Supporting Statement: YouthBuild Funding Opportunity Announcement

Funding Opportunity Announcement

YouthBuild

Supplemental Justification

Supplemental Supporting Statement A: Justification

This request seeks OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act for the unique information collection requirements in the YouthBuild Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). The Employment and Training Administration (ETA), U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), announces the availability of approximately $80,000,000 in grant funds authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) for youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are high school dropouts, adjudicated youth, youth aging out of foster care, youth with disabilities, homeless youth, and other disconnected youth populations. This grant balances project-based academic learning and occupational skills training to prepare disadvantaged youth for career placement.

We expect to award approximately eighty grants of up to $1,100,000 and require an exact 25 percent match from applicants, using sources other than federal funding. Grants will be awarded to public or private non-profit agencies or organizations including rural, urban, or Native American agencies that have previously served disadvantaged youth in a YouthBuild or other similar program. Applicants may include those that have never received a DOL YouthBuild award, have not received an award within the last 6 grant cycles, or have not yet completed their first DOL YouthBuild grant and established applicants (those applicants that have previously received at least one YouthBuild grant from DOL which is near completion and provides sufficient performance outcomes for review). Grantees who received funding from the FY 2015 YouthBuild competition are funded through January 2019, and these grantees are not eligible to participate in this competition. Each applicant may submit only one application. Additionally, the grant period for these projects is 40 months. Up to four months will be for program planning, followed by two years of active program services (education, occupational skills training, and youth leadership development activities) for one or more cohorts of youth; and an additional twelve months of follow-up support services and tracking of participant outcomes for each cohort of youth.

Applications will include the following information collections: 1) Form SF-424 “Application for Federal Assistance,” separately cleared under OMB control number 4040-0004, 2) Project Budget, 3) Project Narrative, and 4) Attachments to the Project Narrative.

Electronic availability:

This grant solicitation is available on the grants.gov Web site. Based on past DOL experience, the Department anticipates 75 percent of responses will be submitted electronically.

Small Entities:

This information collection will not have a significant impact on a substantial number of small entities.

Assurances of confidentiality:

These grant solicitations do not offer applicants assurances of confidentiality.

Special circumstances:

This FOA implicates no special circumstances.

Burden:

Based on past experience, the DOL expects to receive approximately 250 applications from an equal number of respondents.  The ETA estimates public reporting burden for the information collection to average 20 hours per response for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining needed data, and completing and reviewing the collection of information.

250 applications x 20 hours = 5000 hours.

The DOL has increased the October 2014, average hourly earnings in the professional and business services industry of $29.29 per hour by 40 percent (total $41.01 per hour) to monetize this burden.  See The Employment Situation—October 2014, DOL, Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_11072014.pdf at page 32.

5000 hours x $41.01 = $205,050.00

The DOL associates no other burden costs with this information collection. In addition to the application, each grantee will be required to submit quarterly financial, performance, and narrative reports to the ETA. Those information collection requirements will be cleared under a separate control number.

Total burden: 250 respondents, 250 responses, 5000 hours, $0 other cost burden.

Supplemental Supporting Statement B: Statistical Methods

This information collection does not employ statistical methods.

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