Homelessness Partnering Strategy 2016-2019 Request for Proposals FAQs: Support Services Information Session June 1, 2016 Q1: How many signatories are necessary? A1: If you only need 2, just fill in 2. There are spaces for 4 signatures, however if you don t need 4, you don t have to fill them all in. If you need 5 signatures and there is only space for 4, you can re-create the Declaration section and add in one more spot or contact us and we can provide you with an extra document. Q2: Of the 50 applicants who made it through the RFQ, how many indicated that they would do a Support project? A2: App. 36 Support and 34 Housing First. Q3: I am concerned about the period of time between the submission period and the follow-up period (in the weeks after July 6 th ) because main contacts may be away. A3: Ensure you provide alternate contacts in your submission just in case people are away, you can have as many alternates as you want as long as they can respond to a follow-up and are familiar with your application. Q4: Can we partner with another agency who is also receiving HPS funding? A4: You don t want to have a partnership where you re competing, however yes you can partner with another organization who is applying for HPS funding. Discuss with your partners what the best strategy is for success. Q5: Could a partner organization who is being funded by HPS count for in-kind in the budget? A5: It would depend on what that organization is offering as in-kind. Just keep in mind that you can t match HPS with HPS. Q6: Is it mandatory to attach a separate evaluation plan one-pager? A6: It is highly recommended to submit a one-page attachment. Please check the mandatory document submission checklist for what is necessary to submit with your application. Q7: What does at imminent risk of homelessness mean? A7: See Guide II for definition or HPS Directive 11. Q8: There was an error in the pie chart slide, it mentions Support Services twice. A8: That is a typo error, 3.7 M is for Capital funding, not Support. Q9: Can you go over the review process again?
A9: We recruit the Reviewers and they will be put into teams. Every single Reviewer in team A will review on their own, then as a team they will get together and review. That team will be experts on that group of proposals. Then they will meet in a larger team context, when all teams come together (A, B, C etc ). When the larger team comes together, they respect the sub-team who have looked into each application in more detail. Each Reviewer has the same set of criteria and score card. Q10: What is the difference between project level matching and community level matching? A10: 1:1 matching is not needed at the project level. The CE rolls up all the other contributors in all the projects to produce one large amount, to ensure that there is 1:1 matching to HPS at the community level. Q11: What does global MERCs and Benefits mean? A11: Globally, your budget represents your overall cost of your project, however on a monthly basis; we look at the claims submitted and realize that MERCs and Benefits could vary from the max. 22.5% however we look that globally, overall, they do not exceed 22.5%. Q12: I understood that if you are union, you can have above 22.5% MERCs and Benefits? A12: At time of budget negotiation, you provide your collective agreement and show that you are a union environment which could mean that your MERCs and Benefits may be above 22.5%. This would be an element of negotiation and let us know in the proposal stage. Q13: In the population eligibility section of 2A where we have to check off who we will be serving, do we have to stick with what he checked off as who we were going to target if our organizational mandate is to serve anyone who walks in the door? A13: This should be determined by an internal agency policy, so you would have to decide that as part of your project. Q14: If you have two very distinct populations, is there an advantage/disadvantage to doing two separate applications vs. one? A14: That would depend on your specific project. Q15: If we send our submission in multiple emails because the attachments exceed 10MB, is it necessary to include in the body of the first email how many emails I will be sending? A15: Yes, please flag in your first email that you will be sending for example, 3 emails total and this is 1 of 3, 2 of 3, etc It s best if everything is sent in all at once because we will be getting a lot emails. Please ensure to put in a table of contents in your first email telling us what documents exactly you are submitting. Please use the submission checklist to ensure you have submitted all the mandatory documents.
Q16: Is it possible to have a copy of form 2A that is not online? A16: Yes we will PDF a document for all project types (Housing First, Support, Regional and Capital). We can get this up by next week. Q17: Is the criteria/decision making matrix that the Reviewers will be using online? A17: Yes, it s online at the Metro Vancouver site under each project category type. It lists the criteria and the maximum score for that particular criteria to give you an idea of the weighting of each question. Q18: What about pending matching funding? A18: Other funding has to be within the time frame of HPS and confirmable/verifiable. In the project life cycle, if you get awarded funding, we would just do an update to your matching funding. You need to put in what you actually have, don t put in funding that cannot be verifiable at the time of application. Other funder contributions need to fit and align with your project and think about if that funding could help with sustainability/exit/wind down. Q19: Are other contributions applicable for all HPS projects? A19: Yes, this is an HPS condition and applies to all project types: Capital, Support, Housing First and Regional. Q20: Can I list all of my other contributors on every application/proposal I submit? A20: No, the funds should be broken down in terms of what exactly is going to be contributed to each project. This also makes it clearer to the Reviewers. You can break it down by percentages, for example 10% of this funding will go towards your HPS Support project and 70% to your Housing First HPS project. Q21: I want to put in two applications. I need one part of a project to augment another part of the other project, is this acceptable? A21: No, it s not because each project is assessed as a standalone, independent project and evaluated as such. The proposals have to be independent of one another. Each category has eligible activities and costs, which cannot be carried over into another category. Q22: Will there be an ability to carry over clients who are housed, and who are currently on a Housing First project case load into the new project/contract? Could this contract be a continuation where clients could be transitioned? A22: These are considered two separate unique contracts, so you have to work your sustainability plan as if this Oct. 1 st contract did not exist. However, you could include
staffing and costs that would reflect staff would be continuing to support clients from your currently funded project. Please note you should also describe what you will do to prevent homelessness for your currently funded project clients if your proposal is not awarded funding i.e. as per your sustainability/wind down/exit plan. Homelessness Partnering Strategy 2016-2019 Request for Proposals FAQs: Support Services Information Session #2 June 7, 2016 Q1: I notice Langley is not included in the list of municipalities A1: That was an oversight and Langley is now included. Q2: How do you save Form 2A if you want to step away from the application for a while? A2: Form 2A Auto-saves through Auto-Fill, so if you use the same computer and same browser it will save your answers automatically. This is the only way the form auto-saves. We advise you to keep a back up copy of your response, for example, in Word, so if you come back to the form and a previous response is no longer there, you can copy and paste it back into the online application. Q3: Can you speak more to supporting funds that you re looking to see and how it will affect our scores in the screening process? A3: When they are looking at the other contributions, there are a couple criteria to be aware of: -Can we verify the funding? This will not happen in the review stage, but will happen when we start the due diligence process. However, filling out the other contributor template and submitting any supporting documents such as a funding approval letter or contract that is current (do not submit funding that is complete as that is historical and cannot be used to match HPS funds) can assist reviewers in determining if the funds can be verified. How do they augment, or help, your project. This could be during the HPS lifecycle, during the wind down of HPS funding to help sustain the project, or some combination therein. For Example, if your project focused on Housing Placement, you might have another funder that provides a workshop that you could send clients to for that trains them on how to work
with landlords and find housing. This would be a complementary support that you would include in your Other Contributions Section. If you were sending clients to a workshop on self-esteem, the workshop would not meet the threshold needed to classify this as a complimentary support. We would need to see more information on how this workshop would benefit the client with relation to housing placement. Please refer to the scoring criteria list provided in the Housing First guide which shows all criteria and scores assigned to the criteria for further information. Q4: Is it possible to use support services funding to partially support an existing worker/expand a workers role? A4: That depends. Each application category in HPS has unique eligible costs and activities. In Housing First, there are particular roles as noted in the ICM structure questions that align with the Housing First model. So, if you are proposing another worker to augment your Housing First application be aware of these conditions. Also, if you are proposing for staff under the Non Housing First (support services) category you cannot put forward that worker in your Housing First project for a variety of reasons including matching HPS to HPS and because you cannot make one part of your application dependent upon receiving HPS funds from another category. That puts your proposal at risk as there is no guarantee your other project will be funded. Further, each proposal is viewed as standalone project both within and between categories. However, if you have another contributor for a role you are also proposing HPS funds, please be aware of stacking. Please see the example Budget on Metro s website for an example of how to avoid stacking. Q5: If there is a half ½ time worker currently costing $50k, and you are proposing to HPS for another $50k to take the worker to full time, does that mean we are stating to HPS that the total project cost is 100k, and $50K has already been committed and contributed? A5: Yes, this is acceptable It will appear as if this is a $100 K project (if these are your only costs) where you will be asking for HPS to pay for $50k of your project. When you get into the contracting stage, you will be able to show the full amount of the project. Please note though, that you must pro-rate your outcomes for HPS accordingly. Q6: It says that harm reduction costs are ineligible for funding, but would you fund programs that adhere to a harm reduction philosophy? A6: The philosophy of working in harm reduction is fine and can be compatible with HPS activities, but harm reduction work itself cannot be funded by HPS and is funded by a
jurisdiction outside of ESDC. (Please refer to eligible and ineligible costs and activities in Housing First Guide and Guide I). Q7: Is the reporting going to continue the same way? A7: Yes, in Mid-June 2016, Metro Vancouver will publish the templates that will be used during the 2016 to 2019 funding cycle. As part of the agreement, projects will be required to submit monthly claim forms for expenses, and monthly data submissions for services provided to clients. Q8: Is the CAB the same for all HPS streams, or are there different committees that review Housing First, Support Services, Regional, and Capital streams separately? A8: The CAB is all one body. For the review process, the CAB will use members, or recruit reviewers, with expertise in specific streams to look at each project. All reviewers will be screened to ensure there are no conflicts with the proposed projects, and will look at proposal details to see if the projects are viable, and where they should rank among all projects in a specific stream. Q9: Our organization is currently looking at purchasing a building with a local municipality. As this partnership will help ensure our long term ability to support clients, we would like to know how we should account for this partnership in our application. A9: This is more part of your operating budget, so not exactly related to what we are looking for in the RFP process for this application type.. As the Support Services Stream tends to be the most competitive HPS stream, it will be captured as part of your long term sustainability plan. However, even if you do not have to necessarily worry about rent, there will still be other costs that you will need to take into account when creating your sustainability plan. You may wish to state how the absence of paying rent allows you to free up funds for other program expenses within that plan. Please remember that when you are creating your sustainability plan, you need to consider how you are either going to continue to support clients in your program, or move them to a similar support program in another agency, once funding ends in March 2019. Q10: In the RFQ, agencies were asked how many applications were going to be submitted, can that now be changed? A10: Yes, you are not restricted to the number listed in the RFQ stage. That was requested purely to assess workload and assist in reviewer recruitment. Q11: Matching funds Confirmed, how do we do that for funding that might be coming down the line? A11: If you had just submitted an application for new funding, and you don t have confirmation yet that you will receive funding, do not put that in as a matching funder. They have to be verifiable.
If you have not yet received the actual dollars, but have received a letter stating that you approved for funding, you can put that forward as a confirmed contribution source. Staff would follow up regardless if your project reaches the due diligence stage. One exception to this rule is Internal Cash (fundraising). You will have to provide the past four to five years of historical data so that reviewers can see an average of how much your organization has raised and how you took that trend data and accounted for it in your HPS proposed budget. Q12: What about sustainability? Can unverified funds be used to show that the project will be able to continue if HPS funding ends? A12: Yes, it can be used for sustainability, but it will not be considered for use in this project. Please take a look at the sustainability/exit/wind down checklist on the Metro site for types of questions you should be thinking about and incorporating into your plan. Historical funders may fit in here. Q13: With regards to the A-List B-List; are you optimistic that there will be more funds coming down the lines? A13: Yes there will be more funding coming down the line. Service Canada is expecting an announcement in the near future. We don t not know yet how much will be allocated, and the CAB will decide how the funding will split among the four streams. Q14: If we get awarded HPS funding in the 3 year stream, and there is another call, can we apply for the next funding stream if it comes before the 3 years stream ends? A14: Having or not having an HPS contract currently or in the past does not affect whether or not an agency can apply in any future calls. Each RFP is an independent process with specific criteria that has to be met. As such, in theory you can apply for future HPS funding calls, but having a current HPS contract does not guarantee a recommendation in a future RFP. Homelessness Partnering Strategy 2016-2019 Request for Proposals FAQs: Support Services Information Session June 8, 2016 Q1: I notice Langley is not included in the list of municipalities A1: That was an oversight and Langley is now included.
Q2: For calculating verifiable matching contributions, if your current signed contract (with BC Housing for example) is only for a single fiscal year, can you only put the value for that first year, even if you have a track record of 10 years of funding from this source? A2: Yes, you can only put forward verifiable/confirmable matching funds. If you awarded and HPS contract, your project will be monitored and updates can be made to your other contributions throughout your project lifecycle. Q3: We could demonstrate matching funds 1:1 in this current fiscal, but have none in the next, because nothing is yet confirmed. A3: In that situation, it might look like theoretically there are no other contributors after the first year, but you would explain why in your proposal and if awarded an HPS contract, your project will be monitored and updates can be made to your other contributions throughout your project lifecycle. Q4: If you have third party fundraisers and there is an agreement letter, the dollar amount won t be confirmed but could it count as matching? A4: For fundraising dollars (shown as internal cash contributions), you have to show, where possible 5 years worth of historical fundraising data so reviewers can see the trend and know how you came to the dollar value you put in your budget. If another party is fundraising for you (e.g. annual golf tournament that has yet to occur prior to your proposal submission), again, send the historical data on this event