NIFA Preparing To Release Finalized Policy Guide

(The following was excerpted from a recent article in the Federal Grants Management Handbook.) The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) expects to release its revised Financial Assistance Policy Guide early this fall after making final updates to a draft version released this spring, a NIFA official told attendees at a recent meeting of the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) in Washington, D.C.

The policy guide describes the statutory and regulatory responsibilities of recipients of federal funds from NIFA. The guide is a single document containing information for both NIFA staff and grant recipients that was previously provided under various other manuals. The current guide in effect was released in October 2014.

NIFA is revising the 2014 version to incorporate changes and citations from the Office of Management and Budget’s uniform guidance, updated NIFA terms and conditions, new statutory and regulatory changes affecting agency policies and procedures, and stakeholder feedback. The agency issued a 214-page draft version of the revised policy guide in June and accepted comments on it through the end of July. The agency now expects to publish the final revision of the guide in the coming weeks and once it does so, it would be effective for new awards and awards receiving an increment of funding on or after Oct. 1, 2019.

Maribel Langas Miller, director of the policy and oversight division in NIFA’s Office of Grants and Financial Management, told FDP attendees that the policy guide will contain more details in the Table of Contents. Users viewing the policy guide online can click on hyperlinks in both the Table of Contents and the Glossary to take them to the relevant section in the document or to the applicable regulation.

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

As a reminder, our final Federal Funding Training Forum scheduled for 2018 will be Wednesday October 17 through Friday October 19 in Atlanta. Please let me know if you have questions or can make this forum. We hope to see you there!

http://www.federalgrantsforum.com/atlanta/index.html?src=EC

In addition, we are now offering a procurement boot camp Wednesday October 24 in Washington, D.C. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in this program!

http://www.thompsongrantsworkshop.com/dcprocurement2018/index.html