(This post was excerpted from an article in the Feb. 27 issue of Local/State Funding Report.) The Department of Homeland Security recently released its plans for the fiscal year 2013 National Preparedness Grant Program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and was unveiled earlier this month in President Obama’s budget request for FY 2013.

It’s real simple — after reading this blog post, go directly to this link in today's Federal Register and prepare to submit your comments on the Office of Management and Budget’s newly proposed guidance that could drastically change current grants management and single audit practices. This is the most earthshaking thing to hit federal grants since last summer’s D.C. earthquake!

(This post originally appeared on Title I-Derland, Thompson’s blog on federal K-12 education, and was written by Chuck Edwards, senior executive director for Thompson’s education products.) In the dramatic grants reform proposal released on Friday by the Office of Management and Budget and described here by guest blogger Jerry Ashworth, I thought one sentence aptly summarized OMB’s three core objectives  (my caps):

Here’s the big juicy news we’ve been waiting for! Hold on to your hat because the Office of Management and Budget is considering some major revisions that could truly shake up the traditional order of business for grants management and single audits.

(This post first appeared as an article in Thompson's Local/State Funding Report and was written by Karen Norris, grants manager for Montgomery College in Rockville, Md. She has more than 20 years of experience supporting educational institutions in the state of Maryland and as a grants consultant. She is currently a board member of the National Grants Management Association.) Letters of support for a grant proposal can have implications both during the proposal development process and throughout project implementation. In some cases, letters from partners can make or break a proposal. If a particular partner is required, as stated in the proposal guidelines, the absence of an attached letter could disqualify the proposal from review. If a collaborating partner is not required but is included in the program design, the absence of an attached letter could severely diminish the competitiveness of the proposal.

(The following was excerpted from an article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Because several federal agencies provide funding for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education programs, the Government Accountability Office urged the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to provide governmentwide guidance to help agencies avoid overlapping efforts so that federal funds can be used more efficiently.

Prepare to gain a few pounds over the next few weeks. The Girl Scout cookies have arrived!

Three years ago today, President Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – otherwise known as the stimulus bill, the Recovery Act or ARRA – into law. And the opinions about it have been flying almost every day since then. Should it have been done at all? Was it too much? Too little? Too late (in terms of how long it's taken to get the money to award recipients and into the economy)?

(The following was excerpted from an article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) Officials with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services plan to evaluate federally funded immigration integration efforts during the next two years to determine what the goals of the program should be.