Justification for Change Request

Justification for Change in Supplementary Documents

OVW has uploaded the FY 2013 Solicitation Companion Guide in ROCIS in the Supplemental documents section. This document replaces the FY2012 Resource Guide.

Recently, OVW made revisions to the solicitation to update technical requirements for applicants, give notice of rules and regulations that apply to awards, and clarify the required elements of a submission. In the past few years, OVW has used both the solicitation Template (and subsequent OVW solicitations) and the OVW Resource Guide to provide information to applicants about how to apply for a grant or cooperative agreement; the solicitation offered the core application requirement information with links to the OVW Resource Guide for more detailed information.  The OVW Resource Guide also provided information beyond that which was relevant for the application process.  OVW learned that applicants found the Resource Guide to be confusing or, in some instances, were not reviewing important links and, as a result, were missing key information that impacted the submission of an application.  A good example of this was the Central Contractor Registration (CCR) requirement.  The template that OVW used for the FY2012 solicitations included information about the basic steps involved in the Grants.gov registration process and then referred applicants to the Resource Guide for a more detailed step-by-step guide.  It is here where applicants would find language about the need to register with CCR or to ensure that a current registration is active at the time of application submission.  Many of applicants did not utilize this additional resource and found that they could not submit via Grants.gov on the application deadline which was too late to correct the problem.

For FY 2013, OVW wanted to ensure that solicitations are stand-alone resources and that all the information that an applicant would need to apply would be included in this one resource.  Therefore, we made some revisions to the FY2012 template. The FY2013 is not asking for new information, but OVW feel it provides a clearer description of all of the application requirements. The template has also been modified to include updated information pertinent to Grants.gov, such as the System for Award Management (SAM). 

Lastly, the FY 2013 Solicitation Companion Guide was developed to capture general information about all FY 2013 grant programs as well as pertinent information about post-award requirements.  Much of this information was previously contained in the FY2012 Resource Guide and provides notice to applicants about what some of the requirements they would experience as grantees, should their application be selected for an award.