URGENT - CRUCIAL GRANT OPPORTUNITIES - PLEASE READ TODAY!! - 5/06

Mon May 29 16:39:59 EDT 2006

- FATHERHOOD GRANTS: TAPPING IN
- DESIGN AND REFINE YOUR GRANT PROPOSALS: FREE TELE-COACHING
- LETTERS OF INTENT DUE TOMORROW, MAY 30 AND THURSDAY, JUNE 1

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Here are three very important postings from Dennis Stoica for anyone
interested in marriage grants.  I'm going to send them all in one email.
If you're not interested in applying for marriage money, delete this email.

The FIRST is an alert about the MARRIAGE money that's available in the
"Fatherhood" grants and an announcement about a newly scheduled briefing by
Dennis about "how to get it" and the regular marriage money which takes
place this Wed night, May 31, 7-9pm EDT.

The SECOND is a remarkable offer in which Dennis Stoica and Carolyn Curtis
of the California Healthy Marriages Coalition are teaming up with Julie
Baumgardner of First Things First to help you design and refine your
project. This is an extraordinary and generous offer by people who are
running three of the most successful Community Healthy Marriage Initiatives
in the country (Orange County, Sacramento, and Chattanooga.)  It's a chance
to pick their brains and get feedback on your ideas about what works and
what doesn't work; ask anything you want about designing your project -
what's likely to be the most cost efficient and effective; what fits for
the next stage - WHAT do we need tested and 'demonstrated'?  I asked why,
when they're so busy, they're doing this and they said they believe that all
ships rise on the rising tide - that by helping this effort nationally they
help their own local efforts.  I guess that's a pretty obvious truth -
strengthening marriage in America can't happen in one little pocket or even
in one large county no matter how well they do.  We have to connect the dots
across the country.  Even if you think you have your program/project
perfectly designed, I encourage you to take time to listen in on one or more
of these FREE calls. You can just lurk.  You don't have to give any of your
own ingenious ideas.  Just listen and then go back and polish your
perfection.  

The THIRD is simply a reminder that your Letters of Intent are due tomorrow
and Wed.  

- diane 

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- FATHERHOOD GRANTS: TAPPING IN

Diane,

I'm very worried that we in the Marriage Education Movement are NOT going to
get our fair share of the money which is being awarded as part of the
"Promoting Responsible Fatherhood" grant, which is due on July 3rd.  A total
of $32 million per year, for each of the next five years, will be issued
through 89 different grant awards - most of them for $250,000 per year.
Marriage is one of three Allowable Activity Areas covered in that grant (the
other two are "Responsible Parenting" and "Economic Stability").  So, at
least a third of that money should go to us Marriage people. But because it
seems like everyone in our camp is focused on the Healthy Marriage
Demonstration Grant, which is due three days before this one, I am worried
that much of the money that should flow to Marriage Projects will flow
instead to projects in the other two areas - simply because not enough of us
in the Marriage Movement are going to be applying for these grants.

Here's one indication that my concerns might be accurate.  Last Thursday and
Friday evening I conducted telephone briefings on those two grants.  Whereas
over 100 people participated in the Thursday-evening briefing on the Healthy
Marriage Demonstration grant, only 40 people participated in Friday's
briefing on the "Marriage and Fatherhood Grant'.

I am going to make one more attempt to rectify this situation.  This coming
Wednesday evening, May 31st, from 7pm to 9pm EDT (that's 4pm to 6pm PDT for
all my fellow West-Coasters) I will be doing a COMBINED briefing for both of
those grants.  I strongly encourage people to tune in and learn more about
both of these very exciting opportunities.  To register, send an email in
advance to  Registration at CaliforniaMarriages.org (that is Registration "AT"
CaliforniaMarriages.org) - with the following information in it - Your Name
& Title; Organization's Name, City, State, and the Phone Number you will be
using to access the call.

When we receive your registration email we will send you a reply email
containing the call-in information plus attachments containing both of the
RFP's in a format that includes page numbers - so we can all be "on the same
page" during the call.

Dennis Stoica
President
California Healthy Marriages Coalition

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- DESIGN AND REFINE YOUR GRANT PROPOSALS: FREE TELE-COACHING

Dear Diane,
There are two necessary ingredients contained in every highly-scored grant
application - a well-designed project, and a well-written application.

Unfortunately, few applications contain both.  In order to improve the
quality of the marriage-related grant applications, the California Healthy
Marriages Coalition and First Things First are teaming up to provide
telephonic Technical Assistance to help applicants design outstanding
projects.  

Here's how it will work.  For the next two weeks, we have scheduled five
different 2-hour blocks of time where we will offer an "Ask the Experts"
teleconference Q&A service.  Our three experts will be:
- Julie Baumgardner, Executive Director of First Things First in
Chattanooga;
- Dennis Stoica - President of the California Healthy Marriages Coalition
and Executive Director of the Orange County Marriage Resource Center
- Dr. Carolyn Curtis - Executive Director of the California Healthy
Marriages Coalition and of the Sacramento Healthy Marriage Project

Here are the times we will each be available:
- On Thursday, June 1, have "Java with Julie" from 7pm to 9pm EDT
- On Friday, June 2, enjoy "Coffee with Carolyn" from 1pm to 3pm EDT
- On Tuesday, June 6, join "Dinner with Dennis" from 7pm to 9pm EDT
- On Wednesday, June 7, have "Coffee with Carolyn" from 7pm to 9pm EDT
- On Friday, June 9, enjoy "Java with Julie" from 3pm to 5pm EDT

Here is the access information to join any or all of the above "Ask The
Experts" conference calls: The phone number is (605) 772-3001. When
prompted, enter the following access code: 420703#. (Note - the only charge
to participate is your normal long distance telephone charges).

The purpose of these conference calls is NOT to help you WRITE your grant
application. Rather, it is to help you design/refine your project, which in
a sense is laying the ground work for your organization for the next five
years.  Think about it - for most of us, these 5-year grants will catapult
us to the next size level as an organization.  So the projects we are
proposing are, in a sense, "who we will be becoming" and "what we will be
doing" as organizations, in the next chapter in our organization's life.
Therefore it is very important that we all design and propose projects that
will be highly effective, and will move our organizations, and the Marriage
Education Movement, forward, across all levels.

The format of these teleconferences will be "open mike" "question and
answer" periods.  So, if you have any questions about the project you are
designing, or if you would like to hear the discussions others are having
with our resident Experts, please join the conference calls at the above
times.  If you would prefer to submit your questions by email, you can do so
by sending your questions to AskTheMEExperts at gmail.com (AskTheMEExperts "at
sign" gmail.com), either during the above times, or in advance of each call
time.  We will do our best to answer as many questions as possible during
the "on air" call periods.

Dennis Stoica
President
California Healthy Marriages Coalition

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- LETTERS OF INTENT DUE TOMORROW, MAY 30 AND THURSDAY, JUNE 1

Just a reminder that Letters of Intent (LOIs) for the two major marriage
grant opportunities (Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage Demonstration) are both
due this week.  The LOI for the Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant is due
Tuesday, May 30 and the LOI for the Promoting Responsible Fatherhood grant
is due Thursday, June 1.  The good news is that these are very easy to
prepare - they can each be prepared in 5 to 10 minutes, and they can be
submitted by email to ofa at dixongroup.com.  (ofa "at sign" dixongroup.com)
Here is the description from the two Funding Announcements: "The letter of
intent should include the number and title of this announcement, your
organizational name and address, two to three sentences describing your
proposed project, a statement indicating that your organization intends to
submit an application for funding, and the contact person's name, phone
number, fax number, and email address. OFA uses letter of intent information
to determine the number of expert reviewers needed to evaluate applications.
Failure to submit a letter of intent will NOT affect eligibility to submit
an application and will not disqualify an application from competitive
review."  Here is a sample letter of intent, which someone could send by
email:

> To: ofa at dixongroup.com Subject: LOI for Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant
> 
> Dear Dixon Group; Please consider this our Letter of Intent to submit an
> application for funding for the Healthy Marriage Demonstration Grant
> (HHS-2006-ACF-OFA-FE-0033).  We plan to apply under Priority Area 8, with an
> emphasis on Allowable Activities 4 and 5.  Specifically it is our intention to
> implement various courses from the Perfect Marriages curriculum to implement
> pre-marital education courses (activity #4) and marriage skills training
> programs for married couples (activity #5) within the entire city of
> Somewhere, California.
> 
> I will be the contact person for this application, and my contact information
> is follows: 
> Phone number - 123-456-7890
> Fax number - 123-456-7890
> email address - BSimpson at SomewhereInc.org
> 
> 
> Mr. Bart Simpson, President Citizens Going Somewhere, Inc.
> 123 Love Forever Lane
> Somewhere, CA 90703

(note - as indicated above, submitting an LOI is a purely voluntary
activity)

Dennis Stoica 
President 
California Healthy Marriages Coalition

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