On June 6, 2018 six Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs) were posted on grants.gov for Head Start/Early Head Start grant competitions. As the FOAs started to post to grants.gov our first thought was to wonder if this was DRS Round 7 beginning to show up. Well, not yet!
The six open competitions are CDI replacement grants. In other words, they are grants currently being implemented by Community Development Institute (CDI) Head Start. CDI provides interim management of Head Start/Early Head Start grants. Now, the Office of Head Start (OHS) has opened competitions to find new grantees in those areas. A search of the Head Start Center Locator on ECLKC shows the current grantee in forecasted areas as CDI.
Here is a list of the open competitions:
- Head Start and/or Early Head Start – Taylor County, Florida
- Head Start – Barton, Pawnee, Pratt, Rice, and Stafford Counties, Kansas
- Head Start and/or Early Head Start – Harrison County, Mississippi
- Head Start and/or Early Head Start – Cabarrus County, North Carolina
- Head Start and/or Early Head Start – Erath, Hood, Jack, Johnson, Navarro, Palo Pinto, Parker, Somervell, and Wise Counties, Texas
- Head Start and/or Early Head Start – Midland County, Texas
It looks like we’ll all have to keep waiting for the DRS forecasts to post on grants.gov. In the meantime, we recommend taking a look at the FOAs that just went live. You can check them out by going to the Grants & Funding page of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) website. Here is a sample.
If you’ve been following our blog, you might remember that with DRS Round 6 (the most recent round that was concluded in April 2018) there were changes made to the FOA from previous versions. Those changes were mostly reflective of better alignment with the new Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS) and Aligned Monitoring System 2.0 (AMS 2.0). The FOA for the CDI replacement grants is nearly identical to the DRS Round 6 FOA. This is a positive sign that the DRS Round 7 FOA could likely be the same.
As always, we’ll let you know if we see any other changes on grants.gov that could indicate the DRS FOAs are coming soon. If your program anticipates a need for grant writing services please feel free to be in touch. We would be glad to explore services available to meet your program’s needs.
Thank you.