment, you will be prompted for that. So when you log into SAMS Domestic um, this is what your homepage will look like, you will see an apply heading on my applications heading and a word heading and a support heading. Under the support heading is where you can find those grantee training resources that I mentioned. Under the apply heading is where you’re gonna be able to look for and view funding opportunities that your organization may wish to apply for. Under my applications is where you’re going to be able to see applications that you have created and or submitted in the system. And under my organization applications is where you’ll see any application that has been shared with you within your organization. As I mentioned, you can share applications so you that you can collaborate. So when you’re looking for a funding opportunity, whether it be one that you know that you want to apply for or want or if you’re just looking for opportunities to apply for when you click, apply funding opportunities. You’re going to be taken to a page where you can see those funding opportunities. I do see a quick question in the chat that I wanna answer regarding to can we apply for sam.gov and SAMS Domestic at the same time. The answer is yes. There is not a connection between you being able to register in SAMS Domestic with you having an active sam.gov registration so you can actually do those at the same time you’ll you’ll probably get your SAMS Domestic account quicker than say getting your organization right and sam.gov based upon what Joe was saying. So we encourage you to get that account if you want to apply for funding in the near future as quickly as possible. So back to the funding opportunities, so when you’re on the funding opportunities page, you’ll see all the current funding opportunities that are open and not just DRL, but across the Department of State Domestic Bureaus. I’m going to search in my opportunity title by DRL so that I can find the DRL ones I want to look for, but really, when you’re searching the DRL or, I’m sorry, when you’re searching for opportunities, you can use keywords or themes related to that opportunity to search for it. So when I search by DRL because I know that that was the name of the opportunities that that I put in place before our session today, what you will see is there are two opportunity types that I wanted to show you today. So the first is the limited directed opportunity type. This type is a unique type within SAMS Domestic because it’s a type where the the Bureau that’s posting it is saying we’re only going to invite certain organizations to apply for this funding opportunity and you actually have to be associated to this opportunity to be able to view it in the system. So if you receive an invitation to apply for a limited directed opportunity and you are not able to view it, it most likely means you have not yet been associated to it, and you can contact your Bureau point of contact for assistance with getting associated to it. Or you can contact the support desk and we’ll help you know who to contact if you’re not sure, but basically to see these types of opportunities, you have to be assigned to it. You’re not able to see that you’re assigned to the opportunity when you look at it, but if you can see it, you’re assigned to it, so you have the access. I want to go back and look at the full and open opportunity because that’s one that I’m gonna actually apply to in showing you how to apply. So when I go to the full and open competition type of opportunity and you see those types here for you. And I’m sorry, let me just mention one more thing with the limited directed opportunities when you’re applying to that opportunity type, you can only apply to that opportunity type in SAMS Domestic, OK, for the full and open competition opportunity type, which is the one I just logged into, that type of opportunity or even a statement of interest opportunity is going to get posted on grants.gov and when we have a funding opportunity that’s posted in SAMS Domestic and is showing on grants.gov, you actually have two ways in which you could apply from a system standpoint, you can apply either through grants.gov or you can apply through SAMS Domestic. You should always read the funding opportunity document provided by the Bureau to know if you have those two options. Some bureaus will say we only want you to apply this way, to a full and open opportunity, but from a system standpoint, the system will allow for both, so always read the notes to find out, what options you have, but you may have the option that you can choose, do you want to submit through grants.gov or do you want to submit through SAMS Domestic? And when you do submit an application through grants.gov, that application will migrate into SAMS Domestic. So it will end up in SAMS Domestic if you do post on grants.gov. So when you are reviewing a funding opportunity, you have some options, you can hit expand all so that you can see all the funding opportunity information and you’re able to see, uh, the instrument types that are coming out of this opportunity, you’re able to see when it’s due, the estimated project start and end dates, you’re able to see who is eligible to apply for this opportunity. You’re also able to see various award information that would be important to this opportunity, but I really want to show you this submission information section. So when you are submitting to an opportunity, you want to pay close attention to your submission requirements. Some of that information is going to be here when you look at it in the SAMS Domestic system, some of that information’s going to be in the funding opportunity document itself and I’ll talk about where you can see that document in just a moment. So when you are submitting an application, there will be some standard forms that are required, so here under submission information you are able to see which forms are required so you know what to prepare as part of your application. At the bottom and the top of every funding opportunity, you’re going to see an additional actions section, and there’s two additional actions you want to play close attention to so the first is additional documents to be submitted. That is going to tell you the type of documents that you’re going to be potentially needing to, I’m sorry, the type of documents you’re going to need to upload as part of your application. You’re going to be able to see the title of those documents and if they are required or not. Alright, again, you’ll still want to look at your funding opportunity document to see if there’s other documents that may not be showing here. Your funding opportunity document is your primary source of defining what you need to upload. If you go back to your opportunity and notice how we have these little bread crumbs so we like to use those bread crumbs to go back. And if you go to the information for the applicants hyperlink under additional actions, this is where you’re going to be able to find that funding opportunity document that I mentioned that’s going to have more specific details about the eligibility requirements, submission requirements, etcetera for that funding opportunity. Now when you have said, hey, I want to apply for this funding opportunity, you can actually apply from it here on this page by clicking up alley here. And what that does is it loads for you an application every application is assigned a unique application number, which you’ll see up here and this is your your tracker, your your number that you can use to track your submission. And what you’re going to do when you’re submitting an application is, again, you’re just going to have information you need to fill out. So I’m going to click expand all so that I can just see that information and so I mentioned that you can share your application with others, right. So you have two ways in which you can share your application. The 1st way is you can search for an individual person that you want to share this application with, right? Or you can decide, alright, any user in my organization that I’m associated with can see that. So you also can do an all users or you can just share it within an individual or two, alright, you have two choices there. For applicant, organization and individual, I’m gonna enter my organization name here. I’m gonna put in my unique entity identifier, and again, this just helps them know what organization you are. It’s your unique identifier for your organization. It’s it’s just an important field that you want to include that information for. All right, you’ll want to enter in your address. And again, you’ll want to enter in your country.

And then I’m going to click save so that that’s how you initially set up your application. You enter in that initial information and you click save. Then your application saved it’s in draft status. You’re able to come back to this application and continue to finish it. You’re able to do many different things with that application. It will appear on your My Applications section as I mentioned, and you basically can continue to edit this application until you are ready to submit it. All right, you just need to do that initial save to lock the application in. To be able to view it on your MY Applications page. So how do you fill out the rest of your application? So there’s there’s two primary ways you’re going to fill out this application. The first is you have your SF-424 forms you need to complete, so you’re gonna go to the SF-424 information hyperlink here under additional actions and you’ll see that you have required and optional forms. So you need to you must fill out anything that says required yes. Alright, so to fill out your 424 form, you’re going to go in and you’re going to fill out that form with all the various information. So I’m going to try and fill this out somewhat quickly, knowing that we are close to time. And Please note that at the bottom of the page it is going to um help you know if you’ve hit all the required fields. Some of the information is going to be pre-populated for you because of what you put on your initial piece as well as based upon your user account. So I logged in as JC Peters or Jenny Peters so that’s auto defaulting for me, um, you’ll have your type of applicant. And again, what I’m really looking for here are any of those asterisks, those red asterisks to see if I need to fill those out, but you do want to fill out the countries affected by the project umm, congressional District where applicable. And we do have a resource under our grantee resources support page in which there is called our getting started page and it will walk you through this 424 form, and um, how to fill this out in the system if you’re not sure what to put in a specific field, since I know I’m going through this somewhat quickly, so I wanted to just highlight that for you. Um, when you get to this authorized representative field, you have two options on the 424 form, you can actually search for the user account of your authorized representative official. If that person doesn’t come up, that’s OK. If you’re able to select them, it just auto fills out this information for you. If you’re not able to locate them, all you have to do is go here and enter their name. And then for the signature, you’re just gonna enter the person’s name and today’s date, the date that’s being signed. And once you have finished your 424 form, you’re going to, um, click save draft, and then you’re gonna click submit. And when you submit this form, um, the you will be prompted to enter in your username and password plus your 6 digit MFA code and it’s just your login information when you’re entering that information in. And as you can see, our training environment is taking a bit of time, but what it should say is you should get a successful message once it’s been submitted. So I don’t wanna wait too long since our training environment can be slow, but once you have actually submitted 424 form, this SF424 status will say submitted and you know that you’ve met that requirement. I do want to go back because I want to show you one more part of submitting an application. Um, and while I’m waiting for the system to move forward, I do want to answer one question from Pamela in terms of the authorized representative, yes, that is the name of the your authorized representative at your organization who is applying for this opportunity. Um, I’m gonna try and get this to move forward. Um, just knowing the time that we have left. And again, this is not something I would expect you to see in our live environment. It really is something that can happen in our training environment. Alright, I’m just going to try and log back in. It looks like our trading environment might be having some technical difficulties. Let me do this instead then. Gonna stop sharing my screen, um so I apologize that I’m not able to show you the rest of applying, but what I want to mention is we have the resources that I mentioned to you on our in SAMS Domestic, there is a great resource on how to apply. There is our getting started resource which also will walk you through how to submit an application. The key part when applying for a funding opportunity whether it be DRL or another domestic bureaus opportunities is on that SF 424 information page when you’re on your application. It is going to tell you what forms are required. Under the there’s also additional documents to be submitted hyperlink, under that hyperlink, it’s going to tell you what documents are required. You are going to actually upload your documents under the uploaded documents hyperlink, and when you’re uploading your documents, you’re going to tag them with the appropriate file type, so you’re going to tag them with additional documents to be submitted. And you’re going to tag them with the budget narrative or project narrative, and what you want to see is when you look at that SF 424 information page and when you look at the additional documents to be submitted page, you want to make sure that anything that has a required has a yes that you’ve actually submitted and met that requirement for those documentations. Once you have met all those requirements for those required docs, the system is going to allow you to submit your application. A new button is going to appear for you that says submit application for review. If you don’t see that, submit application for review um, button you’re most likely missing one of the required forms or one of the required documents. So, so how you submit your application is you submit application for review and your application will go to the Bureau to whom you’re replying for whom you are applying and they will be able to review your application, so I’m sorry that I couldn’t finish showing you that demo, that our system went down, but I hope that just verbally what I said was helpful to you. So that’s all from the SAMS team today. I know we had a couple questions that I wanted to also just touch base on, but I wanted to ask Chloe, are there any other questions we need to address or have AOPE address prior to us addressing ours?

CHLOE O’KELLY: Thank you so much, Jessica, and I think the one thing I might add just given that I know some folks might be visual learners, what we will plan to do is the great thing is with huge thanks to our AOPE and IMS colleagues, we’ve been able to have a couple of sessions today. So we will plan to share both recordings with those who have RSVPed for for both sessions. So that way you’ll be able to see exactly what Jessica. Described, which I think was a really, really helpful description, but just in case, you can see it in the system as well. So we’re happy to pass those resources along. I’m happy to share that again with thanks to Joe, Jessica and Mai, I believe we’ve kept up with all of the questions that have been submitted via chat. So I will turn it back to Jessica, Mai and Joe, just in case there are any additional questions you’d like to address or any of the questions that were in the chat that you’d just like to expand a bit on as well, we have about 10 minutes for that.

JESSICA BAKER: There was one question that I know I didn’t cover in the presentation that was a a pre asked question and it had to do with applicants who might be looking who might be partnering with other organizations as part of a consortia before they apply for a funding opportunity and the question we got was for that was if you are forming a consortia to respond to an opportunity, what organization within that consortia needs to have that SAMS Domestic user account to apply for the funding? And the answer to that is is you’re going to want whatever organization is going to be the primary organization, the one submitting the application, that is the organization that needs to curb make sure they have a user account to apply for that opportunity. Now we do encourage the other organizations as part of that consortium to have accounts so that should it be awarded, they may be able to see that award. If if necessary however, it’s not a requirement for the application process. You really want the person or the the organization who’s going to submit the application, persons in that organization we’re going to do that submission are the ones who need the user accounts. So that was the one question that I wanted to make sure I answer and I’ll, I’ll let Joe talk now I see she had something she wanted to act, so go ahead Joe.

JOE DEBUSK: Thank you, Jessica. I just wanna, reiterate that if you’re renewing, or even if you’re new registration and your your stand.gov workspace and your entity goes away, please don’t start a new registration. Contact FSD to get your entity put back in your workspace, that’s the most important thing. Don’t start again because that will cause more issues. So if you have a if your entity shows up in your workspace during the registration process or and then goes away, or if you’re renewing and you and your entity is no longer in your workspace. Please contact FSD before you start a new registration, so if your entity showed up in your workspace or someone in your organization’s workspace from before, please don’t start a new registration, contact FSD on how to get that put back into your workspace. Thank you.

CHLOE O’KELLY: Thank you so much Joe and Jessica. And I see of course that Mai has been helping to support in the chat questions as well. So I want to thank her for her time as well. Um, as mentioned at the top of our event today regarding those pre submitted questions and feedback that we received, unfortunately we’re unable to answer all of those during the session this morning, though we have focused on technical questions throughout our session, DRL’s Office of Global Programs is always available to answer any specific questions you may have or point you in the right direction for an answer if needed. One thing that I know was dropped into the chat box, but that I would like to reiterate for everyone on the call today, is that I know there was a question around how to reach out to DRL, if you have an active award with DRL, you can refer to your award agreement for DRL points of contact, including your Grants Officer representative as well as your program officer who will both be DRL staff for those who are considering an application to a DRL funding opportunity and may not have these points of contact for any of our posted solicitations in SAMS Domestic or on DRL’s, website You can refer to Section G labeled contact information for an e-mail address to connect with our office directly. Some of those e-mail addresses will be tagged to specific portfolios within our office, but I am happy to reiterate that it is our DRL staff who checks and monitors those inboxes on a daily basis to make sure that we’re being responsive to your questions and concerns, so please feel free to look at the award agreement or the body of the solicitation itself for that contact information that Joe and Jessica noted for our DRL team. Before I turn to a quick closing thank you, I’m just doing one more scan through the chat here. Happy to to drop that information regarding contacts in the into the chat once again but I do want to end our session today with a a big thank you to our DRL acting Assistant secretary to Joe, her teammates Carla and Kimberly who I know who have plugged into their their presentation today, Jessica and Mai, my colleague Lindsay and all of our colleagues behind the scenes who have provided background on DRL GP as well as such helpful guidance for the registration and application process. In addition, a huge thank you for all of your continued support day-to-day on DRL opportunities our DRL team is in close contact, always with our colleagues at the Office of the procurement executive as well as with ILMS. And seeing just one last last question in the chat here, even if the questions are non-technical related, we can refer to Section G and e-mail contact that’s exactly right for any questions regarding a solicitation though we may not be able to answer them if they impact the competitive process, we can certainly point you to the right contacts as well. With that, we will close our session, we’ll be in touch with e-mail to share some of these resources that we’ve reviewed today. But in the meantime, thank you to all of our participants for your time this morning. We appreciate your interest in DRL opportunities. Thank you.

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