Author: Jake Seliger

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Grant writers for OJJDP’s FY ’23 “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse”

Fifteen grants are available for the OJJDP’s* FY ’23 “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse” program, which was released Mar. 17, 2023; both grant writers and potential applicants will note that, with $16.5 million available and an award ceiling of $2 million, the “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse” is an attractive program. The “mentoring” part is unusual, too, because mentoring was in vogue in the ’90s and early ’00s, but over time it fell out of favor—likely because mentoring programs are hard to run (we’ve heard lots of stories from clients about just how hard, due to background checks, litigation risk, etc.).

If you and your organization are getting ready for the OJJDP FY ’23 “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse” application process, contact us, or email us at seliger@seliger.com; Seliger + Associates has written dozens of funded mentoring grants.

Still, despite the fact that lots of programs and efforts from a variety of federal agencies have targeted opioid use disorder (OUD), and yet OUD remains a persistent challenge. The DEA, for example, recently ended the “waivered prescriber” requirement for most kinds of medication-assisted treatment (MAT), in an effort to expand access to MAT. MAT on its own hasn’t worked. Efforts like Twelve-Step programs haven’t worked. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and other “evidence-based practices” (EBPs) haven’t worked. Marketing and outreach campaigns haven’t worked. Community education hasn’t worked. Each of these may work for some people, but by “haven’t worked” I mean that they’ve not substantially ameliorated the opioid epidemic. They’ve not substantially ameliorated the p2p meth epidemic, which is what OJJDP is likely referring to in the “Other Substance Misuse” part of the “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse” program. Grant writers should know the difference between what’s being stated explicitly and what’s being implied in an RFP.

So the OJJDP program that’s seeking to provide funding for mentoring is reasonable, given how much else has been and is being tried to reduce OUD, which has proven intransigent in the face of numerous public policy and grant efforts. Of those 15 available “Mentoring for Youth Affected by Opioid and Other Substance Misuse” grants, 10 are for “project sites”—which means “normal nonprofits” and five are for statewide or regional projects. For the first category, OJJDP wants applicants to already have at least three years of mentoring program experience. What “mentoring program experience” means is, however, somewhat left to the applicant, and organizations that want to apply but are weak on this area should let us help them apply some grant writing magic to their challenges.

The project’s goals and objectives are typical, and what you’d expect. Curiously, the RFP doesn’t give any guidance around the expected total cost per participant (unless I missed that line in the preliminary read). Though I don’t think OJJDP says as much, I’d guess that having some linkage to MAT, even if only for the families of targeted youth, will likely be helpful for successful applicants.

Why are mentoring programs hard to run? Recruiting mentors, background-checking mentors, and retaining mentors—they’re all hard. It’s also not possible to make sure that every single mentor is volunteering for what might be construed as the “right” reasons. And if one bad mentor isn’t screened out, then that can lead to disaster for the entire program and even agency. Some organizations solve this problem by only allowing mentor-mentee contact in specific places and times, but that can wind up not feeling much like an actual mentoring program. But it is a solution.

If you’re working on that OJJDP application, contact us to further discuss your organization and how we can help.

“OJJDP” standing for the old-school acronym: “Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.” It’s been a while since I’ve heard about Juvenile Justice, outside of anachronistic government sub-agencies. OJJDP is in turn part of the Department of Justice (DOJ).

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Modern HIV prevention and education grant-funded programs

Astute healthcare-related nonprofit and public agency managers who follow grant opportunities have probably noticed how many of those grant opportunities use specific, somewhat coded language to express whatever it is that they want (read a lot, and you’ll start to see patterns in RFP verbiage). We’ve written many modern HIV prevention and education grant-funded programs, and, consequently, we’ve gotten very good at designing how those programs should be pitched to funders—the most common being the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Still, HRSA Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) are often opaque about how exactly the applicant is supposed to provide services and what precisely the applicant should do. The purpose of being opaque may be so that applicants can signal their underlying competence and knowledge.

Many HIV-services programs can be divided into two categories, although the categories can overlap: prevention/education and treatment. We’re going to focus on the former, at least in this post, though some grant-funded programs will ask for both components. A typical grant-funded project purpose for a program designed to provide prevention and education is something like “reduce HIV transmission via outreach and engagement.” The target population will usually be persons at high risk for HIV/AIDs, but who are known to not be HIV+. Federal funders like vaguely bureaucratic terms like “persons” over more human terms like “folks;” the more bureaucratic and less human a proposal sounds, the more funders will typically like it.*

The applicant agency should typically propose a project that will use peers of the high risk population—that is, people who are “culturally and linguistically like the target population”—to do outreach, engagement, and education. A common term for such a position is a “Community Health Worker” (CHW). CHWs are often paired with Registered Nurses (RNs) or similarly licensed clinicians: the CHW goes out, finds the target, high-risk population, talks to members of the target population, and gets them to be tested.

This involves some combination of on-the-spot rapid HIV testing to see if the high-risk person might already be positive, along with education and the like if they’re not. Education includes things like “why using PrEP is a good idea,” “how to avoid sharing needles,” etc. The CHW will encourage the at-risk person to reduce risky behaviors (e.g., sharing needles, or unprotected sex with multiple random partners, and the like). This kind of outreach effort is sometimes done with a mobile outreach unit, often a van, that’s owned/leased and operated by the applicant. In some grant programs, it’s possible to buy the van with grant funds, but, even when the van isn’t covered, leasing and operating costs (e.g., gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.) should be eligible grant costs.

In addition to culturally and linguistically street-based education and rapid HIV testing in the outreach van, CHWs try to get who are found to be HIV+ via rapid test a follow-up laboratory confirmation test. If the lab test confirms the person is HIV+, the CHW tries to get help that person get into treatment. Persons who are positive should in particular be targeted for entry into services.

But funders usually also want all high-risk persons who are engaged by the team to establish a medical home and, for HRSA, this means at a Federally Qualified Health Center’s (FQHC). In the real world, many FQHCs aren’t excited by the prospect of new, high-risk, and difficult-to-serve patients, but HRSA and other funders want to hear that this is going to happen.

HIV+ persons obviously need care, and consistent care, both to ensure their own safety and to reduce the likelihood of community transmission. Modern, consistently applied HIV treatments haven’t, to our knowledge, been shown to conclusively, completely, continuously prevent HIV transmission, but they can make the virus nearly undetectable in the body, which likely reduces transmission (if there is evidence one way or another, please cite it in the comments). PrEP in the high-risk, but uninfected population, in combination with effective, consistent usage of anti-HIV drugs in the infected population, is a potent combination to reduce HIV prevalence, which is why almost all modern HIV-prevention programs want this approach, whether they say so directly or not.

The peer-to-peer outreach approach, in which the organization hires CHWs with the “street cred” to engage the target population, ensures that the target population is more likely to accept some level of engagement, education, and behavior changes to reduce risks. The peer positions receive training in HIV and how HIV prevention works, and then go into the community to seek high-risk, hard-to-reach persons. Applicants should also propose more general outreach efforts focused on social media. Virtually all targeted persons will have smart phones; even most homeless people do, today.

The approach we’ve discussed above can be described in more detail or less detail—for example, what specifics will the educational effort cover? How long will CHWs seek to talk to each person who is reached out to?—but the basic structure has been consistent for years.

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The Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program and grant writers

The huge bolus of Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding is beginning to hit grants.gov—which means the grant money will soon hit the street as companies apply soon. That’s the dynamic we’re seeing with the $700 million available for the Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program,* which has no award ceiling in grants.gov (although the NOFO itself says $15 million is the maximum; this reinforces the valuable “always read the NOFO” lesson) and no guidance as to the number of grants that might be available. Grant writers should be cognizant of the “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program, and the other large BIL funding opportunities that are likely to follow, because they have so much money available. This FY ’23 NOFO has a deadline of May 30, but the program may be renewed in future years.

We can help: contact Seliger + Associates today to find out how we can make your “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program, if not easy, then at the very least easier than it would be otherwise. We’ve not yet looked in depth at this particular Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), but, from what we have seen (starting with the amount of money available), it looks unusual. A variety of infrastructure can be installed—among them, classic electric chargers, but also hydrogen infrastructure, or propane infrastructure, or even “natural” gas (sometimes called by its more honest, but less marketable, name: “methane”). I’d guess that most funded projects will focus on electric charging infrastructure, but there could be some dark-horse candidates for hydrogen (like mining equipment).

I’d also guess that successful applicants will get the city, county, and state bureaucracies on their side, so as to avoid interminal environmental and other reviews. I haven’t found specific language in the “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” NOFO pertaining to that yet, but, even if that language isn’t in there, reviewers will probably want to know that the infrastructure is going to be built. In much of the United States, we’ve defaulted to status-quo bias in the physical world. Smart applicants will likely have these challenges settled before they apply.

Over the years, we’ve written numerous scientific and technical proposals, and we often complement engineering firms and other organizations devoted to planning and executing the physical construction of charging infrastructure. We’re specialists in making sure that grant proposals are compelling, narratively cohesive, and tell an important story. We’re experts at making sure the most important thing is at the front, and then proposals proceed to the details; many amateur grant writers mistakenly start with details and then wait until the end to attempt a coherent, broad picture. Readers are often confused by that, and want the opposite—the broad picture first, followed by details.

The Department of Transportation’s (DOT’s) “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program is unusual in that it’s a “Cost Reimbursement Grant”—so some funding that your state, planning organization, local government, Indian Tribe, or consortium has already spent can still be eligible under this grant program.

Let us make sure your “Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant” program narrative makes sense. You do what you’re great at, and let us grant writers write the proposal. Contact us today to make your proposal process (relatively) easy.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is the DOT sub-agency charged with administering the competition.

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Grant writers for the ACF’s “Runaway and Homeless Youth – Prevention Demonstration Program” (RHY-PDP)

The FY 2023 “Runaway and Homeless Youth – Prevention Demonstration Program” (RHY-PDP) has several notable elements that should interest grant writers as well as potential nonprofit applicants: $2 million is available for ten grants of up to $200,000 annually for some number of years. The FY ’23 “Runaway and Homeless Youth – Prevention Demonstration Program” (RHY-PDP) application was due in June 20, but, if you’re thinking of applying in the future, now is the time to act.

Does your organization have a plan for getting the “Runaway and Homeless Youth – Prevention Demonstration Program” (RHY-PDP) application done? Let’s talk: call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1, or email us at seliger@seliger.com, to get a fast, free fee quote to write your RHY-PDP proposal or edit your draft for a reasonable flat fee. Grant writers with long-term, proven track records are useful, valuable resources for any organization looking to submit a complete and technically correct RHY-PDP application.

The RHY-PDP program offers funding that will help precariously housed runaway and homeless youth find and maintain long-term housing solutions, while assisting those recently homeless with finding long-term and stable housing. Like many coordination programs, RHY-PDP appears not to offer much funding for the direct provision of housing—in other words, it doesn’t appear to offer funding for the most-needed services—but it still offers useful money for organizations looking to bolster their overall homelessness services portfolio. Many organizations will quietly reassign staff persons to different grants depending on which grants the organization has at a given time. RHY-PDP can be part of that effort. There are only 10 grants available: that may dissuade some nonprofits from competing, but it shouldn’t, because all of the usual suspects may also be dissuaded. Victory goes to those who try.

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Curious instructions in the DOL’s “Nursing Expansion Grant Program” FOA

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) “Nursing Expansion Grant Program” funding Opportunity Announcement (or “FOA,” which is DOL-speak for “RFP”) has a peculiar instruction, which we, as grant writers, noticed right away: “NOTE: Full points will not be given for simply repeating the requirements stated below or elsewhere in the Announcement.” This is a humorous instruction because many FOAs tell applicants what to do, and the applicant’s main duty is to tell the funder that the applicant will in fact do whatever it is that the funder wants the applicant to do, and which the funder has specified already. “We are going to tell you what to do and how to do it,” the funder seems to be saying, “but we want you to tell us what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it.” The DOL, for the “Nursing Expansion Grant Program” application, says:

For example, if the applicant is asked, “Describe in detail how strategies to expand diversity, equity, inclusion and access to recruit participants will be implemented,” applications will not score the full points (and zero points may be received) for simply stating, “We will implement strategies to expand diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in our participant recruitment.” To receive full points, the applicant must describe, in their own words, the process or procedures their institution will use and what evidence is available to show those processes are effective for meeting the stated requirement.

The word “diversity” occurs 12 times in the “Nursing Expansion Grant Program” FOA, so there are a lot of places where applicants can pick up some diversity lingo for their applications. And, to the DOL’s credit, the strategies to be used “to expand diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in our participant recruitment” are pretty standard for an experienced grant writer: hire diversity consultants; provide diversity training; favor candidates from particular demographic groups in employment, while simultaneously complying with laws that forbid discrimination; subject all recruitment materials to review by diversity consultants who are experts in all facets of diversity and the implementation of diversity; and so on. Are diversity consultants particularly qualified to judge the success or failure of diversity efforts? Maybe. Does hiring diversity consultants improve actual, real-world diversity on the ground? Maybe, maybe not. But the DOL wants diversity and therefore applicants are obliged to promise that they’ll focus on diversity, albeit without appearing to quote the DOL’s instructions that describe what the DOL wants.

The FOA questions have the air of an Inquisitor during the Inquisition: “We are asking the question, and we know the answer, but you must supply the answer we are looking for.” If the DOL knows the answer, why not just tell the applicant what the specific expectations are?

I don’t want to pick on diversity too much here, because the DOL also offers instructions like “Clearly identify the training strategy(ies) that will be deployed to train participants enrolled in the Nurse Education Professional Track or the Nursing Career Pathways Track, as described in Section I.E. Program Design and Allowable Activities,” as if humans don’t have millennia of experience in “training strategies,” almost all of which reduce to some combination of direct instruction and hands-on practice. How do you ascertain someone’s blood pressure? We’re going to show you how, then you’re going to do it, then we’re going to give you feedback, then you’re going to teach someone else to do it.

Who knows: maybe some applicant to the “Nursing Expansion Grant Program” will reinvent the entirety of human education and knowledge transmission, but I’d personally bet against that, and I’m guessing that the same strategies will be used that anyone who’s ever participated in K – 16 education will be familiar with. There’re only so many ways to slice a salami and all that.

Some applicants could use online modules as part of their education effort (someone is probably vending those for nursing education), and those online modules might be appropriate for highly motivated trainees, but we’ve seen through the course of the COVID-19 pandemic that, in most cases, online modules don’t effectively replace in-person learning for most people.

I’m (obviously) a grant writer, but I also occasionally teach writing and related subjects for undergraduate college students and have seen the results of online “education” firsthand. Non-traditional nursing students may be more motivated than typical undergrad cohorts, but much of nursing is a hands-on discipline that needs in-person training, and thus it’s not likely to be highly efficacious online—and that’s particularly true given online education’s existing drawbacks.

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Grant writers: SAMHSA’s “Services Program for Residential Treatment for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” (PPW) program

Grant writers may have seen the NOFO for SAMHSA’s FY ’23″Services Program for Residential Treatment for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” (PPW) program, which has $11.5 million available for 22 grants of up to $525,000 per year for five years—implying a lifetime total availability $57.5 million. Smart nonprofit and public agencies will look closely at SAMHSA’s PPW program, given the large amount of funding at stake and the clear need for more residential treatment beds. We can help: call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1 or contact us to get a fast, free fee quote that will help your nonprofit or public agency write a winning proposal. SAMHSA’s 83-page FY ’23 PPW NOFO likely contains many gotchas and other surprises that we’ll ferret out—leaving you free to run your organization.

The PPW program offers funding for pregnant and/or postpartum women to get help with substance-use disorders (SUDs), along with housing and wraparound supportive services that will help aid recovery. Basically, SAMHSA’s “Services Program for Residential Treatment for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” (PPW) looks to provide not only treatment and amelioration of SUD, but also all the wraparound supportive services that a pregnant or postpartum woman might need to remain sober and take care of her child, or children. The goal of the program should remind you of the goal for the HRSA Healthy Start Initiative (HSI) grant program: both programs fund similar activities, even if the funding agency differs and PPW is for residential, not outpatient, services.

SAMHSA’s PPW program wants to lower the total level of infant mortality, and the total level of maternal mortality. It has a bit of the old “Pathways to Responsible Fatherhood” RFP feel too, in that PPW seeks to, wherever possible, promote family stability and family unification. I’m reminded of the way that there are various essays and research reports out there observing that female college graduates are overwhelmingly married when they have kids, as was true in the 1960s; among the non-graduates, however, marriage rates have cratered. Here’s one report along those lines, although one could dig up many others. As it says: “Marriage used to be a classless phenomenon. But, not anymore: in 2008, marriage rates amongst college-educated 30-year-olds surpassed those without a degree for the first time.” More educated women tend to have kids with a spouse, and less educated women tend to have kids without a spouse, and in an unstable households. I’ve seen calls that educated women (and men) should “preach what they practice”—that is, speak up about the need to get married prior to having kids, and to avoid having kids in the midst of turbulent, uncommitted relationships. Child support doesn’t replace fathers, in this view.

The above paragraph has some ideas in it that need to be approached delicately and tastefully in a proposal, and experienced grant writers will understand how to do this. Nonetheless, intact families are part of what SAMHSA is dancing around in its NOFO. The NOFO emphasizes that “Services Program for Residential Treatment for Pregnant and Postpartum Women” (PPW) applicants need to offer in-patient services in facilities, usually one or more single-family houses, overseen by round-the-clock staff supervision. Applicants should probably have a psychiatrist on staff or via contract at least part of the time. The challenge with the PPW NOFO will likely include having a facility that is zoned correctly and that the applicant can use. Well, that, and getting staff for what might be a challenging patient population.

There are a number of straightforward required activities: treatment includes the typical assessment process, which will lead to some form of “Individual Improvement Plan” (IIP) or the like, which will tailor SUD treatment for the individual’s needs. The applicant will come up with appropriate instruments to be deployed. Treatment will include medications—thus the the psychiatrist, physicians assistants (PAs), and other waivered providers with prescribing power—and the overall goal is to manage the SUD to the extent possible. Overall, this is an intriguing NOFO for federally qualified health centers (FQHCs), as well as other substance abuse providers.

Contact us for more information. Let us make your grant seeking experience easier.

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SAMHSA’s “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” (GBHI) and grant writers

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” (GBHI) Notice of Funding Availability (NOFO) should appeal to grant writers and grant applicants because the program is offering funding for activities that many homelessness services organizations are already doing—most notably, providing funding for various kinds of substance use disorder (SUD) / opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment, and, in particular, medication assisted treatment (MAT). MAT is also now easier to administer, because the “waivered prescriber” requirement has been waived. In the FY ’23 GBHI NOFO, there’s $75 million available over five years for up to thirty-two awards, and grants go for five years, with half a million per year—overall, it’s a desirable grant program. If your nonprofit organization wants to apply for SAMHSA’s “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” program, call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1, or email us at seliger@seliger.com, for a FREE quote on writing this SAMHSA application, or any other proposal.

The SAMHSA NOFO notes that GBHI applicants should provide a fairly typical suit of services for homeless individuals, including SUD/OUD treatment (likely via MAT, as noted above) and assistance to overcome chronic or episodic homelessness. Nonprofits are eligible. The program should probably include peer workers (often called “community health workers” or similar—”CHWs” is a fine acronym) who are going to liaise with the target population of focus.

The trick for all these programs is outside the ability of applicants to affect: getting enough housing built at all, for anyone and everyone, which is a point we’ve made in “‘Homelessness is a Housing Problem’: When cities build more housing, homelessness goes down.” Building housing for anyone is hard, which means building it for the homelessness (or whatever euphemism one may choose) is even harder. Fortunately, the SAMHSA GBHI program wants to offer help with finding or showing permanent housing through “collaboration,” including with public housing authorities (PHAs). So applicants that are, or can get, a homelessness services provider to help will be aided, even if most of the target population doesn’t wind up with a permanent living situation. Finally, typical case management services are required; for case management, applicant should probably propose an approach in which CHWs will provide warm handoffs to case management professionals. Treatment of substance-use disorder and mental illness itself is also an eligible cost, which will be appealing to healthcare organizations.

Distributing naloxone, opioid test strips, and similar harm reduction supplies are eligible activities. SAMHSA also specifically tells applicants that they need something like a “Participant Advisory Council” (PAC) to offer oversight, but SAMHSA has adopted another term: a “steering committee.” Whatever the name, the purpose is the same, and should be familiar to veteran grant writers. Beyond that, various kinds of other activities are optional, including HIV prevention, and training staff in evidence-based practices (EBPs) like Motivational Interviewing (MI) or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). How many of these activities really make it from the proposal world to the actual world? Probably not all of them, but some. SAMHSA also has an EBP warehouse that applicants can choose from, but most EBPs are essentially different routes up the same mountain.

Regardless of the route, the journey is arduous; the number of interventions that it takes to get a homeless person with SUD sober and off the street can number in the dozens, if not hundreds. Outsiders often don’t realize this. If you don’t work in the homelessness-services field, ask someone who works in emergency rooms what the population of focus for the “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” (GBHI) program is like. The organizations operating GBHI programs are doing tough work. Grant writers should be able to evoke that work, without being melodramatic about it.

Want that GBHI grant? Contact us, so we can help make it happen. We’re here to help, and to make your life easier.

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Links: Peculiar training and capacity-building programs, the dangers of NEPA, manufacturing jobs strike back, and more!

* There is a real federal program called “eSports and Game Development Skills Training and Capacity Building,” run through the Department of State’s (DoS) U.S. Mission to Saudi Arabia, and the program “requests proposals for projects aimed at increasing the knowledge, skills, abilities, and networks of Saudi youth in game development and STEAM fields.” There is only $45,000 available, however. I also spotted an RFP for “Strengthening Worker Engagement, Empowerment, and Trust in the Dominican Sugar Sector.” Who knew that the Dominican sugar sector is a priority for the DO?

* “The Case for Abolishing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).” Like the “Patriot Act,” which is not patriotic, NEPA actually harms the environment, rather than helping it. Notice: “If you think a two year, million dollar, 1,000+ page environmental report simply to build new bike lanes in an already developed city seems absurd, you’re not alone.” And, also: “America is absolutely drowning in process, forms, and reviews.” We need less participation and more action.

* “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s.” Perhaps relatedly: “Milwaukee Tool Raises the Bar with New USA Factory.”

* “Inside the Massive Effort to Change the Way Kids Are Taught to Read,” using phonics and direct instruction. In other words, the simple, decades-old ways work better in this field.

* The Framework modular laptop appears to be good. Modularity should increase longevity and thus reduce waste, although I doubt consumer electronics like laptops account for a high percentage of waste products.

* The NYT finally figures it out: “Why It’s So Hard to Find an Affordable Apartment in New York: There simply aren’t enough places to live, a crisis decades in the making and one that poses a threat to the city’s continuing recovery.” They should’ve learned about supply and demand a few decades ago, but “late” is better than “never.” Oh, and The national housing shortage is likely in the four to twenty million range: which is one reason why we need zoning reform.

* “The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China.” Maybe we shouldn’t do that? Seliger + Associates has worked on numerous clean energy projects, and we’d prefer the benefits accrue here.

* “The US basically stopped building large-scale water infrastructure in the 1980s.” That seems bad, and we should start again. “Big” shouldn’t be synonymous with “bad,” even though it has been in the discourse of the last forty years.

* A Canceled Cancellation at the University of Michigan: “The University of Michigan Medical School just took a bold stand for academic freedom.” That’s an improvement over the status quo, but, simultaneously, I wonder how many institutions include “misuse of the bureaucratic apparatus and process” as a punishable offense.

* Colleges engage in extensive price discrimination, though they rarely call what they do “price discrimination.”

* Arguments in favor of intellectual freedom at the University of Austin.

* The paradox of Fermi’s Paradox: maybe we’ve been seeing aliens for a century and yet not admitting that’s what we’ve been seeing.

* “Failing Introductory Economics: A Davidson professor bemoans the state of his classroom.” Note the comments about performance across time. Maybe you’ve also seen that SAT and ACT scores are at their lowest level in 30 years. Complaining about the kids these days is an ancient hobby, but it may be useful to ask the kids these days how they spend their time.

* “Ten years of YIMBYism have accomplished a lot.” Good.

* “The Masks We’ll Wear in the Next Pandemic: N95s are good. Some scientists want to do much better.” Good, too, and there’s no guarantee the next pandemic won’t be far worse than this one.

Manufacturing plants are going up

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What counts as an eligible service area for SAMHSA’s “Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma” (ReCAST) program?

Long ago, we wrote about what grant writers and applicants should do when confronted by a poorly organized RFP; because little external pressure pushes federal agencies to write RFPs that make sense, one finds too many RFPs that leave a lot of questions. SAMHSA’s “Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma” (ReCAST) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is a case in point: eligible applicants are those “communities that have recently faced civil unrest, community violence, and/or collective trauma within the past 24 months.” Okay: the NOFO will surely get more specific, right? But the ReCAST NOFO says that “Community violence is defined as the exposure to intentional acts of interpersonal violence committed in public spaces by individuals who are not related to the victim.” Okay: but how much violence? Do two murders count? Do two instances of battery count? Almost every city of any size has likely experienced at least two “intentional acts of interpersonal violence” committed by strangers in the prior 24 months. So how much is enough? Is more better, for purposes of being funded by this program? How are applicants to judge the feasibility of being funded? Being able to have some sense of eligibility is key, because preparing and submitting a SAMHSA application isn’t a minor endeavor.

Then there is the issue of “collective trauma.” Do natural disasters count? I’ve read the definitions of “collective trauma” on pages 8 – 9 of the ReCAST NOFO, and I’ve gone through all 41 uses of the word “trauma,” but I don’t see an answer to that specific question. Natural disasters are violent and often cause injury and death, which makes me lean towards “yes,” but the emphasis on “civil unrest” seems to point to a very specific set of issues that SAMHSA has in mind.

So I sent an email to the SAMHSA contact person, Jennifer Treger, asking her a version of the above. She wrote back: “Thank you for your inquiry. Please refer back to the definition that you have pointed out on pages 8-9 of the funding opportunity. If you determine your community meets the eligibility based on the definitions, please feel free to submit an application.” But how am I, or anyone else, supposed to judge whether a specific community is eligible based on that vague definition? I tried asking her in another version, and she reiterated, unhelpfully, that “We can only respond to what is in the NOFO.”

She also wrote that: “You can determine if you feel your community meets the definition for Collective Trauma as stated in the NOFO.” But the problem is that how I “feel” doesn’t matter at all to SAMHSA in determining eligibility; only SAMHSA’s judgments matter (SAMHSA has the money). It’d be useful for SAMHSA to list, in its view, which communities have had sufficient “civil unrest, community violence, and/or collective trauma within the past 24 months” to qualify for ReCAST. Or, alternately, what metrics they’d use. An FBI Uniform Crime Rate (UCR) of x per 1,000 people, for example, would be a specific metric.

Too many federal agencies love the latitude that vagueness implies. It’s hard to advise our clients on whether they should apply to ReCAST without more specifics, but those specifics evidently aren’t going to be forthcoming. I guess we’ll have to try to look at our feelings and our client’s feelings, and hope SAMHSA feels what we feel.

For more on similar matters, see RFP Lunacy and Answering Repetitive or Impossible Questions: HRSA and Dental Health Edition.

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Permitting is the big barrier to wind energy right now (beyond batteries and fundamental research)

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (EERE) wrote and posted the 2022 Offshore Wind Market Report,* which contains an astounding table that in turn points to the way permitting—not research and development or manufacturing—is the big barrier to wind energy right now; although many of us assume that better batteries, and more fundamental research, are the main constraints for large-scale wind power deployment, it would appear that, no, permitting is actually the biggest barrier, which is blocking at least 442 times as much wind power as is presently operating:

wind energy table

So: 42 megawatts (MW) are operating, 932 MW are under construction, and 18,581 are stuck in permitting processes—many of those permitting processes likely relating to the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which is supposed to “protect” the environment, but has instead been used as a cudgel to continue the status quo and prevent substantial changes in power and transportation policy. “The status quo” in terms of power production in the United States is pretty bad, and high in terms of methane and carbon emissions. Beyond the 18,581 MW in permitting purgatory, another 15,996 MW are in the “site control” phase of wind projects.

Before seeing this report, I knew that NEPA (and CEQA in CA), along with parochial local political issues, were stopping wind power from being developed, but I didn’t realize the extent to which permitting was blocking wind projects. At Seliger + Associates, we’ve got some personal and business interests in seeing renewable energy projects succeed, because we’ve written many proposals for organizations and companies that are working on renewable energy projects. Consequently, and above and beyond the obvious need for renewable energy, we don’t like to see our work wasted: the United States can do a tremendous amount of R & D, but if the fruits of the R & D can’t be deployed, the R & D is in effect wasted.

Currently, it’s already technically feasible to install large amounts of offshore wind power generating capacity: we’re just not doing it. And the EERE has, as of this writing, a Funding Opportunity Announcement on the street for “The Systems Integration Solar and Wind Grid Services and Reliability Demonstration FOA.” That FOA obviously isn’t for the direct creation of new solar technologies, but it’s an indication of the importance of wind-related, grant-funded projects. Total U.S. power generating capacity is vast—one source reports “1.2 million megawatts of generation capacity” in Feb. 2022—so even 18,000 MW is a small proportion. But permitting challenges likely dissuade would-be operators from attempting to install more. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed earlier this month, is supposed to reform the permitting process, which is a major culprit in U.S. reliance on fossil fuels. The sooner reform hits, the better. Offshore wind minimally affects birds, so it’s one of the easiest climate- and power-related wins available to us, and much of the U.S. population is clustered along the coasts.

* The link goes to a PDF download.