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APPROVED

Grants Management Committee Minutes

Monday May 15, 2006

10:00AM-11: 30AM

Present: Cathy Martyniak, Kelley Cunningham, Grace Strawn, Peter McKay, Jan Swanbeck, Erich Kesse

 

Announcements: Cathy stated that the Library Council has given the GMC a full steam ahead with our procedures, documents, etc. Minutes from our March 2006 meeting were approved.

 

Mini-Grants: Grace reported that she and Robert Shaddy met several times to review the Mini Grant document originally drafted by Erich Kesse. A discussion was held as we went over the new procedural document that they created. Grace will make the suggested revisions and send a second draft of the document out to the group to review via email. A generic set of grant application guidelines will be needed if we really want to implement a mini grant program. It was decided that Kelley will review the LSTA’s guidelines and perhaps tone them down (make them a bit easier) so they can be included in the procedural document. These modified guidelines will also be sent electronically this week for review. It is hoped that much of the work to modify and finalize the proposal for a mini grant program could be completed soon so that it could be forwarded to John Ingram and the other Directors for possible funding in 2006-2007.

 

Grant Tracking Database: Cathy received an update from Systems stating that they are very close with providing us with what has developed so far for the Grant Database by Stephen Williams. Once a first ‘draft’ has been completed, Cathy and Kelley will review and give feedback to Stephen. Cathy will invite Stephen to attend our next meeting and discuss the progress with the whole group. A discussion was held in regards to where the scanned narratives should be placed, who should be able to view them and if all parts of the narrative, including budget functions, should be viewable. The group decided to make the narratives available in the Instituional Repository (upcoming) and our Grants Database (also upcoming).

 

Baldwin Phase 3 Grant : Rita Smith from Special Collections is the PI for this phase of the grant. She is using the Grant procedures that GMC has developed. The application, because this is a federal grant, needs to be sent electronically on grants.gov. A demonstration was given to show how to download the Pure Edge viewer that will be needed in order to review the final grant application and send applications to DSR. DSR will look over the application, make any needed revisions and submit to NEH. Rita would like to have the proposal application to DSR by June 26 th. The grant application due date is July 17, 2006. The particular grant application package (PC) she will need is not available at grants.gov yet. We will monitor the grants.gov web site closely, looking for the application package to be posted, in order to submit the application as early as possible. Erich stated that he and several other institutions have used this new method of applying for grants, stating it worked with a little frustration.

Rita mentioned previously to Cathy that she would like to see the proposal template available as a PDF form (right now it is MS Word). Cathy will look into this. [NOTE: Other documents, including GAA, would also be converted to PDF form] On a related note, a discussion was held in regards to the GAA and the signatures on it and how to track if/when all the appropriate people had seen the proposal template and signed off on it. It was determined that having an approval email from these appropriate people is enough, we do not need an actual paper document with signatures on it. Who tracks and maintains those emails (PI or Kelley or ??) was not clarified.

Erich asked if we could give copies of the grants.gov form, the GAA, template, etc. to Stephen to make available via our database. Cathy stated that this will probably be part of Phase 2 of our database. Cathy will clarify with Winston.

 

Email Notification: The feedback from the 5 Grants Presentations given by Kelley in late April and early May has provided us with some issues to address. One idea we will develop will be an email notification sent to the library population. Kelley will be creating an email that will be sent out quarterly. The email will contain grant training opportunities, application deadline reminders (with a sufficient amount of notice given, especially for the tougher fund agencies like NEH, IMLS and LSTA), updates of application in process and grants that have been awarded, and any other suggestions from the group that would be beneficial. Kelley will provide a draft for review by our next meeting date of June 19, 2006. Another idea we will develop will be a FAQ link. We will begin with the questions we received during our grants presentations. Kelley will work on the answers and we will go from there.

Timelines: Erich created 2 versions of timelines, one using the traditional bar model and the other with graphics. The group clearly liked the graphical version better. We will place these on our website. Hopefully these will be used by PI’s to help plan accordingly within the time frame. Cathy will attempt to modify the circles in the right hand column so they can link to the steps in the one page summary/checklist document.

 

Big Flow Chart: Cathy has developed a large flow chart showing the PI’s application process. We began to discuss the document when time ran short. We can continue that discussion at our next meeting.

 

Next Meeting: Monday June 19, 2006

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