Grants Review Committee

City of Takoma Park, Maryland GRANTS REVIEW COMMITTEE MINUTES DATE: Tuesday, December 6, 2022 TIME: 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. LOCATION: GRC: Working Session Tuesday, December 6 · 6:30 – 8:00pm Google Meet joining info Video call link: https://meet.google.com/qkp-kxtz-bfc Or dial: (US) +1 347-227-1562 PIN: 371 091 264# More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/qkp-kxtz-bfc?pin=8619427673756 A. Call to Order and Welcome GRC Attendees: Susan Rosenblum, Mark Swartz, Jim Sebastian, Derek Shiau. HCD Staff: Makena Kirkham ● Meeting Notes opened (Derek Shiau taking notes) ● Adoption of Meeting Notes (November 1, 2022 (deferred; no quorum) ○ Mark moves to adopt, Derek seconds. B. GRC Administration ● Discuss feedback survey from grantees - Makena created a 10 question survey to send out to applicants. Questions include: How many years have you applied? How long does it take to submit an application? Similar in time and requirements to other grants? Most challenging aspect? Least challenging? How user friendly is it? Applicant Satisfaction with process? What would you change? Please see the results here. Lots of good feedback here, like being able to submit more to application beyond what’s on application to be able to include examples of programs, pictures, testimonials, etc. Or have a way to resubmit previous years applications. Too late to make any major changes for this year’s application. Minor changes can be implemented, like all city funded programs should be listed in one place to help parents find this info. ● Final discussion of FY24 Application and scoring. Same as previous years. ● HCD plans for publicizing and doing outreach for FY24 application ○ Discuss flier ○ We discussed the flier and submitted some comments, like better pictures, cleaner language in bullets.  City of Takoma Park, Maryland GRANTS REVIEW COMMITTEE MINUTES ● Outreach to Community Groups ○ Newsletter, Post Flyers in Community. Rather than put up on random bulletin boards, better to send to the property manager to put up. ● Protocol for Inviting Council Members to Join Site Visits ○ Some potential issues with this. You can’t have more than 4 Council members without notifying the public. So to avoid this, after we’ve created the site visit schedule, Makena can send an email to all Council members and have them RSVP to Makena directly so she can avoid any issues. Make sure all council members get the same information. ○ Subsequent discussion on getting a full time City staff for Grant Review. Have discussion with Council members because there’s resistance from Council on having a full time person, as City’s largest expense is payroll. ○ Last year, the goal was to go to Council before we made funding recommendations. Purpose of this was to know how the group of grantees were doing. But we missed this last year. We put together FY21 report, which got submitted at the end of the year. But there was no presentation. We do need to start working on FY22 final report, similar to last year. This becomes public record. Council wants some accountability, and that’s important. So perhaps we can present to Council about the progress. March would make the most sense if we do this. C. Site Visits ● Montgomery County Media (Mark) ● Upwardly Global (Susan and Mark) ● GBYM SSL Media Arts Program (Jim) - well attended meeting! Jim working on write up. ● Dance Exchange (Susan defer to next visit cause of cold. Feel better Susan!) ● Ethiopian Community Center (Susan defer to next month) Though Susan did say they brought in speakers from other Organizations, including Emma’s Torch, Upwardly Global, and Community College. ● Per Scholas (Susan defer to next month) ● Carpe Diem (Mike) ● Upcoming FY23 Site Visits D. Other Plan to Promote FY24 Grant Opportunity on Takoma Radio (Mike - defer to next meeting) E. Adjourn.