Round 5 Designation Renewal System (DRS) Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA) have been posted and are available on the Administration for Children and Families Grants website, as well as on grants.gov. The FOA post date is December 16, 2016, and proposals are due February 14, 2017. The 12 FOAs that posted are for funding to provide Early Head Start and/or Head Start services for the following communities:
- South Los Angeles and Compton, in Los Angeles County, California
- Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Grantee – Adams, Mesa, Montrose, Larimer, Delta, and Weld Counties, Colorado
- DuPage County, Illinois
- Butler County, Kansas
- Harvey County, Kansas
- Frederick County, Maryland
- City of Detroit (zip codes 48219 and 48235), Michigan
- Adair, Cherokee, McIntosh, and Sequoyah Counties, Oklahoma
- Philadelphia (Lower North Philadelphia), Pennsylvania
- Calhoun, DeWitt, Gonzales, Jackson, Lavaca, and Victoria Counties, Texas
- Edwards, Kinney, Real, Uvalde, and Zavala Counties, Texas
- Cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Portsmouth, Virginia
If you are applying for a Head Start and/or Early Head Start grant through the DRS competition there are six main areas you will need to address in your proposal narrative:
- Demonstration of Need for Child Development and Health Services: Location, Population, and Service Delivery Options
- Achieving Early Learning and Development Outcomes to Promote School Readiness for Children
- Past Performance
- Staffing and Supporting a Strong Early Learning Workforce
- Organizational Capacity and Governance
- Budget and Budget Justification
Ten bonus points are also being offered in this round of re-competition. As stated in the FOA:
In the interest of ensuring a robust competition for high-quality, comprehensive early care and education service providers, ACF is awarding bonus points to any applicants that do not have agreements that prohibit other entities from applying for a Head Start or Early Head Start grant on their own behalf or that impose a penalty on any entity for making such application.
With an approximately 8-week turnaround for proposals being due there is no time to waste (especially since a few of those weeks occur during the holiday season, when you might have staff out of the office!). We recommend pulling your DRS planning team together for a meeting as soon as possible. Create a clear timeline with detailed roles and responsibilities. Make a list of all of your data needs, stakeholders with whom you will need to collaborate, and identify key decision points. We also recommend determining now when your proposal will be reviewed and approved by the appropriate individuals or groups. Your end goal will be to have a high quality proposal submitted on time, and following a clear timeline will help you successfully achieve that goal.
If you are applying for grant funding through the DRS Round 5 competition, we are here to help! Through December 30, 2016 we are offering a complimentary 30-minute consultation with a senior grant writer to organizations that plan to submit a DRS proposal. Our team has written winning proposals in every round of DRS grants, and we would be glad to explore ways we can assist you during your proposal writing process. Email Amy Augenblick at [email protected] to schedule your consultation or to learn more.
Thank you.
Contact Us
We have successfully worked with agencies in every round of recompetition to write winning grants, design competitive programs, confirm prudent budgets, and plan for a manageable start-up period. Contact Amy Augenblick, Executive Director, at (703) 599-4329 or [email protected] to learn about how we can help.