Current through Reg. 49, No. 38; September 20, 2024
(a) To be eligible for review, each
application must be submitted by the specified deadline with all required
components and all necessary authorization signatures.
(b) Agency staff will review each application
for the following:
(1) legal eligibility of
the institution to participate in a grant program and appropriate authorizing
signature;
(2) conformance to the
federal and state regulations pertaining to grants;
(3) inclusion of unallowable costs;
(4) errors in arithmetic or cost
calculations;
(5) submission of all
required forms;
(6) compliance with
submission procedures and deadlines; and
(7) relevance and appropriateness of the
project design and activities to the purpose of the grant program.
(c) Agency staff will raise issues
and questions regarding the needs, methods, staffing and costs of the
applications. Staff will also raise concerns regarding the relevance and
appropriateness of the project design and activities to the purpose of the
grant program. Staff comments will be sent to the review panel with the
applications for consideration by the panel.
(d) Applicants will be sent a copy of the
staff comments to give applicants an opportunity to respond in writing.
Applicants may not modify the proposal in any way; however, applicants'
responses to staff comments will be distributed to the panel.
(1) Applications with significant errors,
omissions, or eligibility problems will not be rated. Applications in which the
project design and activities are not relevant and appropriate to the purpose
of the grant program will be ineligible.
(2) Agency staff will be available to offer
technical assistance to reviewers.
(e) The agency may use peer review panels to
evaluate applications in competitive grant programs.
(1) Peer reviewers may include professionals,
citizens, community leaders, and agency and library staff to evaluate grant
applications. Peer reviewers must have appropriate training or service on
citizen boards in an oversight capacity and may not evaluate grant applications
in which there is, or is a possible appearance of, a conflict of
interest.
(2) The agency staff will
distribute selected applications to reviewers and will provide written
instructions or training for peer reviewers. Reviewers must complete any
training prior to reviewing applications.
(3) The reviewers will score each application
according to the review criteria and requirements stated in the grant
guidelines.
(4) Each evaluation of
an application for competitive grants shall be appropriately documented by the
peer reviewer conducting the evaluation. The documentation shall include the
scores assigned by the peer reviewer. The peer reviewer may also include
comments that may be shared with the applicant.
(f) Applications will be scored using the
following process:
(1) The peer reviewers will
review all complete and eligible grant applications forwarded to them by agency
staff and complete a rating form for each. Each reviewer will evaluate the
proposal in relation to the specific requirements of the criteria and will
assign a value, depending on the points assigned to each criterion.
(2) No reviewer who is associated with an
applicant or who stands to benefit directly from an application will serve on
the review panel for the grant program in which the application is submitted
for that grant cycle. Any reviewer who is associated with a potential applicant
in the respective category must inform the agency and their organization about
a potential conflict of interest. Any reviewer who feels unable to evaluate a
particular application fairly may choose not to review that
application.
(3) Reviewers will
consider and assess the strengths and weaknesses of any proposed project only
on the basis of the documents submitted. Considerations of geographical
distribution, demographics, type of library, or personality will not influence
the assessment of a proposal by the review panel. The panel members must make
their own individual decisions regarding the applications. The panel may
discuss applications, but the panel's recommendations will be compiled from the
individual assessments, not as the result of a collective decision or
vote.
(4) Reviewers may not discuss
proposals with any applicant before the proposals are reviewed. Agency staff is
available to provide technical assistance to reviewers. Agency staff will
conduct all negotiations and communication with the applicants.
(5) Reviewers may recommend setting
conditions for funding a given application or group of applications (e.g.,
adjusting the project budget, revising project objectives, modifying the
timetable, amending evaluation methodology, etc.). The recommendation must
include a statement of the reasons for setting such conditions. Reviewers who
are ineligible to evaluate a given proposal will not participate in the
discussion of funding conditions.
(6) Reviewers will submit their evaluation
forms to the agency. In order to be counted, the forms must arrive before the
specified due date.
