Grants & Awards: LGRMIF: 2009 Grant Application Materials

Review Process

State Archives staff in the Grants Administration Unit first review applications for eligibility and completeness. They will not send forward for further review applications that do not meet basic eligibility requirements, do not include all the required forms, are not postmarked by the deadline, or do not have the appropriate signatures. A local government is responsible for meeting eligibility requirements and for submitting a complete application.

All applications are separated by grant categories and subcategories, and ultimately ranked against all applications for that particular category or subcategory. Review panels are assembled based on grant categories and subcategories. Outside expert reviewers are assigned to panels to review grants in their areas of expertise. Each reviewer evaluates approximately forty grant applications apiece and assigns each application a score based on information in the Application Narrative Form (LG-NA) and Budget Narrative forms. The reviewers' ranking criteria are included in the appendix of this booklet.

In May, reviewers convene as panels in Albany. Each panel is assigned an amount of funding based on the percentage of the amount available of the total funding requested. The reviewers deliberate in detail on the applications they have read, reconcile differences in conclusions from their preliminary reviews, assign each application a final score, rank applications, and make funding recommendations. When there are multiple panels for a specific category or subcategory, reviewers from the multiple panels will discuss the ranking of all the applications until they reach consensus on the final ranking order of all applications for that category or subcategory.

Funding recommendations will be made in the order of ranking until available funds for that category are depleted. Applications are recommended for full funding, partial funding, or no funding. Applications may be recommended for partial funding if they include ineligible expenses, include elements that are not essential to the project, or attempt a project that cannot be completed within the grant cycle, or if the reviewers recommend an alternative solution to a records management issue. In the case of a tie, the application with the lower funding request will be given priority. The State Archives reserves the right to apply unused funds, if applicable, from one panel to other panels.

Grants must have a minimum score of 60 to be considered for funding. The cut-off score for funding may be higher than 60, depending on the quantity of applications and the amount of funding available for awarding.