Course 7: Indirect Cost Recovery: Maximizing Cost Recovery under Federal Grants One of the major benefits afforded by the implementation of Uniform Guidance is the ability of non-Federal entities to negotiate rates for indirect cost recovery with the federal government. Unfortunately, many organizations still have not taken advantage of this benefit. Organizations owe it to their mission and to their stakeholders to take full advantage of and recover every dollar of funding that is available. In this session, we will discuss the benefits of establishing a Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreement (NICRA) and how to leverage your organization’s indirect rates once approved by your federal cognizant agency.

Course 2: Adequate Internal Controls for Federal Grants Management: Your First Line of  Defense OMB continues to shine a spotlight on the adequacy of the Federal award recipient’s system of internal controls with the inclusion of a section dedicated to adequate internal controls within its annually issued Compliance Supplement. OMB expects all non-Federal entities to have a documented system of controls that provides reasonable assurance that Federal awards are being managed in compliance with Federal statutes, regulations, and the terms and conditions of the Federal award. In this session, we will discuss the basic principles of internal controls, the key requirements in 2 CFR 200, differences between preventative vs detective controls, proper segregation of duties, and common control activities related to high-risk areas in the organization.  

Course 3: Financial and Compliance Considerations for Pre-Award: Price to Win Organizations have invested significant resources in grant writing and have become very good at winning grants. These victories are often short-lived due to the lack of financial consideration given during the proposal development process. Organizations oftentimes are stuck with financial terms and grant budgets that wind up costing the organization significant amounts of money for the life of the grant. In this session, we will cover Uniform Guidance’s post-award requirements from the perspective of the pre-award phase within the grant lifecycle. We will discuss certain considerations for post-award requirements and how they should impact your organization’s planning and preparation during the development of grant applications and budgets in response to Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). This discussion will include practical advice and tools for post-award professionals to aid proposal development teams’ focus on compliance throughout the pre-award process.

Course 4: Time and Effort Reporting: Compliance for Your Largest Expense Category Like all aspects of Uniform Guidance, OMB attempted to ease the administrative burden and place greater emphasis on sound internal controls concerning time and effort reporting. This leaves considerable ambiguity about exactly how federal award recipients and subrecipients should document their personnel costs. What is the best way to handle accuracy and documentation so that your time records don’t result in disallowed costs? This session helps you understand the cost principle behind time and effort reporting, generating quality supporting documentation, and what’s expected under Uniform Guidance. You’ll get expert guidance on how to respond to the new flexibility—and ambiguity—with high-performance procedures that help keep personnel costs from being questioned and disallowed. You’ll learn about what audit procedures you are likely to face and how organizations that have received findings could have avoided trouble.