Victim Compensation Certification: Best Practices in Completing the Form

JEFF BLYSTONE: Okay, I think you’re ready to go, Joel.

JOEL HALL: I am ready. Thank you very much, Jeff, and thank you very much for the VOCA Center.

We couldn’t do this without them. I want to accept, you know, their participation. They are hosting this webinar, but it is an OVC presentation.

And we also plan to take this recording and put it on our OVC website. I know last year we kind of didn’t, but we’re going to do that this year so we can save this for prosperity.

So again, I want to thank everybody so much for joining the Victim Compensation Certification webinar. OVC, OJP and the department greatly appreciate your participation in the webinar to ensure accuracy, consistency, and understanding of the statutory requirements of filling out the VCC forms. The data provided in a certification form is used by OVC to calculate allocations for VOCA-eligible crime victim compensation programs.

Once these calculations are complete, State Victim Assistance Formula Grants received for up to 47.5 percent of the remaining balance plus any funds not needed to reimburse victim compensation programs at the statutorily established rates.

So we use, again, this is probably the most important form that we use at OVC to help us make our determinations in terms of the different funding levels that we go to. Not just victim assistance, but it’s also kind of used in terms of our set-asides and many of the different programs that we fund throughout. So we, this is the first step. And we use this, and so we greatly appreciate you taking the time.

Now, I give this presentation every year. I also usually give it at the VOCA National Conference if they, if I’m accepted to do my presentation.

And this one hasn’t changed much in the past year, but it’s always sometimes good to get a refresher.

I also know there’s many new administrators that are coming on. There’s been a lot of turnover in the past few years both on the victim assistance and victim compensation side.

So please take this moment to kind of listen to what I’m saying and save your questions towards the end and write them down and then we’ll try our best.

We have a few grant managers on the on the line that can probably provide assistance as well as I will answer any questions that you have.

And I think that’s about it. Jeff, next slide.

Hello, I’m Joel Hall. I am the Deputy Division Director for the State Victim Resource Division with the Office for Victims of Crime under the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Okay, you can go back, Jeff. You can go back now.

What are our learning objectives? Our learning objectives for today are to understand how to accurately complete the VCC form.

As some of you may know, or many of you who have been around for a while, we redid the form 2 or 3 years ago--FY 21 to be precise. And so, it’s much simpler than it used to be, but there’s still things that people make errors on. The OG finds things all the time. So, it’s very important that we kind of review what steps we need to take, that you’re filling out the right boxes in the right way.

And actually, what’s going to be different this time is objective number 2, which I’m going to go just briefly over some best practices to ensure that victim compensation programs are using appropriate accounting principles to keep track of your expenses.  

There’s some best practices that you can do to avoid some of the over- or under-certifications that do happen.

I work with compensation programs all the time in terms of there’ll be some transition, or they’ll have a finding, or there could be a lot of different things. And so they’re trying to like re-create their policies or figure out what, you know, the previous person did, and it sometimes can be very complicated. So, I’m just going to go over some best practices. Every compensation program--all 54, 50 states 4 territories, do things a little bit differently but there are definitely some universal practices that we can promote to ensure a better, consistent, and accurate VCC form, and program information. Okay, Jeff.

Certification Requirement: Each state (including territories) that applies for the victim compensation funding must submit an annual, submit annually the VOCA compensation certification to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime.

They must retain records. This is very important. I just ran into this recently: 2 CFR part 200.334, supporting the data entered into the certification form. This is how we get, a lot of times, that OIG or OCFO have non-supporting documentation. You must maintain those records based on your recordkeeping provisions.

Maintain a policy that describes the calculation review and approval process for the certification.  We’ve been working on this a lot with, as the OIG has been going out as long as--as well as when we’re doing our monitoring. A lot of states don’t have any policies. They have one lady who’s been doing it for 25 years, and she, she keeps, she knows what she’s doing and doesn’t really have any kind of policies to explain for her replacement. So, it’s very important that you have it laid out--that any person who could walk in knows what you know. And--and I’m not just talking say “Oh, it goes to this person or this person.” I mean it will say what file you pull it from, it’ll say what, you know, accounting records, maybe there’s accounting codes. It should be very detailed so that any person who started the job could review it and know what they’re doing. 

Have the certification form completed and reviewed by individuals with specialized personal knowledge of the compensation program funding. So, it should not just be one person filling this out. It should be multiple different people going for a review to make sure that it is as accurate as it can be so that it’s a combined effort to ensure accuracy and consistency.

Again, going back to, yeah, I’ve been here for a while, as we just found out as we were digging through our offices. I’ve been here for a while, and I’ve seen—I’ve seen it to where it’s just like this one person--one person reviews it and management has no idea how this form is even filled out. So, it’s important that you have actually a way of reviewing it and having it signed off on.

Give me one second. Try to keep these--I see chats coming in.

All right. And make sure that the entity’s authorized representative, as assigned in the JustGrants system, or other individual with signing authority signs the certification.

So how do you know that? In JustGrants if you see the signing authority and your DMRA slash DIAMD system, if you can look and see the signing authority, make sure it’s that person. Or they’re equivalent, or somehow that individual, you know, maybe that person left and their, and their equivalent is coming in.

But it’s very important not to have necessarily the accountant or whoever signing it. There should be somebody who’s signing it who’s authorized to sign it.

Next slide.

Over certifications and under certifications. So, the certification forms provided are used by OVC to calculate allocations for VOCA-eligible crime victim compensation programs.

In the event of an over certification necessary steps will be taken to recover funds that were awarded in error. OVC does not have the authority to permit states to keep amounts obtained through over certification that they were not entitled to.

In the event of an under certification of amounts paid to crime victims, no supplemental payments to the state will be issued to correct the state’s error.

Now, this question is asked every year. This will be addressed. I can’t say what’s going to happen, but I’m going to say it will be addressed in the new federal regulations to a certain extent.  A lot can happen, but we hear your feedback. So just, you know, if any questions come about this, hopefully with the new regulations, this sometimes inconsistency will be addressed. I can’t give any details what that will be. In fact, it’s still being worked out, but we will be addressing this. That’s all I can say. At least we’ll see it when we get to the review, the public comment period, see what people think.

All right. Next one.

All right, so now we’re going to go through a line-by-line walk-through of the form.

All right, this is the form. So, basically, you’re going to see in the next two slides, I basically copied and paste as we kind of moved down the form. So, it’s not the whole form. This--what we’re looking at is just kind of the top section.

And as we go through kind of each line, we’re going to just, you know, talk a little bit about some of the best practices. So, obviously, and I’m probably going to go over each line, might be slightly redundant, but there are a lot of new people, and I think it’s very important that we be as detailed as possible.

So we have state or territory. So if you’re the State of Wisconsin, just put Wisconsin. That’s all you need to do. You don’t have to say State of Wisconsin even though--it’s not--we won’t send it back if you do but just say Wisconsin, California, whatever you want to do.

UEI, a number, that’s unique entity identifier, that’s what you get through--when you identify with www.SAM.gov. As a history reminder, that was originally the DUNS number, and we changed to the UEI number.

If you’re not sure what’s your UEI number, if you go to your grant, when you open up your award page, you’ll see your UEI number. So, everybody’s got a UEI number. You can’t have a OVC grant without one. So, if you’re just not sure because maybe it was somebody else in a different department who put that information in, you will need to know what that number is. Just go to your award document and look for that UEI number, and put it right in that box.

Why? We started this last year, why did we put the UEI number in there? Let me get a little history.

So right now, we’re still doing these VCC forms externally instead of internally. Originally, for people who remember it, it was all done in GMS or Grants Management System, and so you would fill out this form in the system.

But when we switched over to JustGrants, they, because of the learning curves and some of the difficulties they had with the implementation of JustGrants, they were just not ready to create a separate component for the VCC form.

Still on the to-do list. I’ve met with people about 6 months ago. They’re not ready yet. Maybe FY 24 we’ll have it done, but right now we’re still doing it externally.

And this UEI number helps us to find these forms. So, with this number in the system, they.re able to run queries and do different things to keep track of that. So, if they need to pull a UEI form for some, you know, a VCC form, and they can use the UEI number to find it and pull it up real quick. So that’s kind of why we have it.

Name of state administering agency. So put down the main agency, the name of the agency, not so much the subdivision. So, let’s say for example you have the Office of the Attorney General but you’re a subagency, which might be like say Crime Victims’ Reparations Program or something like that. So, you may want to put Crime Victims’ Reparations Program. And put the state down there, say the New Mexico Crime Victims’ Reparation Program. But it could be a different name.

So, I would try not to just say the--the parent agency, even though you can--you can if you really want to say Office of the Attorney General, Office of Victims’ Compensation Programs, etcetera. But I would just put the prime, like what your prime agency’s name is.

The reporting period. Give me 1 second here.

As per my email as everybody saw, it is October first, 2021, through September 30, 2022. Why is that? So a lot of people—number one question I get--why these--why do we have these dates? Well, it’s—I’m going to help you try to conceptualize why we do what we do.

So, we kind of have a look-back period. So, think about it. We’re technically in FY 24, but hopefully one day we’ll be collecting this in FY 23, so we kind of look back at FY 22, giving you a lot of time. Hopefully, one day this will be with the application, the VCC form will be with the application in FY 23, but we’re kind of running--I’m trying to—we’re kind of behind but we collect information from FY 22, the reporting period. We collect it in FY 23 for the allocations in FY 24. So, that’s kind of how it works.

We try to give a lot of time. We could ask for it right after the FY 20--this performance period--say ask for it in November of FY 22, but then you might still have, you know, reconciliations to do and different things that you may need to do to pull that information together. Coming back to it almost, say we’re almost like a year later, actually a little over a year. So, this time gives you plenty of time to double check your math, making sure of things, maybe there’s refunds that come in, a lot of different things. So, that’s kind of why we have this look-back period. And we go in an order every year. So, that’s the reason why we do it: looking back to FY 22, collecting in FY 23, to make the allocations in FY 24.

All right.

Okay, what is this one thing? All right, next slide.

All right, Line A: Total Amount. Total amount paid to or on behalf of crime victims by the compensation program from all funding sources.

So, enter the total amount of expenditures incurred by the compensation program for payments to or on behalf of crime victims for all funding sources--all funding sources, it’s important to remember that--for the relevant federal fiscal year.

If you can remember, we used to collect all those federal, all those funding sources in a different part of this form, which we decided to get rid of because it was kind of redundant. It was too much information. It took too long. It was an administrative burden. So this, you know, you need to make sure. We’re no--no longer double checking that you’re putting all your different sources in there and all the different claims that you pay out.

As you see the information below, we have different pieces of information related to forensic sexual assault examinations, things you can keep track of, payments to the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, payments, amounts recovered from restitution collection and subrogation, et cetera. So, these are important things to remember to insert into line A. Basically, everything that you paid out on behalf.

Do not include expenditures for costs other than compensation payments, i.e., administrative costs.

This was the common thing we used to find all the time when I would do--go out to states. So let’s say, for example, you have chosen to use your 5 percent admin to pay for maybe staff or whatever, what else was going on, so let’s say you had a $100, your grant award was $100. Well, 5 percent or $5 of that would go to administrative cost but then you would put in line A, 100 percent, put $100 because you didn’t account for your administrative cost. So, it’s very important to make sure you subtract that when you’re filling in line A, depending on how much money you use. So just always remember, don’t include administrative costs in line A.

All right, next slide.

Line B1: VOCA Grant Funds.

So, this is where we’re going to deduct the federal amounts. As you know per the federal guidelines, [we’ll] reimburse up to 75 percent of state dollars of what you’ve spent. So, what we need to do is put the federal dollars in here.

So, you would put the grant years that you’re using. Let’s say this is, theoretically you’re using 21 or 20, 21, and 22--that you--your particular program actually used three different years of funding. Some states do, some states will pull it all out at once, but FY 20, 21, 22 and then the amount of money that you used out of those grant awards to pay for compensable expenses for claims during the reporting period.

Now, number one mistake people make is they will actually put the federal grant award. Let’s say the grant award is $1,000.

So in 2020, V1-GX-0056, you received $1,000 grant award. And then you put that, you put $1,000 in there, even though you didn’t use it all. You only used actually, you know, $200 of it.

So, you’re kind of like over, over--this is how over certi--over and under certifications happen because it doesn’t mean put your total grant award amount. It means the amount of money that you actually spent that reporting period from that federal award.

That’s the number one mistake I’d see all the time. I’d see the people’s award amounts. I’m like, no, no, you know. And not only that, you have to keep track of how much you pulled out because you may actually pull a little bit out of FY 20 over the past 3 years, so you have to see what the remaining balance is. So, it gets really complicated. So, just number one mistake, do not put your federal award amount there. Put how much money you spent out of that award for that reporting period on claims.

Alright, next slide.

Enter amounts paid to or on behalf of crime victims that are returned to the state. Examples: over payment, erroneous payments, and uncashed checks during the federal fiscal year. Do not include recoveries from restitution collections or subrogation under a civil lawsuit as refunds. So, as you see my little blurb there, this can include refunds from open awards and closed out awards.

Many times I get questions, we all have questions about, oh, we received an uncashed check from a doctor’s office from 7 years ago. That grant is long closed. How do we return this money to OJP?

Well, the answer is that’s what this line’s for. You keep track of that and you can use that to, the refunds doesn’t have any specific periods, how many refunds you got for, during that period--the reporting period--from all sources. It could be an old check, could be something from an open grant that you have. It could be something from a few years earlier that’s been closed down.

So that’s what this, this refund section is, is to kind of capture those--those odd payments, you know, there’s so many different. These are just examples: overpayment and erroneous payments, uncashed checks. It just and there’s probably more some of you might be--be like, “Oh, there’s more things that we have.” We’re just giving those examples.

Next slide.

Property Damages or Loss Payments.

Enter amounts paid to, or on behalf of, crime victims for property damage or losses. Please exclude the amounts paid for damage to personal medical-related devices (see the Guidelines, section IF) and the following (if authorized by state or statute policy): crime scene cleanup, replacement costs for clothing and bedding held evidence and necessary building modifications, equipment to accommodate physical disabilities resulting from a compensable crime, locks, doors, windows--yes, door jams and the windows--not just the locks. If the door was destroyed, you can replace the door jam, the door, whatever.

Use your judgment. We’re very flexible. We get this question every year. You have the flexibility to make those decisions to the spirit of the guidelines.

So as long as it’s, it’s a door, I guess. As I said, well, how can you replace the door when you can’t--when the door jam’s broken? You can replace all that to make the victim safe at home. That’s what we’re here for.

I think we’re actually, during the next regulation, when the federal regulations come out, they’ll be a little more wiggle room on that, but I can’t remember what we have been working through. But hopefully, there’ll be some more detailed information on that.

Okay, next slide.

Line B for Other. Other Deductions.

Enter all other deductions. This include--this includes all federal funding included in line A, except for VOCA compensation or SLFRF funds, expended for victim compensation payments. Do not include recoveries from restitution collections or subrogation under a lawsuit. As you can remember, the VOCA Fix Act, of FY 21, says that you can now keep that money.

This line can be used for many things. A lot of times I try to tell people to keep it blank unless you have something specifically. Sometimes I’ve seen states use this for over, or not over, yeah, not under certifications, over certifications. You could technically say, “Oh, we over certified by $4,000.”

You could use that. There could be some kind of interesting payment that you get from the state that doesn’t necessarily qualify for--to be compensable. I’m trying to think if there’s a few states with some interesting kind of things that they pull out there, but this is kind of used for many different reasons.

Technically, yeah, that’s what it’s used for. And if you have any questions, you can ask your grant manager. In general, we’re pretty flexible. This is kind of that “And/or, we don’t know what box to fit in,” and that’s what’s right. And it’s very important too to write the description if it’s like an AEAP fund thing that you got separately for—that’s used for different payment--that you paid out of compensable expenses. So, it could be a P--it could be—there’s so many examples.  Sometimes when I read through things, because now that I’m one of the supervisors, I have to read all of them. And a lot of states have very unique deductions that they use. So, there’s many different examples. If you have any questions, ask your grant manager. They’re here to help.

Next line.

Line C: Deductions.

All right, so this one is automatically calculated, so you don’t really have to fill this out. It says enter the sums of B1 through B4, but technically it’s calculated automatically. However, I always strongly encourage everybody to always double-check the math to make sure the system is working right. Again, you get this form from us. Maybe modifications were made, so it never hurts to double-check your math.

All right, next one.

Line D: State-Funded Payments (Total)

State payments to or on behalf of crime victims, subtract line C from line A.

This is another one that’s done automatically. So, you don’t really have to do it. You fill out those--those first forms. Again, you fill out line A and line C, and the system will automatically calculate that.

Hopefully, in time, we will be developing a new system that will do it all in the system. But right now, this form is the best tool that we have to help you check your math. But again, always double-check your math. Don’t rely on a PDF form to do that for you. It’ll calculate it. Double-check it, and hopefully everything will be fine.

Next slide.

Recovery Personnel Costs.

Enter the salary and benefit costs allocable to seek recoveries (a percentage of time spent on recoveries X annuals), you know, somebody’s annual salary for individual employees whose primary responsibility is directly and specifically related to recovery efforts defined as individuals who spent at least 75 percent of their work time undertaking recovery efforts.

Recovery efforts are activities directly attributable to obtaining restitution, refunds, and other reimbursements for the expenses of specific crime victims who have received compensation from the state program. Please see the Guidelines. There’s a lot more information under section VF.

Please attach supporting documentation such as time sheets and job descriptions. Please remember to do that. Time sheets and job descriptions. Sometimes I just get accounting codes and files and things like that and that’s okay. I don’t exactly mind that as long as you have the other supporting documentation substantiating the amount of recovery cost, claims, and that person’s primary responsibilities directly and specifically related to recovery efforts.

I know we get, a lot of times, people are like, “Well, what happens if we have somebody at 30 percent, can we?” No, it’s got to be 75 percent. That’s, hopefully, changing. Again, this is, we’re doing such great things with the new compensation regulations. I don’t, I’m not entirely sure, but I know there could be some potential changes. So, I know this frustrates some states sometimes but, hopefully, that will be changing.

Next slide please.

Line F: Total State Payments and Recovery Costs Eligible for Matching VOCA Grant Award. Total state payments and recovery costs.

So, this is the line. All right, this is a line when everything is done that we use to calculate what your allocations are.

People sometimes will look at the VCC forms, and they’ll see allocations, get confused, but if you, if you get paid, you know, $100, and we reimburse you $75. You know, let’s say the reimbursement or claims were $100, and you were reimbursed up to 75 percent, and your allocation would be 75 percent.

So, this is what we use. I really would like to put, maybe when I have to redo the form, so I’ll do it so you can actually see like, well actually calculate the allocations on there.

But I won’t change it right now, but that--so people can see that, cause I get that all the time. Like, well, our line F is this, but we’re only getting X amount of dollars. Well, that’s because you’re only being reimbursed 75 percent. The allocation chart actually kind of shows that but still get those questions every year.

All right, next line.

Certification.

I certify to the Department Justice, OVC, under penalty of perjury, on behalf of myself and the state or territory listed, that I have the authority--that’s important--to make this certification. Please, we send so many back because the wrong person signs them. So, it’s very important that the person signing is the correct person.

We will check, on the JustGrants, to see who your signing authority is, so. There are times where there may be somebody certified to do that due to changes or whatever, but please let your grant manager know or have some kind of form that says this person temporarily doing it.

It’s pretty easy for your entity administrator to go in and change names pretty fast. So, you know, it used to be much more complicated, but I would say do that quick so that when we’re reviewing them, it’s important.

I understand that in the event of an over certification the OVC will take the necessary steps to recover funds that were awarded in error. And then, in the event of an under certification, no supplemental payments to the state or territory will be issued to correct the error.

All right, next slide.

And this is where you put the name and signature. Some people do, cause they have some issues—I’m not sure why in this modern age we still do, but some people have. They’ll print it out, physically sign it, and like rescan it. That’s acceptable. We’ll take those. I would prefer that it’s an electronic signature, but if you do that, that’s fine as well. But sometimes people just have signature issues for different reasons, but it’s a common error.

Must be the signing authority or their approved representative. I know I said that. I think it’s probably the fifth time of saying that. Number one: It is one of our biggest and largest issues--so just repeating.

Next slide.

So, this is part where I talked about a little differently. I went much more in detail with some of the things in the OIG errors during the VOCA conference. When I held my--all 10 people who attended that training really enjoyed themselves.

Funny story, the OIG was there and writing down everything I said which is good. They didn’t come back, so I guess that was good but--so next year, if I hold this issue, I’ll go into more things about some of the best practices in terms of what we see when we do our reviews and OIG and stuff.

But in general, let’s just talk about best practices to track expenses, and I see this missed all the time. Retain documentation to support all decisions made. I know many states have different rules related to retaining documents.

Sometimes states, you know, have to follow the federal rules. Sometimes states have 99 years as their retention rate. Yeah, there’s actually one state that does it that way.

So, make sure you have that information if we need to find out whether it be claims or something. We pull claims out, and we do a quick sampling. Then, we only do 12. So many times we’re not really going too deep into that because it’s really, you know, the compensation programs are their own entities. But sometimes, if we see something, we may want to double- check against maybe a spreadsheet to make sure you’re accounting for everything correctly. It’s important to keep that information.

Document eligibility or ineligibility.

It’s very important to know why we make decisions.

Again, most of the claims we look at when we come out are very straightforward but sometimes there’ll be some questions. And we’re like, “Well your policy says this but then you denied them,” or “The policy says this, and you let them go through.”

So consistency is important, so that when we look at the stuff, basically, you know, again, every compensation program is its own entity. So, what we’re looking at is really basing it against, in a lot of cases, claims about your policies. It’s very important to follow your policies and document it correctly.

Have detailed policies.

I mentioned this before, and I’ll mention again. When we come out, I’d like to see, I would--how I feel is when I come out and I’m doing a site visit, I want to be able to read that form and know how you perform your duties as if I was going to start a job there.

I could say, “Oh, with form X174Z, or this code, all these codes in this general ledger are for these expenses related to funeral expenses. Or basically, I know where things are going and how you collect them. And then also, you know, when you pull in your reports, you know, because you might have different names for different reports that your state uses, not every state has the same name or same kind of category. So, this is makes me feel better when states have these detailed policies to ensure compliance, accuracy, and consistency.

I don’t know how many times like we’ll get a call from a new state administrator and they’ll be like what do we do? You know, I just got hired in this job. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know where they keep the files. And so it’s very important. That’s why we’ve been very consistent to make sure that they actually have accurate policies.

Luckily, we have a very active and wonderful partner with the VOCA Center, who can also help you. Suzanne Breedlove, who’s a former VOCA compensation administrator, is always there to help and provide assistance as we need. But also, you know, the best policy—prevention is the best medicine. So, why don’t you fill out these policies and work on them so that you can help be consistent. Not everybody’s going to keep the job forever. People move on, retire, different reasons. So, do your replacement a favor and have adequate policies.

Next slide.

Resources.

So, a lot of times people ask me well, where’s this DOJ Grants Financial Guide? Well, you can go--these slides will be available on our website and things, so you can click on there. There’s an online financial management training that everybody needs to attend.

• DOJ Grants Financial Guide
• Guide to Completing Financial Status Reports
• Also very important: the VOCA Victim Compensation Guidelines
• Online Financial Management Training

People always ask me who needs to take it in my office? I say you are required, and anybody in JustGrants under the grant list, whether it be the grant manager, alternate grant manager, financial manager, and. not necessarily the authorized rep, but those three need to.

But if everybody is touching it, it’s a free training. You go online and you take it. So, I can only promote education related to what we are, our expectations are the best. And not only that, they even have advanced trainings that you can go beyond just the basic training and come in and learn what you need to learn about the different systems and different federal regulations.

You can learn as much about 2 CFR as--part 200--as you ever really wanted to, and we’ll--we’ll teach you as much as we can.

And, before we get to questions, I want to go over the email that I sent, as a reminder. We--Jeff, you can go to the question thing, but I want to go over a couple of things.

So, just a reminder that these are due December 29th. A question I get is like, “Well, we’re really busy in December. We have closeouts and everything. So how are we going to get that done?”

Well, that’s why we have it open for 2 months. If you’re really busy in December, why don’t you start doing it now? This is for a period that was due like a year, year plus ago so you can actually start them now.

So that’s—that’s my--my counter to be like, “Oh, the end of year is very busy.” Well you got 2 months. So, I don’t know how busy you are in November but start early, and then hopefully you can take your vacation time or use or lose leave time or whatever you need to do.

Grant submission.

Let’s see, again, the periods are between October 1st, 2021, September 30th,2022.

Do not submit these via GAMS in JustGrants. You’re going to give this directly to your grant manager through OVC.

We take them. We collect them. I review them. Kate reviews them. Then, they go off to somewhere, some accounting people. They also review them. So there’s a lot of review. These are done. So, do not do GAMS. Those GAMS will be denied and sent back. So, you just send it directly to your grant manager once you have these forms completed.

Pay attention to the email related to the naming authority. We use that naming authority in terms of state initials, VCC form, award year, all these different things to make sure, to help keep track of that within JustGrants.

Again, with the UEI number and the naming convention, we’re able to keep track of these things in the system. If we need to pull reports, we can pull reports using the naming convention.

So, it’s very important to follow that. The grant manager for OVC will correct that if you didn’t follow it directly, but we will do that.

And I think that’s about it in regards to anything else I wanted to pull out.

Yeah, just remember, I’m trying to just give you a history lesson. We re-did the form in 2021, and then we kind of really, because we were took so long to do the form, we really pushed the VCC form collection really far back.

I’m trying to slowly move it back into a more reasonable time in the FYSA 23.

Hopefully, next year it will be even a little earlier. So, one day we’ll actually have it back to where it’s done in JustGrants, That would be--that would be great. I’m hopeful it’ll be that next year.

But I am ready to receive your questions, so if I can find the question box.

If anybody has any questions, you can hit me up. I’m here to help. I also have Jalila, who’s also here.

Yes, I called you out Julia, to provide any assistance for any questions you may have.

JEFF BLYSTONE: If you’d like to raise your hand, we can also do it that way.

JOEL HALL: Yes, so yeah, since we’re not getting many questions, you can either put it in chat or you can, you can actually, yeah, raise your hand and open your mic if you want to as long as it’s not a very complicated question.

JEFF BLYSTONE: Julia has a question.

JOEL HALL: All right, Julia from American Samoa or …?

JEFF BLYSTONE: American Samoa, yes.

JULIA PEREIRA: Hi Joel. Hi Jeff.

JOEL HALL: All right. I haven’t seen you since Pittsburgh.

JULIA PEREIRA: I wasn’t in Pittsburgh, but I saw you in D.C.

JOEL HALL: Oh, sorry.

JULIA PEREIRA: It’s okay.

JOEL HALL: Yeah, it’s just a little picture.

JULIA PEREIRA: So, my question for the very--for the--for the two of us who haven’t yet started our victims comp program, so does that mean we only submit our report next year? December?

JOEL HALL: Once you actually have, yeah, you would not do it yet. Once you actually have an established program where you’re making payouts—so, just for everybody to understand, America Samoa is wanting to develop their own victim compensation program. As time moves on, as you start paying out compensable expenses, you collect that information. Then you will report on it the next year.

You haven’t really started paying expenses yet. So the second you start paying, you start recording that, and then the following year is when you do the VCC form to then to get your grant.

JULIA PEREIRA: All right. And then one more other question in--on the form, Section B-1, where you had the table. So I know you listed the federal fiscal years so, you know, how we could like do different multiple years, award years, multiple amounts, the amounts that we put in, that also, too, does not include admin costs, correct?

JOEL HALL: That’s correct. So those fiscal years, those are deductions, that table you saw. So those also, I think it says it at the bottom of the slide, you would also account for the admin costs, no not account for admin costs, yes, correct.

JULIA PEREIRA: All right, that’s it. That’s all I got. Thank you.

JOEL HALL: No problem.

JEFF BLYSTONE: Joel, there’s a uh--.

JOEL HALL: So once America Samoa, once America Samoa decides to, then we’ll have officially 55 programs, so. All right, any other questions?

JEFF BLYSTONE: There’s a question in the chat, Joel, about how soon the recording will be available.

JOEL HALL: Yes, I don’t know the answer to that. Hopefully, within a few weeks because we have decided, I made—I’m going to make this call, and we’re going to actually put it on the OVC website.

There is a thing called 508 compliance, and this requires that transcripts be reviewed so to--to do that as well. There’s a lot of things that go into 508 compliance, and it usually take several weeks because we have other products and things that we do. Other webinars are going on now with some of our partners, either within OVC or externally, that we’re going to put on the website. So, it goes into a queue and when they get it done, they get it done.

So, but it will be out before the end of the period, the performance period, which is December 29th, or not the reporting period or the due date, the 29th. So again, at least 2 weeks. I think the last time I did it, it was 3 1/2 weeks so, it depends.

But the second we get this, I’ll get it off to our comms team to start the process and get our contractors doing whatever they do for 508 compliance.

JEFF BLYSTONE: Suzanne has a question, Joel.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Yes. Would it be okay if we put this on our learning management system? Cause we could make it available sooner.

JOEL HALL: Yes, and you can also do that. I think I still, from what we learned last year, I think we still want it to be on both sites.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Okay.

JOEL HALL: There there’s some--the reason for that is there’s other people looking at it. As we learn, you know, the OIG necessarily is a part of the LMS system. So it’s best for us to have this, as transparency, to be on our website, but it also can be on the LMS system sooner. And it doesn’t have the same requirements so, yes, you can do whatever you want to. Again, having it on multiple systems is never a bad thing.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Thank you. And one other thing, someone pointed out that that slide, where you have section A, you have the period as October 1, 22, to September 30, 23, but the one that’s due December 29th is for October 1, 21, to September 30, 22. Is that correct?

JOEL HALL: That is, so go back. Jeff, go back to that. I’m sorry, as we were going through, I was trying to jump over. That is actually the period that we’re collecting information. I should change that out of the script for reporting period. Yes, so this is wrong. So don’t--don’t pay attention to that. I kind of, what I meant to say was that we’re collecting in FY 23. This is for the FY 23 period but the reporting period, the collection period but yeah, I will fix that next time. What I was trying to say, what originally it was supposed to say, “Our reporting periods, FY 20,  we collect for FY 22 for over 23 or 24.” So you’re right. I threw that in at the last minute when I gave them slides, so probably made that mistake, but it is FY 21 to FY 22.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Okay.

JOEL HALL: So, follow my email. I was trying to be, to make an example, and I probably confused more people.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Thank you, Joel.

JOEL HALL: So, right. Maybe we’ll collect correct this slide before we put it onto the thing so we can avoid confusion.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Thanks.

JOEL HALL: All right, back to questions.

JEFF BLYSTONE: No more in the chat, Joel.

JOEL HALL: No more in the chat? All right, well.

JEFF BLYSTONE: I’m sure. Anybody else have anything?

JOEL HALL: If anybody doesn’t have anything, I’ll give you 13 minutes back of your day.

I greatly appreciate the time and effort, and I look forward to this. Again, this stuff will be posted. And I also want to put a shout out to the VOCA Center for their help and, if I’m able to do the presentation next year at the National VOCA Conference, please more than 10 people come so we can—I’ll have an open discussion part so we can have more talks about this, so that we can learn more and maybe improve on things in the future if I learn more from you.

All right, have a great day everybody.

JEFF BLYSTONE: Thanks everybody.

SUZANNE BREEDLOVE: Thanks, Joel. By