SUPPORTING STATEMENT
Justification
A.1 Need for Information Collection
The Corporation for National and Community Service (the Corporation or CNCS) awards grants to states, institutions of higher education, non-profit organizations, Indian tribes, and U.S. Territories to operate AmeriCorps State, AmeriCorps National, AmeriCorps NCCC, AmeriCorps VISTA, and Senior Corps programs. This information collection comprises the questions applicants answer to apply to be a Senior Corps sponsor organization for RSVP, the Foster Grandparent Program (FGP), and the Senior Companion Program (SCP).
The information collection was revised in 2013 to align with RSVP competition requirements. The information collection also divided the application into two separate sets of instructions; one for RSVP and another for both FGP and SCP. Finally, the 2013 revision supported the implementation of the Corporation’s agency-wide Performance Measures. It is requested that the new expiration date be three years from the clearance date for this information collection revision.
This revision builds on the currently approved grant application, and refines the narrative questions for greater clarity, reduces the number of required pages of narrative, aligns with new Senior Corps National Performance Measures that will be implemented in 2016, removes redundant references in the grant application by providing links to core documents, and creates a more user-friendly document for applicants.
A.2 Indicate how, by whom, and for what purpose the information is to be used.
Applicants respond to the questions included in these instructions in order to apply to be a sponsor for RSVP, FGP, or SCP. In addition, sponsoring organizations applying for year two or three of a three-year project period use these instructions as a guide to make any necessary updates to their applications.
A.3 Minimize Burden: Use of Improved Technology to Reduce Burden
The Corporation will be eliciting and accepting grantee’s responses to these questions electronically via eGrants, the Corporation’s secure online grants management system.
A.4 Non-Duplication
There are no other sources of information by which CNCS can meet the purposes described in A.2 (above).
A.5 Minimizing for economic burden for small businesses or other small entities.
This collection of information does not impact small businesses because they are not eligible to serve as grantees or as placement sites for the volunteers. There is no economic burden to any other small entities beyond the cost of staff time to collect and report the data. This is minimized to the degree possible by only asking for the information absolutely necessary to measure progress towards CNCS’ strategic initiative benchmarks.
A.6 Consequences of the collection, if not conducted, conducted less frequently, as well as any technical or legal obstacles to reducing burden.
CNCS will be unable to collect, analyze and report on the performance measures for RSVP, FGP, and SCP without approval of this collection. Without these results, CNCS will not have a mechanism to substantiate the return on federal investment or to report key benchmarks included in the CNCS Strategic Plan. In addition, CNCS will not have the information necessary from applicant organizations to conduct a thorough grant application review and grantee selection process without this information collection.
A.7 Special circumstances that would cause information collection to be collected in a manner requiring respondents to report more often than quarterly; report in fewer than 30 days after receipt of the request, submit more than an original and two copies; retain records for more than three years; and other ways specified in the Instructions focused on statistical methods, confidentiality, and proprietary trade secrets.
There are no special circumstances that would require the collection of information in any other ways specified.
A.8 Provide copy and identify the date and page number of the publication in the Federal Register of the Agency’s notice. Summarize the comments received and the actions taken in response to comments. Specifically address comments received on cost and hour burden.
The 60-day Notice soliciting comments was published on December 10, 2014 on page 73280. No public comments were received.
A.9 Payment to Respondents
There are no payments or gifts to respondents.
A.10 Assurance of Confidentiality and its basis in statute, regulation, or agency policy.
The information provided in this collection will be held solely by grantees and CNCS staff.
A.11 Sensitive Questions
The information collection does not include questions of a sensitive nature.
A.12 Hour burden of the collection
The total hour collection burden is estimated at 7,595 hours. This estimate is based on the following:
Total Respondents:
FGP: 335.
SCP: 228.
RSVP incumbents: 756.
New RSVP applicants: 200
Frequency: Once each year.
Average Time per Response:
5 hours each
A.13 Cost burden to the respondent
Not applicable.
A.14 Cost to Government
There are no additional costs to the Government.
A.15 Reasons for program changes or adjustments in burden or cost.
The burden for each submission is unchanged from the currently approved collection.
A.16 Publication of results
The Executive Summaries for RSVP continuation applications and FGP and SCP applications will be posted to the CNCS website. In the interest of open government and transparency in grant making, the following information pertaining to competitive applications will be published on the CNCS website within a period not to exceed 90 business days after all grants are awarded: list of all compliant applications submitted, Executive Summaries of all compliant applications submitted, and SF424 Facesheet and Program Narrative for successful applications.
A.17 Explain the reason for seeking approval to not display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection.
Not applicable.
A.18 Exceptions to the certification statement.
There are no exceptions to the certification statement in the submitted ROCIS form.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Roberts, Angela |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-24 |