City of Rohnert Park Foundation - Regular Meeting

All right, we're back, and I would like to welcome everyone to the September 22nd Roanoke Park Foundation meeting. We're going to start with roll call.

Director Adams.

Here.

Director Giudice.

Present.

Director Rodriguez. Here. Vice Chair Elward. Here. Chair Zambor. Also here. Members are present. Great. Okay.

No presentations this evening or executive director or treasurer briefings. So we're on to public comment, item four. Anybody who would like to speak on any items not listed on the agenda, now is a great time to do so. I don't have any public comment cards. Do we have anyone on Zoom who would like to speak?

No, Mayor.

Okay, given that, I'm gonna close the public comment period and we will move to item five, which is our consent calendar. May I get a motion? A motion to approve.

Second.

Yeah, great. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Then we are on to item 6, and that is our action item 6A, consider approving the Runner Park Foundation Board Small Grants Program, Program Guidelines 2026 to 28 Cycle, And we have our senior analyst, Mr. Kevin King. You are the show.

I'm back. Good evening. Thank you. And tonight I'm presenting the updated guidelines for the small grants program for the 2026-2028 cycle. So let's jump right in. Just a brief overview of the agenda. I'm just going to go over overview of the small grants program, the application review process, as well as a little bit of a timeline, and the summary of changes to the guidelines. So as you know, overview of the foundation, specifically the small grants program is what we're talking about today in the guidelines. It's focused on enhancing new partnerships with community members, nonprofits, foundations, public agencies, and similar entities, and which sustain or enhance the community Today we're trying to update the program guidelines for that small grants program for the 2026-2028 cycle. So just briefly going over the grants program, there are four eligible grant categories with which someone may apply for this grant for Rohnert Park. One is community artwork. Second is community beautification, third is education, and the fourth is program support. Grant applications have to be in the amount of $5,000 to $10,000, and the foundation has a budget of $300,000 to apply to the small grants program. So that means as many as 30, or excuse me, as few as 30 can get at the full amount. So jump now that you know, so Anybody who is applying for these small grants has to include these four elements in their applications, scope of work, detailed budget, timeline of project implementation, including tasks, and a detailed description for the purpose and the need of the program. So as the administrator of the program, my job I think I'm just going to take a step back here. So I'm just going to go a little bit over what the review process is for a grant. So a person applies. I get it first to review it for completeness. So I look at these four criteria. And I work with the applicant until these four criteria are met, at which point if the If they complete the application, according to how I see fit, it goes to an internal staff review committee made up of about five members of city staff. That review committee reviews it based on eligibility criteria. If you have your guidelines, it's Exhibit G. And what that is, is four review criteria and four points for each review criteria. Those staff members on that review committee, they score each application. Those scores are tabulated, and if you meet a certain threshold, they are then moved on to this board, the foundation, for the final recommendations and approvals of which grants you guys actually allocate the funding to. So, there are with these guidelines going to be kind of one major change and then everything else is rather minor and more logistical. But the major change from the prior cycle is going to be held in this slide here. qualified applicants so who's eligible for the project is anybody who has a valid business license and beats insurance requirements for the city or city for the foundation they must be for a project that is servicing or offered in runner park and then the third is that they must be a established 501 c 3 and then what those sub bullet points is they have to either be a 501 c 3 irs irs code section 501 c 3 or or have an agreement with a 501 . In addition, what that may include, so they either need to be the charitable organization themselves, they need to have an agreement with that charitable organization, and in the case of the latter, the foundation itself could be that charitable organization for that applicant. That's the major change. The reason we are trying to expand the pool is we've had this $300,000 grant allocation in the past, and as you know by the last report I did up here last month, only $175,000 roughly was allocated, of which only $150,000 was spent. So we're trying to open up the pool of people who can receive the grant of applicants in order to try to spend that entire amount. So that's mostly it. Now I'm just going to go through a summary of the other changes, including that one. So that's the major one, trying to expand that pool with the eligibility. We're also taking away a pre-application meeting that was required in the past. We're making that. We're just encouraging that now. And then the third bullet point there is kind of important. Though it doesn't start with this grant cycle, it'll start with next grant cycle, but we're including the language in this grant cycle is that starting in 2028, you need to have complied with past grant cycles in order to be eligible. Noncompliance with past grant cycles will count against your scoring going forward. And the reason we're starting it next cycle, not this one, it just felt like we just wanted to give people the warning before we actually made the change. It felt like it would have been a little bit too punitive to punish people who perhaps were noncompliant last cycle for whatever reason. Some of those noncompliance may have been an outcome of how this was structured in the past. Okay. We are requiring two contacts now for each project, not just one, in case anybody moves on from their job. Reimbursements requests, before they were made, they were tied very strictly together with the reporting period. So we'd ask for a report in June, in January, in June again, and we would kind of tie the reimbursement request to those reporting periods. That put a lot of work on staff all at once to both do the reimbursement requests and confirm the reports and give them all the sign and confirm everything. By allowing people to make a request whenever they have $2,000 to request, that will spread it out over the year rather than these specific periods. Third, which is we are going to come when somebody asks for 85% or more of their total allocated grant, we're going to request a final project status report at that point. What occurred and what happened is it was very much a challenge to, at the end of the cycle, go back and ask for people for reports on projects that were over a year completed. So we're going to ask them right near closer to completion instead. And they can always amend. And so if they say they only request 85%, and then later on they ask for that last 15, we're like, well, you can amend your final report if you wish. part of that again project status reports we had a project status report and a final report we're just going to combine those two documents into one we're eliminating a lot of like the percentage we had like this thing of like percent complete per task we're just eliminating that that's going to be evaluated by myself how complete it is versus the applicant we're Creating a small grants email so that everything can flow into a general email that anyone at the city who needs access can have access to And then we're making some logistical updates that aren't included in the guidelines, but will help I believe the applicants a lot trying to move everything into kind of more like e-signature, e-contract. If they seek out a reimbursement request, they can do it online in a form rather than emailing me directly, making a little bit more self-service easier. All of the paper requirements and those email requirements, or excuse me, they can still do this process over email or paper if they wish to, but we're trying to create the standard of more of like an e-digital process. It'll make it a lot simpler for folks, especially the e-signature stuff, in my opinion. And then the other one is just I plan to reach out more frequently. I'll probably put out an email once a month to applicants that's like here, you know, that's going to give them instructions on how to do their reimbursement request if they're ready to at that time. That's to help me spread out my workload over the year. And then timeline of the whole thing. So right now we're in 2026 September. We're going over reviewing the guidelines. Plan is to open up the application portal sometime October 1st to November 30th. That might slip down depending on how this meeting goes. and then small grants reviewer committee that's the internal staff committee will review things from October to December and the hope is to bring this back in front of this board in February with a kickoff celebration of grant awardees in March and then after that it's just the reporting period and the reimbursements. Normally we do that FOUNDATION BOARD REVIEW IN JANUARY, BUT WE'RE GOING TO SLIP THAT TO FEBRUARY JUST BECAUSE THERE'S GOING TO BE NEW MEMBERS OF THE FOUNDATION BOARD AT THAT TIME. WE NEED TO GET THEM UP TO SPEED FIRST. ANY QUESTIONS?

GO FOR IT. BEFORE I START, I JUST WANT TO EXPRESS our gratitude to Federated Indians of Great and Rancheria for this amazing program. And thank you, Kevin, very much for the presentation. I think that all of the steps that you are taking not only streamline it, but open it up to a broader pool of potential recipients. So I think it's excellent. I think it's well thought out. And you also put some measures in there that make it a little more manageable for you. And I think that that's really important as well.

i guess i don't have any direct questions apologies but those are my comments any other questions we'll take comments too i don't expect that the public will have a ton of questions all right we got someone mr steve keith i would gladly open the public comment period for you where's my gavel yes

So a person can email either one if they do at rpcity.ca.gov or .org, but it is going to change over to .ca.gov, correct?

That was one of my questions. Okay. Questions from the Foundation Board here? No? I had a couple easy ones. It's been a while since we talked about the review committee. Do you have returning members from previous years, and how did you select those folks?

Of the five members, four of them are no longer with the city.

That's what I was wondering. So who is stepping up to?

That ask has been put out to the team so far. And so far, I've only had one member come back. But I'm going to need a total of five among staff. And I don't know if this board needs to hear, but the idea is they're going to review it over time. It's not like the review committee is going to meet and review. It's going to be, here's the application. Score it. Send me the score when you can. And then I'll just

put those scores in over time and My other question was with the distribution list so I know that people expressed interest throughout the year years Since we did this last and you've been capturing all these folks in one spot You said you were gonna send out a newsletter or some kind of announcement to them right is that October-ish?

Yeah, goal is to put out an email or communication that's going to be telling them when the application period is open, part of the NOFA. And then, yeah, just kind of go from there. And I'll probably do that communication a few times. It's not going to be just one email. It'll probably be on social. We have an old list. I'm going to go back and see if some of those folks are still at their positions. So yeah, there'll be a broad effort to put out. But yeah, I've received a lot of... inquiry on this.

And if we've come across people who expressed interest, can we just send you that list to make sure that they're on it?

Yeah, there's an interest form online, rpca.ca.gov slash small grants. At the top, there should be a link to an interest form. Anybody can just fill that out, and they will see the communications about this program specifically.

Beautiful. That answers my questions. Anything else? Anyone else from the public or on Zoom? No, Mayor. Marvelous. Well, then I think that we've covered everything here. Thank you for that update. And I think we need a motion to approve this.

I'll make a motion that we approve.

I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Fabulous. Happy grant season, Mr. King. Thank you. I was jumping ahead. We've got any communications or matters from the board. That would be item seven. Seeing none, the next thing is item eight, adjournment. Thank you. Let's go.