FY 2024 Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Solicitation: Submitting the Population Certification Form

MELISSA LOPEZ: It looks like we have a good group of attendees, so we're going to go ahead and get started. If you are listening via computer, please select the speakers or headphones you wish to use. Your microphone and video are not needed, and will remain off. You will not be able to start video or unmute yourself.

If you're experiencing any technical issues with this webinar, please let us know in the chat box, or email our technical support using the email address on the screen, [email protected].

For your awareness, this session will be recorded. If you haven't already done so, please open the chat feature. It's at the bottom of your screen. Please share your Tribe or organization and a brief greeting to the group as we begin. Also, please remember that when typing in the chat box, the default setting to message everyone. If you need to send a message privately, select the dropdown and choose one of the hosts. 

We'll be using the Q&A feature throughout today's webinar. The Q&A feature can be found in your Zoom menu bar. Please enter your questions in the Q&A feature, not the chat. OVC staff will answer your questions in the Q&A section, and we'll also respond to questions allowed during portions of the presentation reserved for Q&A. 

Closed captioning is also available. To enable it, click on the show captions option in your Zoom menu bar. Now I would like to turn it over to LeBretia White, director of OVC's Tribal Division.

LEBRETIA WHITE: Thank you so much. Good morning, and good afternoon everyone. As shared, I'm LeBretia White. I am the director of the Tribal Division in the Office for Victims of Crime, and I must say, I'm delighted to welcome you to this informational webinar on how to submit your population certificates.

Your certificate submissions are critical to informing the calculations for FY 2024 Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside allocations for grant awards. As you may or may not be aware, each year, Congress authorizes the Office for Victims of Crime to use a portion of the balance of crime victim funds to support grant programs for crime victims or victim services.

To share a few highlights with you of how the FY 2023 allocations and awards were used to fund our Tribal victim services set-aside, or TVSSA projects, here are a few.

So Congress authorized a Tribal Set-Aside of $95 million from the Crime Victim Fund, and again, this was for last year, 2023. At present, we're awaiting to learn from Congress how much funding will actually be available to us for the FY 2024 awards.

In support of the varied options for Tribes to submit applications, traditional narratives, checklists, or interviews, and so for FY 2023, Tribal division staff had the option of working with some of the Tribes to conduct interviews, and we were able to successfully conduct 90 virtual and in-person interviews, and there were about 25 that were conducted in person, which was 30% more of the total that were reviewed or supported in FY 2022, so progress there.

23 applications were received from first-time applicants for Office for Victims of Crime grants in 2023. And if your Tribe has not previously applied for TVSSA funding, we appreciate your interest today, and look forward to receiving your population certificate for 2024.

The final FY 2023 highlight I would like to share with you is that OVC awarded 212 TVSSA formula grants totaling $69.6 million, representing a 20% increase from the previous year. This is significant, a significant increase in awards, and it conveys to us the fact that TVSSA projects and the program itself is growing, and expanding the reach, and addressing the needs of crime victims in Tribal nations.

So for today's webinar, it's all about encouraging you to submit your population certificates so that you can be considered for an award in 2024.

As a reminder, awarded funds may be used for a number of optional services, conducting community needs assessments and strategic planning is one. Others include developing and implementing victim service programs.

You can use your TVSSA funding to also, to hold ceremonies to help victims connect back with their communities, and to provide services to family members of missing or murdered indigenous persons, as well as generating awareness around MMIP. Some of the unique components of our funding that you'll find in our upcoming solicitation, similar to in the past, funds for renovation or construction activities, such as the purchase, installation, and site preparation for modular buildings, mobile homes, trailer homes, and other prefabricated structures. 

Allowances are available for costs to purchase supplies related to missing persons searches, including meeting room rental for families waiting for law enforcement updates, bus rental to transport families, and other search party related expenses. As well as we include the option for the use of funds for food at cultural events, which can be reasonably linked to supporting crime victims.

I want to close this afternoon, morning for some of you, my remarks, by once again thanking you for joining us today. And please know we look forward to providing you with support as you prepare to submit your Population Certification information in February, 2024, as well as to participate in the application process, which you'll get more information about later in the spring of 2024. 

Oh, and I have one other announcement. We will host a Tribal consultation on January 17th and 18th, 2024. Information regarding the consultation is available on the Office for Victims of Crime website. We're anxious to hear from Tribal leaders during this virtual consultation. So if you want more information about that, please take a look at the website.

Now, at this time, I would like to turn over today's presentation to Kimberly Woodard. She is a senior analyst within our office, and she will provide for you critical information on the Population Certification process. Kimberly?

KIMBERLY WOODARD: Thank you, LeBretia. Again, my name is Kimberly Woodard. I'm OVC's Senior Tribal Affairs Specialist. There will be two other primary presenters this afternoon.

Barbara, excuse me, Bonnie Robertson, some of you may know her as Bonnie, who is a victim justice program specialist with OVC's Tribal Division, and Melissa Lopez, who is a TA specialist with OVC's Tribal Victim Services Training and Technical Assistance Provider that we refer to as T-VSTTA.

So let's take a look at today's agenda. We are going to start things today by taking an overview of OVC, the Tribal division at OVC, and the Set-Aside Program before we walk you through the certification form and how to submit it. We'll round things out with a brief review of additional resources and tools to aid you in finding other DOJ grant opportunities.

We have built in two opportunities for us to pause the presentation to answer some questions, but we have also reserved time at the end of the presentation for a more extended Q&A session.

So let's take a look at OVC. OVC has been administering the Federal Crime Victims Fund for more than 35 years. The fund, which was established by the federal Victims of Crime Act of 1984, also known as VOCA, is financed by fines and penalties paid by persons convicted in federal cases, not from tax dollars.

Each year, Congress allocates a portion of the proceeds in the CVF to OVC as part of US DOJ's appropriations bill. OVC uses these funds to support a diverse array of programming and initiatives, including federal victim assistance programs, state crime victims compensation programs, the state VOCA formula grant program, and programs to assist communities impacted by mass violence, and as well as individual victims of overseas terrorism. We also use the funding to support a variety of discretionary grant award programs, and training and technical assistance initiatives, and so much more. OVC is organized into five divisions, including a Tribal Division.

Next, we're going to learn more about what the Tribal Division does. OVC's Tribal Division is supervised by our director, LeBretia White, and is currently staffed by 12 grant managers and a senior Tribal affairs specialist. We manage more than 800 awards, and work closely with more than 300 individual grantees, including federally recognized Tribes, Tribal consortia, and authorized designees of federally recognized Tribes, and non-profit Tribal organizations who are providing victim services throughout Indian country.

The Tribal division manages three discretionary grant award programs in addition to TVSSA. We will only be soliciting applications for one of those discretionary grant programs this year, and that is CTAS Purpose Area 6. The FY 24 CTAS will be issued in the coming weeks. Let's take a pause for a brief poll.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Okay, so hello everybody. My name is Bonnie, Barbara Robertson. I'm here to, we're going to conduct our first poll, and it is, did your Tribe or organization participate in the Tribal Victim Services Set-Aside Formula Grant Program in fiscal year 2023 or any years prior? So please indicate your answers in the poll on the screen, and then we'll have the results shortly.

Okay, we have a lot of people who have participated in the set-aside previously, which is a great thing. We have a few that are new to the process, which is wonderful. And some folks who aren't sure if they've done it before, but that's good too, because this will be a good refresher for those who can't remember if they've done it before. So Kimberly, I'm going to turn it back over to you. 

KIMBERLY WOODARD: Thanks, Bonnie. This slide summarizes some of the most important things to keep in mind about the Set-Aside Program. We'll take a closer look at some of the program's features in a few minutes.

As Director White mentioned a few minutes ago, as of right now, OVC does not know whether there will be a Tribal Set-Aside for FY 2024, and we do not know the amount of funds that might be available through a FY 24 set-aside. That is because we are operating right now on a continuing resolution.

We do not have a budget for DOJ at this point, and without a budget, we won't know about the set-aside for sure. OVC is proceeding, however, with the established FY '24 application process in anticipation that Congress will authorize a Tribal Set-Aside for FY 24, as it has been doing since FY 2018. Let's take a look at who is eligible to apply for the Set-Aside Program.

There are only three categories of eligible applicants for this program. Individual federally recognized Tribes, a consortium of federally recognized Tribes, and applicants who are acting as the authorized designee of a federally recognized Tribe.

Now we're going to take a closer look at the last two categories, consortia and authorized designees. Typically, OVC receives set-aside applications from Tribal consortia in one of two ways. One, applications that are submitted by an established existing Tribal consortia whose membership consists of multiple federally recognized Tribes. These established consortia can consist of formal inter-tribal councils, or organizations that the member Tribes organized to meet a critical need for their members, such as healthcare, courts, or public safety.

The second type of consortia applicants that we see comes from individual federally recognized Tribes who submit a proposal seeking funds to support victim services for their community, as well as at least one other federally recognized Tribe.

Take a look at authorized designee and what we mean by that. This slide summarizes what an authorized designee is, and offers examples of who can act as one. The key takeaway is that almost any legal entity can act as the authorized designee of a federally recognized Tribe. What is most important is that an applicant seeking set-aside funding as an authorized designee of a Tribe, be able to demonstrate that they have the legal authority to submit an application on behalf of the Tribe.

Now we'll take a look at a special application requirement for authorized designees and Tribal consortia applicants only. So Tribal consortia and authorized designee applicants are the only two categories of set-aside applicants who must submit a Tribal resolution with their applications. As detailed by this slide, there are alternative means of satisfying the Tribal resolution requirement.

The link in this slide will take you to OJP's Grant Application Resource Guide, which has a more detailed discussion of how to satisfy this requirement. So we will also be, and I see it's already there, we've added the link to this resource guide to the chat, for anyone who is not familiar with the resource guide, and would like to read more about this particular requirement.

As you'll hear more about in a few minutes, Tribal consortia and authorized designees must satisfy the Tribal resolution requirement during part one of the set-aside application process. Tribal consortia and authorized designees who do not submit their resolutions contemporaneously with the Population Certification Form will not receive a funding allocation amount, and will not be invited to submit a full application in part two of the application process.

Let's take a closer look at the common scenario involving Tribal consortia and authorized designee applicants. If you are applying as a Tribal consortium or authorized designee, and the Tribe or Tribes who authorized you to apply for funding on their behalf submits their own Population Certification Form, OVC will accept the Tribe's submission.

For authorized designee applicants, this means that you'll not be invited to submit a full set-aside application in part two of the set-aside application process. Tribal consortia applicants can still be invited to submit a full application in part two of the application process. However, OVC will reduce the total population to be served by the population size of each Tribe who backs out of the consortium application.

For example, let's assume a consortium applicant submits a Population Certification Form for five Tribes whose combined total population is 1,500. If two of the Tribes included in that total decide to submit their own Population Certification Form, and one of those two Tribes has a population of 150, and the other has a population of 400, OVC would still include the Population Certification Form submitted by the consortium when allocating set-aside funds, but instead of receiving an award based on a population of 1,500 people, the allocation would be based on a population of 950. So let's take a look now at the award period.

As I mentioned, again, Congress has not appropriated funding for DOJ for FY 24, and OVC is therefore unable to determine how much funding Congress might authorize for a Tribal Set-Aside this fiscal year. We also do not know how much funding each applicant will be allocated this fiscal year, because we do not know the amount of the set-aside, and we have not, of course, received your Population Certification Forms. The total number of forms and the population totals included in those forms are necessary for OVC to determine the individual award amount for each applicant. So now let's take a look at the two-part application process.

So submitting a Population Certification Form is the first part of the two-part set-aside application process. Staff from OVC's Tribal Division will review each certification form for accuracy, completeness, and eligibility. We'll contact you if there are technical issues with your form. We ask that you please respond to our inquiry within 48 hours if we reach out to you. 

Right now, you do not need to submit any other forms other than the Population Certification Form and a Tribal resolution if you are a Tribal consortium or authorized designee applicant. If you are invited to submit a full application as part of part two of the application process, you will need to submit all of the required application components in JustGrants. We anticipate that the deadline to submit part two of the documents in JustGrants will be in the spring of 2024. So now, we're going to pause for some questions.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Well, Kimberly, we don't have any questions. We have one question that's being answered, and it's been answered. We have no other open questions at this time.

KIMBERLY WOODARD: Thanks for the update, Bonnie. So just as a reminder, if you have questions as we go along, please enter them into the Q&A, and we will be more than happy to answer them.

Okay, so now, let's review who needs to submit a form. Some of you may recall that OVC previously allowed applicants to resubmit the same Population Certification Form each year in the past. That was when we used a fillable PDF version of the form.

However, OVC transitioned to using an online form in FY 23. Now OVC downloads the data that you submit in the online form into an Excel spreadsheet. This makes the internal review process more efficient, and helps us make sure that the information is accurate and complete. OVC's transition to an online version of the form means that all applicants must submit a new Population Certification Form each year. You can enter the same population data that you submitted in the past into the FY 24 form if nothing has changed.

I'm going to turn things over to Melissa Lopez from T-VSTTA to walk you through where to find the form and how to complete it.

MELISSA LOPEZ: Hello again. As Kimberly stated, I'm with T-VSTTA, and our team of TA specialists, myself included, are here to support you as you complete and submit your Population Certification Form. Let's take a look at the form, and how to complete, certify, and submit it.

You'll find links to the FY 2024 TVSSA form and other related resources on the OVC TVSSA homepage. We've dropped a link in the chat.

First, you'll provide background information, and this should look familiar to people who've submitted certifications before. Make sure that the name you enter for your Tribal organization matches the legal entity name for your Tribal organization in sam.gov.

Please note all TVSSA applicants must have an active sam.gov registration before they can submit part two of the application. If you have never registered in sam.gov, or have an expired registration, you are strongly encouraged to update it as soon as possible.

We ask for two points of contact that we can reach out to with questions or follow-up information. Please enter the names of two different people who are familiar with the certification form and your responses to it, as well as the status of the application. It is important to know that email confirmation will go to the primary contact, secondary contact, and certifying official.

Next, you'll be asked to choose your applicant type. If you choose authorized designee or Tribal consortium, you'll be asked to upload an authorizing Tribal resolution or legal equivalent. As we heard earlier, authorized designee and Tribal consortium applicants are only eligible to apply for TVSSA funds if they have been authorized to submit an application on behalf of a federally recognized Tribe or Tribes. 

The resolution that you submit will serve to document that you have satisfied the TVSSA eligibility requirements by obtaining the required authorization from a federally recognized Tribe or Tribes to submit an application. OVC will not be able to consider your application if you do not submit a resolution or its legal equivalent.

Please know that you can only upload one file, but it can be a zipped folder. If your file exceeds 256 megabytes, please reach out to discuss how to transfer your documentation. OVC recognizes that Tribes are diverse. Federal datasets on Tribal population are imperfect, and no single dataset currently available adequately represents all Tribes.

Your population source response must be sufficiently detailed enough for OVC and/or a potential future auditor to independently locate the information source. For example, US census is too vague. 2020 US census, on the other hand, alerts the reader to the specific US census that you consulted to find the total population to be served. In general, OVC suggests using a population number that is well established for the applicant Tribe, and that bears a reasonable relation to the victim services that the Tribe anticipates providing. OVC suggests that Tribes use one of the following as the basis for their certification: Tribal resident population, Tribal enrollment, service population.

Once you've collected all of your data, and verified that the certifying official approves its accuracy, you are ready to add the certifying official's information to the form. When you have entered this data, please carefully review everything, and then submit the form. After you submit your Certification Form, the primary contact, secondary contact, and certifying official will receive an automated email confirming that OVC has received your submission.

The email will include the data that you entered into the form, and if you attached a resolution, a copy of the resolution will be attached to the confirmation email. If you do not receive a confirmation email, or if you identify a data entry error, please email OVC's Tribal Set-Aside email address for technical assistance.

This slide summarizes your options for hands-on support as you prepare and submit your Population Certification Form. Email OVC with technical questions about the TVSSA program. You can contact T-VSTTA staff for help completing your certification form, or drop in for T-VSTTA's office hours. We do not have dates or times for the office hours yet, but these will be virtual events held via Zoom, and we will announce the dates and times in early 2024. Now we will pause to answer some questions. 

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Melissa, there's no questions that came in during your portion. Everything that has been posed has been answered.

MELISSA LOPEZ: Thank you.

KIMBERLY WOODARD: Again, I just want to remind you, if you have questions as we go along, enter them into the Q&A, and we'll be happy to answer them. I'm going to start winding down our presentation by talking about what happens next. Over the course of the next 120 days or so, OVC will complete a number of tasks critical to the set-aside award-making process.

Once we've completed our internal review of the Population Certification Forms and applied the TVSSA population-based formula to any set-aside that Congress authorizes this year, we will determine award allocation amounts based on the amount of that set-aside and the total number of Population Certification Forms that are approved to move on to part two of the application process.

The certifying official identified on your form will receive an invitation to submit a full application under a TVSSA program solicitation that will be released along with a table organized by state and applicant name that shows the total amount of funding allocated to each applicant. The table and the letter of invitation and the solicitation will all be available on OVC's TVSSA website.

We're nearing the end of our formal presentation, but before we wind things down, we'd like to highlight some important resources that we think you should know about. The first is OVC's TVSSA page. Please visit this page for the latest information on OVC's Tribal specific programming and initiatives, including materials and information to help you with the 2024 TVSSA application process.

As Director White mentioned during her remarks, OVC is planning to host a Tribal consultation in January of next year. If you are interested, or I should say, if a Tribal leader from your Tribe is interested in participating in the consultation, you can find the information on how to register on our TVSSA page, as well as a framing paper for the upcoming consultation, and an annual report that summarizes what we did in FY 23 with that set-aside.

You also have the opportunity to hear about OVC's grant solicitations as they are released. OVC administers many discretionary grant programs for which Tribes are eligible to imply, including the largest share of grant funds authorized by the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act. If you subscribe to OVC's News Service, you can receive announcements about these funding opportunities as they are released. You can also sign up to receive notices from other OJP offices on a wide range of public safety issues. There's also another important resource to help you find FY 24 grant solicitations from all of DOJ's grant making component. 

Each fiscal year, US DOJ publishes a searchable database of all of the solicitations that are issued by OJP, COPS, and OVW. In the Department of Justice Grants Program Plan, one for FY 24 has not been released yet, but we encourage you to bookmark the page and check back for the FY 24 update. The link is embedded in this slide, but it's also being shared with you in the chat.

We have reached the end of the formal presentation, and will now answer any questions that you have about the Set-Aside Program and application process. Just enter them into the Q&A, and we will be happy to answer them.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Kimberly, I do have one question. It says, "Can you please tell us again where we can get our population counts without using census data?"

KIMBERLY WOODARD: So OVC really defers to Tribes on where you pull that population data count from. You can get it from your Tribal enrollment, you can get it from the census, of course, but we will take any source that you are able to cite. If there are questions about the source of the data, we will contact you once we start to review the Population Certification Forms.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Okay, at this time, there's no other questions being posed. There's one being answered in the chat right now. Other than that, no other questions, so please, if you do have questions, please enter them in the Q&A, and we will do our best to answer them today, or get you the answer for the future.

AMY FILKO: Hey, Bonnie, there was a question about where to find the form, so I just popped that link again into the chat. That gives you a little bit of instruction, and then there's also a link to the form which you could go and take a look at and not submit if that's helpful to get a feel for what's on the form.

KIMBERLY WOORDARD: So this question has come up a couple of times about getting a copy of the presentation. Just to let you know, the PowerPoint slides and the recorded webinar will be posted to OVC's TVSSA site within 10 days.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Okay, another question has come in. "Does the population from our village decide how much funding we receive, and if so, are we only allowed to help victims in our village?"

KIMBERLY WOORDARD: So the population that you submit on the Population Certification Form does ultimately determine how much of the set-aside will be allocated to your Tribe. So we use population tiers, and so we make a minimum award amount to everyone who applies, and then based on the formula that we use, and the population that you report, that's how we make the final award amount. In terms of whether you are only allowed to help victims in your village, that is really up to the Tribe to define what their service area is.

So we defer to you on that as well. But again, if there are any questions that come up around the numbers that you report, or the source that you cited on your form, we will be in contact with you for clarification for this. 

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Okay, we have another question, Kimberly. "If the certifying official is leadership, I'm concerned that the invitation to apply email might not make it to the right people due to being buried in a full inbox. Is there only one person who receives that email?"

KIMBERLY WOODARD: I'm going to defer to you, Bonnie, on that one. My recollection is that it only goes to the certifying official, but I defer to you on that, if it goes to more than one person.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Typically, it goes to whatever email address that is on there. So you may want to utilize an email address that may not go directly to that person. Sometimes, there's a general email address that folks use that is easily accessible by people who need to access it. Okay, so far, that's, we don't have any new questions coming in.

KIMBERLY WOODARD: So if folks have questions about activities you're thinking about funding, but you're not quite sure if they fit within this program, I know it's early on, but we can also entertain those questions as well.

BARBARA ROBERTSON: Alright, Kimberly, I don't see any other questions coming in in either the chat or the Q&A.

KIMBERLY WOODWARD: Now, based on the poll that we did, we've got quite a few return customers, so to speak. So hopefully the lack of questions here reflects that people are very familiar with the process. Again, if you are not, if you have any questions at all, please submit them to our OVC Tribal Set-Aside email account.

I think we'll hold on for another couple of minutes and see if anything else comes in. Doesn't look like we are getting any more questions, and if we have answered everything for today, and I see some folks are starting to depart, I think we can go ahead and wrap things up. So again, if you have any question that comes up during the process, please email us at the OVC Tribal Set-Aside email address. It looks like we have reached the end of today's webinar, so on behalf of OVC, we'd like to thank each of you for joining us today. We will, again, be posting the PowerPoint slides and a recording of this webinar on the OVC TVSSA webpage within 10 days.

Please remember to submit your forms by no later than 11:59 PM Alaska Time on Friday, February 9th, 2024. Again, any questions that you might have about this year's program, please submit them to the OVC Tribal Set-Aside email address. Again, thank you all so much for joining us, and we look forward to working with you this year on the Set-Aside Program.