The Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for the fifth round of EHS Expansion and Early Head Start – Child Care Partnership grants (EHS-Expansion and EHS-CCP) may be released this fall. Since each round of EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP has become increasingly competitive, we recommend planning ahead for development of a successful application. Check out our top five strategies for success in Round 5!
1. Get your data ready. Like previous rounds of EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP, programs will be required to provide data that demonstrates the need for funding. For maximum competitiveness, you will want that data to be up-to-date and compelling. Given the deep impacts of COVID-19 on communities across the country, it is expected that programs will need to reflect on growing or changing needs due to the pandemic. Data is part of the backbone of the competitiveness of your application. Take time leading up to the release of the FOA to gather and update data
2. Engage in fiscal planning. Plan for child care partner payments that will cover the cost of quality. Also, explore the role that subsidies will play in your proposed funding budget. When planning for subsidies, estimate how many children in your partnership model are likely to be eligible for subsidy, currently enrolled in subsidy or able to access subsidy, and have a plan to cover lapses in subsidy. You will achieve fiscal success with carefully thought out and aligned fiscal and programmatic strategies.
3. If applying for partnership, establish the foundation now. Begin conversations with potential child care partners. If your program is already a partnership grantee, consider what worked well and what could be improved upon in your partner selection process. Solidify your protocol so that you your team and potential partners have clear, shared expectations about what happens before grant proposal, during the proposal period, and after grant award.
4. Think about start up. Its not too soon, during your grant writing planning phase, to think about what you will need post-award to implement a new EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP grant. In our experience, some of the most compelling start up proposals are built while the program is developing the rest of the application. For example, in your early program design planning, ask yourself – at every step of application development – will this activity require start up support? Pin down start up activities, responsibilities, timelines, and costs.
5. Review the Round 4 EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP FOA for reference. While the FOA for the fifth round of EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP grants may be different from Round 4, there has been a substantial amount of consistency among previous rounds. Reviewing the EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP Round 4 FOA will ground you in the core requirements of the initiative and will help you to organize your planning around those areas.
Foundations for Families has assisted programs to prepare for and submit successful EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP grant proposals in all rounds of the initiative. If you’re interested to learn how our team can help your program, please be in touch.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading our blog. We encourage you to use our blog posts for thought, integration, and sharing. When using or sharing content from blog posts, please attribute the original content to Foundations for Families.