"Our town is grateful for the MD Bikeways Grant.  It is key to buildout of community bikepath both for safety and economic development!" 

The Maryland Bikeways Program supports Governor O'Malley's Cycle Maryland initiative to promote biking as a fun, healthy transportation alternative that is great for our environment. The Program supports projects that maximize bicycle access and fill missing links in the state's bicycle system, focusing on connecting bicycle-friendly trails and roads and enhancing last-mile connections to work, school, shopping and transit. On-road bicycle projects, such as bike lane striping, sharrows, and wayfinding signage are eligible for funding. Off-road shared-use path and trail projects are also eligible for funding. Eligible project types include:

Feasibility assessment and Design of proposed or potential bikeways to assess issues, such as environmental impacts, right-of-way issues, ADA compatibility, local support, and cost estimates.

Minor Retrofit including bicycle route signing, pavement markings, parking, drainage grate replacement and other minor retrofits to enhance bicycle routes.

Construction of bikeways, generally leveraging other sources of funding, such as Transportation Enhancements, Maryland Heritage Areas, etc.

Click here  for a list of current Bikeway projects in MD.  Another funding solicitation is anticipated for Spring 2013 and will be posted to the State Available grants site at www.grants.maryland.gov.

The new The US Health and Human Services' TAGGS system (Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System)  is a robust reporting tool developed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Grants and Acquisition Policy and Accountability (OGAPA). The TAGGS database is a central repository for grants awarded by the eleven HHS Operating Divisions. TAGGS tracks obligated grant funds at the transaction level.

TAGGS serves HHS staff, congressional offices, other executive agencies, potential and current grant recipients, and other interested parties for a variety of informational purposes.

GGO Director Eric Brenner said, "for those of you still not comfortable with the USASpending.gov website, the TAGGS system provides another way to search for federal grant data, at least related to DHHS grants. Under 'searches,' you can view grant awards by program/year as well as all grant awards by location (state/county/city/district)."
 
The US Census recently terminated the Federal Financial Statistics program, and removed the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) website and online query system. 

Recently, GGO produced a webinar with guest speaker Natalie Keegan, analyst at the Congressional Research Service, and author of "Federal Grants-in-Aid Administration: A Primer," written for Members of Congress and their staff.  During the webinar, Natalie touched on the fact that the Central Contractor Registry (CCR), where all entities must be registered prior to applying for a federal grant, is going away; CCR is being replaced by a more inclusive system known by its acronym, SAM. 

The System for Award Management (SAM) is combining all federal grants and procurement systems and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance into one new system.

This consolidation is being done in phases. The first phase of SAM includes the functionality from the following systems:

 * Central Contractor Registry (CCR)
 * Federal Agency Registration (Fedreg)
 * Online Representations and Certifications Application
 * Excluded Parties List System (EPLS)

The advertised overarching benefits of SAM include "streamlined and integrated processes, elimination of data redundancies, and reduced costs while providing improved capability." Future phases of SAM will add the capabilities of other systems used in federal procurement and awards processes.

If you have an active record in CCR, you have an active record in SAM. You do not need to do anything in SAM at this time, unless a change in your organization's circumstances requires updates to your Entity record(s) in order for you to receive funds or you need to renew your Entity prior to its expiration. SAM will send email notifications 60, 30, and 15 days prior to expiration of the Entity. To update or renew your Entity records in SAM you will need to create a SAM user account and link it to your migrated Entity records.

You do not need a user account to search for registered entities in SAM by typing the DUNS number or business name into the search box at www.sam.gov. 

GGO Deputy Director Merril Oliver will host a (free) webinar in the near future to discuss SAM and what it means to entities applying for federal grants.  We'll email you an invitation when the date has been set.

Federal Research Priorities & Budgets FY13

Many of the federal agency speakers at our May 2012 grants conference for higher education provided updates to their presentations during a series of webinars that took place in the fall, patterned after our conference presentations. The information is mostly meant for entities seeking federal research dollars. 

If you'd like to see these federal research priorities and budget updates, you can download the recorded webinars that were recently posted by

United Way of Central Maryland Offers Community Grants
Deadline is February 7


The United Way of Central Maryland FY2014 Community Impact Grant application is now available online. The deadline is February 7, 2013 at 4:00 p.m.

UWCM is a regional organization focusing efforts in central Maryland within six defined geographic areas: Baltimore City and the counties of Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford and Howard. UWCM is committed to helping people, especially the most vulnerable members of the central Maryland community by meeting their basic needs, helping them access essential services, helping them through crisis to ultimately achieve a better quality of life.

UWCM is holding grants bidder conferences and Q&A workshops for this grant throughout January. For information and an application, visit their site.

To receive email notifications of state and private grants like this one, go to GGO's homepage at www.grants.maryland.gov and sign up (bottom right hand side of page.)

Maryland compares favorably to community foundations throughout the U.S.

The Maryland Community Foundations Association, housed within the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, has issued a new report about Maryland's 14 community foundations.  

Community foundations are publicly supported foundations operated by, and for the benefit of, a specific geographic region or community.  The first community foundation was started in Cleveland in 1914 when separate charitable trusts were consolidated into one institution. Since then, community foundations have become one of the fastest growing forms of philanthropy. Community foundations receive contributions from a variety of donors: individuals, families, businesses and private foundations, enabling a wide range or donors to participate in community philanthropy. Donors may establish and name component funds within their community foundation, and designate the fund's purpose, which may be specific, like scholarships, or to address a broad field of need, such as the arts or the environment.

Most important, community foundations build and steward permanent endowments for the communities they serve, using the income from those endowments to address changing needs.  Every Maryland resident is served by a community foundation.  Maryland foundations gave a combined $108,883,565 in grants last year.

Read the report here. 

There is something unique among Maryland counties going on in Harford.  It's called the Harford Grant Academy, a 12-week program that provides grant training in research, proposal development and writing, and grants management. The Academy's first class graduated in December. 

The Harford Grant Academy was founded earlier this year by the Community Foundation of Harford County, Harford County Department of Community Services, Harford Community College and Harford County Public Library to assist area nonprofits in increasing their capacity for fundraising and resource development. The Academy is supported in part by the Dresher Foundation.

Through its graduates, Harford Grant Academy hopes to develop a local network of trained grants professionals to staff and support the academy in the future and to provide support and feedback to nonprofits throughout Harford County.

"The collaborative effort and vision of the Harford Grant Academy's founding leadership is something that other counties will want to replicate. It will become a model of what can be achieved to increase nonprofits' capacity throughout the state," said Eric Brenner, director of the Governor's Grants Office, who spoke at one of the sessions. "The Community Foundation of Harford County deserves particular praise for going beyond grant making to embrace the leadership building role to which the best community foundations in the country can aspire."

The next class of the Harford Grant Academy will meet in September 2013. Application information will be available in the spring from the Community Foundation of Harford County.

"Participants in the Harford Grant Academy learn fundamentals that carry over into all areas of the development field," said Tamara W. Zavislan, executive director of the Community Foundation of Harford County.

The Harford Grant Academy builds on local resources, such as Community Foundation of Harford County's Nonprofit Resource Center and the Foundation Center Cooperating Collection at the Bel Air branch of the Harford County Public Library.