Writing sample · full proposal
The proposal that follows the letter
Same applicant, same funder, same $74,985. Eleven sections, a logic model carrying the projected numbers, an evaluation design with a named external evaluator, a line budget that reconciles to the dollar, and a risks section that names the condition under which the applicant would stop.
Section weighting.
Word count here is allocated against the published scoring weights of 14 real FY2026 federal competitions, not against instinct. The nearest single rubric is HRSA-26-046 (FY2026): need 20 points, response 25, performance management 15, impact 15, resources and capabilities 20, support requested 5. Actual word allocation is reported and compared at the end of the page.
1Summary
One peer recovery specialist, on the hours the program does not cover
Sixth Street Clinic asks The Colorado Health Foundation for $74,985 over twelve months to staff one peer recovery specialist on overnight and weekend shifts in Pueblo County.
The clinic already runs Second Door, a post-overdose outreach program that meets overdose survivors at the emergency department bedside and stays with them for 90 days. The program works. In FY2025 it enrolled 214 adults, started 79% of them on buprenorphine within 72 hours, and held 60% of them in medication treatment at 90 days.
The program does not run overnight. Between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. no peer is on shift, and in the twelve months to 30 June 2026 that gap cost 41 eligible people their bedside contact. This request closes the highest-volume part of that gap and reaches an estimated 60 additional adults in the grant year.
2Statement of need
Pueblo County recorded 64 overdose deaths in 2025, a rate of 37.9 per 100,000 residents. That is the highest rate among Colorado's ten most populous counties (Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Vital Statistics Program, provisional 2025 data, released April 2026).
The clinical window that follows a nonfatal overdose is short. St. Isidore Regional Medical Center's emergency department logged 388 nonfatal opioid overdose presentations in 2025. A patient who leaves that department without a medication start and without a person to call is at their highest risk of a fatal overdose in the days immediately after discharge.
Sixth Street Clinic covers that window from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week. It does not cover the rest. Between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026, the emergency department paged our peer line 41 times outside covered hours and reached nobody. Our staff later found 18 of those 41 people and enrolled 11. We never made contact with the remaining 23. The program manager keeps that log by hand because we wanted to know the size of the hole before we asked anyone to pay for it.
Two-thirds of the overdose presentations at St. Isidore arrive between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. The hours we do not staff are the hours the problem happens. Section 2 · the sentence the whole request rests on
Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights carry more of those presentations than the rest of the week combined.
The people in that window are ours to reach. Of the 214 adults Second Door enrolled in FY2025, 143 were uninsured at intake, 67%. Pueblo County's median household income sits well below the Colorado median. These are people for whom the alternative to a peer at the bedside is nothing.
3Organizational background and capacity
Sixth Street Clinic opened in 2004 as a volunteer free clinic in a church basement on West 6th Street and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 2006. It now operates a primary care and behavioral health practice serving roughly 6,200 patients a year in Pueblo County, on a FY2025 budget of $4.18 million, with 31 full-time staff, 6 part-time staff and 44 volunteer clinicians.
FY2025 financial statements carry a clean opinion. The clinic's FY2025 Single Audit, required because federal expenditures exceeded $750,000, returned no findings and no material weaknesses. The clinic has administered the State Opioid Response subaward that funds Second Door since March 2023 and has filed every quarterly report on time.
Who does the work.
- Denise Archuleta, Executive Director (0.05 FTE on this project, unfunded by this request). Executive Director since 2016. Signs the MOU and the reports.
- Marcus Ybarra, Second Door Program Manager (0.50 FTE on the program, 0.06 FTE funded by this request for supervision of the new position). Certified Peer and Family Specialist, State of Colorado. Has supervised the program's peer team since its launch in March 2023.
- Peer Recovery Specialist, 1.0 FTE, to be hired. Position description attached. Requires the Colorado Peer and Family Specialist credential or eligibility to obtain it within six months, and two years of documented personal recovery.
- Nurse practitioner, 0.20 FTE, existing staff, unfunded by this request. Prescribes buprenorphine. Since the DEA X-waiver requirement was eliminated in 2023, any DEA-registered clinician on staff may prescribe, and two staff physicians completed buprenorphine prescribing training in April 2026.
- Dr. Lila Ferrante, principal, Ferrante Evaluation Group, external evaluator. Eleven years evaluating behavioral health programs in Colorado. Letter of commitment attached, specifying her role, her hours and her deliverables.
4Program design
Who is eligible.
Adults 18 and over, resident in Pueblo County, presenting to the St. Isidore emergency department after a nonfatal opioid overdose, or self-referring within 14 days of one. No income test. No insurance requirement.
What happens.
The emergency department pages the Second Door line at triage. A peer recovery specialist arrives at the bedside within 30 minutes. The peer's first job is not intake; it is staying in the room. The emergency clinician offers a buprenorphine start before discharge. The peer walks the patient out with a scheduled Tuesday or Thursday walk-in slot at the clinic, already held.
For how long.
Ninety days. The peer calls at 24 hours, again at 72 hours, then weekly for twelve weeks. In FY2025 the average enrolled participant received 14 peer contacts. At day 90 the participant transfers to ongoing medication treatment at the clinic or to a provider of their choice.
Why it works this way.
Two design choices carry the outcome. The first is the 30-minute response, because the willingness to accept treatment after an overdose decays within hours. The second is the 90 days of peer contact, which is where a medication start becomes a medication course. In FY2025, 79% of enrolled participants started buprenorphine within 72 hours and 60% were still in treatment at day 90. Those two numbers are the program.
What this grant changes.
One thing. It adds a 1.0 FTE peer recovery specialist covering Friday, Saturday and Sunday overnight shifts, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., plus a Thursday overnight during the winter months when presentations rise. Everything else stays as it is: same eligibility, same protocol, same prescriber, same database, same supervision.
This is not a new program. It is the existing program running during the hours it currently does not. Section 4 · a bounded slice of a proven whole, which is what the rubrics pay for
Volume.
We project 60 additional enrollments in the grant year. Our current rate is 89 participants per peer FTE (214 participants across 2.4 peer FTE in FY2025). We are projecting below that rate because overnight shifts carry fewer presentations per hour than daytime shifts, and because a share of overnight contacts will be people the day team would eventually have reached anyway.
5Goals, objectives and outcomes
Goal.
Adults who survive an opioid overdose in Pueblo County start and stay on medication treatment, whatever hour they arrive.
Three objectives. No more.
| # | Objective | Indicator | Target | Basis for the target | Data source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Reach overdose survivors during currently uncovered hours | Adults enrolled from overnight and weekend-overnight shifts | 60 in 12 months | Below the current 89 per peer FTE, because overnight volume per hour is lower | athenaOne enrollment record |
| 2 | Start medication treatment quickly | Enrolled participants beginning buprenorphine within 72 hours of the index overdose | 75% | Below the FY2025 actual of 79% (168 of 214), because the overnight prescriber is off site and some inductions wait for the morning clinic | athenaOne medication record, verified against pharmacy fill |
| 3 | Hold participants in treatment | Enrolled participants in medication treatment at day 90 | 60% | Equal to the FY2025 actual of 60% (129 of 214) | Ferrante Evaluation Group REDCap project, 90-day status |
Outputs, counted continuously: pages received, response times, bedside contacts, buprenorphine starts, peer contacts delivered, walk-in appointments kept.
Outcomes, which mature later: the 72-hour induction rate closes about 10 days after each enrollment. The 90-day retention rate for a participant enrolled in September 2027 does not close until December 2027, after the grant period ends. We will report it to you when it closes rather than reporting a partial figure as though it were final.
6Logic model
| Inputs | Activities | Outputs | Short-term outcomes, 0 to 90 days | Medium-term outcomes, 90 days to 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 FTE peer recovery specialist (this request) | Respond to ED pages within 30 minutes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday overnight shifts | 60 bedside contacts | 45 participants (75%) start buprenorphine within 72 hours | 36 participants (60%) in medication treatment at day 90 |
| 0.06 FTE supervision (this request) | Support the ED buprenorphine induction | 60 enrollments | Reduction in unanswered overnight pages from 41 per year toward 0 | Participants transferred to ongoing medication treatment at the clinic or a provider of choice |
| Buprenorphine and pharmacy assistance for 40 uninsured participants (this request) | Deliver 90 days of peer contact: 24 hours, 72 hours, then weekly for 12 weeks | About 840 peer contacts (60 × 14 average) | Participants hold a scheduled clinic appointment within 7 days | Program retains capacity to cover overnight hours after the SOR subaward ends |
| Existing: prescriber, program manager, clinic space, athenaOne, evaluation contract | Hold Tuesday and Thursday walk-in slots | Weekly shift log and response-time report | ||
| Signed MOU with St. Isidore emergency department, June 2026 to June 2029 | Monthly data review with the evaluator | Quarterly evaluation memo |
Assumption under the model, stated because it is the one that could break: that the emergency department pages the line reliably at 2 a.m. as it does at 2 p.m. Section 9 covers what we do if it does not.
7Evaluation
Ferrante Evaluation Group has evaluated Second Door since October 2023 under the clinic's existing contract. Dr. Lila Ferrante remains the evaluator for this grant. She is not paid from this request.
Design.
A pre-post cohort comparison with a contemporaneous internal comparison group. The grant-funded overnight cohort is compared against the daytime cohort enrolled in the same twelve months on the same three indicators. This is not a randomised design and we are not going to describe it as one. It answers a narrower question honestly: does the overnight shift produce results comparable to the shift we already run, and if not, where does it diverge.
Data collection.
Enrollment, demographics and medication records live in athenaOne, the clinic's electronic health record. Peer contacts, response times and 90-day status live in a REDCap project hosted by Ferrante Evaluation Group. Participants consent to the 90-day follow-up at enrollment. Records are matched by clinic MRN, and the linking key stays with the clinic, not with the evaluator.
Schedule.
The program manager reviews the shift log weekly. Dr. Ferrante pulls data monthly and issues a memo each quarter to the Executive Director and the board's quality committee. Final report at 15 months, which is when the last enrolled cohort's 90-day window closes.
What we will report to the Foundation.
Enrollments against 60, induction rate against 75%, day-90 retention against 60%, unanswered overnight pages against the baseline of 41, and expenditure against each budget line. Where a number lands short we will say so and say what changed.
Evaluation obstacles we expect.
Ninety-day follow-up loss is the main one. In FY2025 we could not determine day-90 status for 17 of 214 participants, 8%. Dr. Ferrante counts unknown status as not retained, which pushes the reported rate down rather than up. We are keeping that rule.
8Budget
Total request: $74,985. Twelve months, 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2027.
| Line | Basis | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Peer Recovery Specialist, 1.0 FTE | $21.50 per hour × 2,080 hours | $44,720 |
| Fringe benefits on that position | 24.5% of $44,720 | $10,956 |
| Program Manager supervision, 0.06 FTE | $62,400 salary plus 24.5% fringe = $77,688; × 0.06 | $4,661 |
| Buprenorphine and pharmacy assistance | 40 uninsured participants × $185 | $7,400 |
| Peer travel | 9,000 miles × $0.70 | $6,300 |
| Encrypted mobile device and service | $79 per month × 12 | $948 |
| Total request | $74,985 |
44,720 + 10,956 + 4,661 + 7,400 + 6,300 + 948 = 74,985. The lines add to $74,985. That is why the request is $74,985 and not $75,000.
Why each line is this size.
Peer Recovery Specialist, $44,720. The clinic's peer pay scale runs $20.10 to $23.40 an hour. $21.50 is the midpoint step for a credentialed peer with two years of experience, which is what overnight bedside work requires. The rate is not the entry step because we have tried filling overnight shifts at the entry step and could not.
Fringe, $10,956. 24.5% is the clinic's actual FY2025 blended rate: health, dental, FICA, unemployment, workers' compensation and a 3% retirement match. It is not an estimate.
Supervision, $4,661. Marcus Ybarra supervises the peer team. 0.06 FTE is 125 hours across the year, which is a weekly one-hour supervision session, monthly chart review, and the on-call escalation the overnight shift needs. Peer work without supervision is where peer programs fail.
Buprenorphine and pharmacy assistance, $7,400. 67% of FY2025 participants were uninsured at intake, so we budget 40 of the projected 60. $185 is the clinic's FY2025 actual cost for a first fill and bridge supply until Medicaid enrollment completes.
Travel, $6,300. Peers drive to the emergency department, and after discharge they drive to homes, shelters and the county jail for follow-up contacts. The FY2025 peer team logged 21,400 miles across 2.4 FTE, which is 8,917 miles per FTE. We budgeted 9,000 at the 2025 federal mileage rate of $0.70.
Phone, $948. One encrypted device on the clinic's plan. Peers carry protected health information in a car at 3 a.m.
Cost per participant.
$74,985 across 60 projected participants is $1,250 each, against the program's FY2025 all-in cost of $2,855 per participant. The difference is not a saving and we do not want it read as one. This request buys marginal capacity only. The prescriber, the program manager, the clinic space, the electronic health record and the evaluation contract are already paid for by other revenue, and they do not appear here.
Indirect costs.
We are not requesting any. The clinic's federally negotiated indirect rate is 14.8%, which on this request would be $11,098. We are absorbing it.
What this request does not pay for.
Evaluation, which the clinic funds at $9,400 from unrestricted revenue. Fundraising. Grant writing. Any share of executive salary.
Other funding for this work.
Nothing is committed for FY2027 overnight coverage. An application for $40,000 is pending with a regional health funder for the daytime peer team, decision expected November 2026. If it is funded it does not overlap this request, and we would tell you either way.
9Risks, and what we do about them
Four things could go wrong. We would rather name them than have a reviewer find them.
We cannot hire the position.
Peer recovery specialists with two years of documented recovery are scarce in Pueblo, and our last peer search took 11 weeks. Two current Sixth Street staff are completing the state peer credential and both have said they would take the role. The posting opens on the award notice, not on the start date. If the seat is still empty at week eight, the existing peer team covers the shifts on overtime out of current salary lines, so coverage starts on schedule and the grant simply spends slower.
The emergency department stops paging at 2 a.m.
Overnight staffing at St. Isidore rotates through locum physicians who have not worked with us. The MOU signed in June 2026 runs to June 2029 and names the page protocol. Paper is not the whole answer. Marcus Ybarra runs a 20-minute orientation at each locum onboarding. The page sits in the ED's overdose order set rather than in anyone's memory. The weekly shift log compares pages received against the ED's own overdose presentation count. A gap between those two numbers shows up within seven days.
The prescriber is a single point of failure.
One nurse practitioner at 0.20 FTE carries the induction protocol. Two staff physicians completed buprenorphine training in April 2026, and since the X-waiver requirement ended in 2023 any DEA-registered clinician here can prescribe. Overnight inductions are written by the emergency clinician under the MOU, not by clinic staff, so an overnight vacancy delays the follow-up appointment rather than the medication start.
The overnight cohort does worse than the daytime cohort.
It might. People at 3 a.m. are not people at 3 p.m. If day-90 retention in the overnight cohort falls below 50% for two consecutive quarters, we stop expanding, sit down with Dr. Ferrante, and either fix the protocol or tell the Foundation the model does not transfer to those hours. We would rather return unspent funds than spend them on something that is not working.
10Sustainability
FY2025 revenue was $4.24 million against $4.18 million in expenses, drawn 46% from Medicaid and patient services, 22% from federal grants, 19% from foundations, 9% from individuals and events, and 4% from a Pueblo County contract.
The honest position on Second Door is this. The State Opioid Response subaward through the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration ends on 30 September 2026 and we do not expect it to return at the same level. It carried 22% of the clinic's revenue alongside other federal awards, and its loss is a serious wound rather than a fatal one, because no single source has ever carried this organization.
Three things replace it, and none of them replaces all of it.
Colorado Medicaid reimburses peer support services delivered under supervision. In FY2025 the clinic billed $61,000 of peer time. Our finance director's estimate, built from those actuals, is that roughly 44% of the new position's contacts become billable. That figure depends on two things we do not fully control: the participant enrolling in Medicaid, and the peer's credential being on file. At 44% the position recovers about $24,500 of its $55,676 salary and fringe in a full year. That leaves $31,176 unfunded, and we know it.
The Pueblo County contract, currently $167,000 a year, comes up for renewal in March 2027. The county commissioners have asked for overdose response data, and this grant's shift log is the data they asked for.
The rest is foundation revenue, of which this request is one part. Sixth Street Clinic has operated continuously since 2004, has come through the end of two multi-year federal awards before, in 2014 and again in 2019, and did not close a program either time. That is the whole basis for the claim.
We are not offering you a plan where the program becomes self-funding, because these are recurring costs and recurring costs need recurring money. Section 10 · the sentence most sustainability sections decline to write
11Attachments
Documents, not adjectives. Several federal rubrics score signed agreements and decline to credit general enthusiasm. ACF's FY2026 notices say it directly: "We do not consider general letters of support to be third-party agreements."
- Memorandum of understanding, Sixth Street Clinic and St. Isidore Regional Medical Center emergency department. Signed June 2026, runs to June 2029. Names the page protocol, the 30-minute response standard and the induction order set.
- Letter of commitment, Ferrante Evaluation Group. States Dr. Ferrante's role, her annual hours, her four deliverables and her rate.
- Position description, Peer Recovery Specialist, including credential requirement, shift pattern and supervision line.
- Organizational chart showing the Second Door reporting line.
- FY2025 audited financial statements and Single Audit report.
- IRS determination letter.
- Board of directors roster.
—Claims table
Every specific claim in the proposal, and the artifact it would be traced to in a real engagement.
| Claim | Source class |
|---|---|
| Founded 2004, incorporated 2006; about 6,200 patients a year; $4.18M FY2025 budget; 31 FTE, 6 part-time, 44 volunteer clinicians | Client fact file, org profile |
| Clean FY2025 opinion; FY2025 Single Audit, no findings, no material weaknesses; federal expenditures over $750,000 | Audited financials and Single Audit report |
| 64 overdose deaths, 37.9 per 100,000, 2025 | CDPHE Vital Statistics, provisional 2025. Illustrative here |
| 388 nonfatal opioid overdose ED presentations, 2025; two-thirds between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. | Partner hospital ED data, supplied under the MOU |
| 41 unanswered overnight pages; 18 later found; 11 enrolled; 23 never contacted | Program manager's shift log, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 |
| 214 enrolled FY2025; 168 (79%) induced within 72 hours; 129 (60%) retained at day 90; 17 (8%) unknown status | athenaOne and evaluator REDCap project |
| 143 of 214 (67%) uninsured at intake | Client intake data |
| $2,855 all-in per participant | $611,000 FY2025 program cost divided by 214 |
| 89 participants per peer FTE | 214 divided by 2.4 peer FTE |
| 14 average peer contacts per participant | Evaluator's FY2025 contact analysis |
| Peer pay scale $20.10 to $23.40; midpoint step $21.50 | Clinic salary schedule, FY2026 |
| Fringe rate 24.5% blended, FY2025 actual | Clinic finance records |
| $185 first fill and bridge supply | FY2025 pharmacy actuals |
| 21,400 peer miles across 2.4 FTE = 8,917 per FTE; $0.70 federal rate | Mileage logs; IRS standard mileage rate, 2025 |
| Federally negotiated indirect rate 14.8% | Current negotiated indirect cost rate agreement |
| $9,400 evaluation cost, unrestricted | FY2027 program budget |
| $40,000 application pending, decision November 2026 | Development pipeline |
| Revenue mix 46 / 22 / 19 / 9 / 4; $4.24M revenue against $4.18M expenses | FY2025 audited statements |
| $61,000 peer time billed FY2025; about 44% billable estimate; about $24,500 recovery against $55,676 | Finance director's projection from billing actuals |
| Pueblo County contract $167,000, renews March 2027 | Contract file |
| Two prior multi-year federal awards ended, 2014 and 2019, no program closed | Organizational history |
| SOR subaward via Colorado BHA since March 2023, ends 30 September 2026 | Award documents |
| X-waiver requirement eliminated 2023 | Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, Section 1262 |
| "We do not consider general letters of support to be third-party agreements" | ACF FY2026 notices, ANA NB-0116 and ACYF-CU-0021, verbatim |
| HRSA-26-046 scoring weights | HRSA-26-046 FY2026 notice of funding opportunity, verbatim |
—Writer's note: what this proposal is doing, and why
Written against the published scoring criteria of 17 real FY2026 federal notices. The design choices below are not stylistic. Each one traces to a rubric line that pays for it.
Word allocation, and why the need section is short.
Across the 14 scored FY2026 competitions analysed, need carries a median 11.25% of available points, with a range of 0% to 30%. Approach carries a median 36.4% and never drops below 20.8%. Approach plus capacity runs 55% to 70% in most notices. This proposal is budgeted accordingly.
Counted across sections 1 to 11 only, which total 3,227 words. Front matter, the claims table and this note are excluded, because a reviewer never sees them.
| Section | Words | Share | Nearest HRSA-26-046 criterion | Its weight | Corpus median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Summary | 139 | 4% | Unscored front matter | n/a | n/a |
| 2. Need | 287 | 9% | Need | 20% | 11% |
| 3. Capacity and 4. Program design | 655 | 20% | Response 25% plus resources 20% | 45% | 56% |
| 5. Objectives, 6. Logic model and 7. Evaluation | 819 | 25% | Performance management | 15% | 10% |
| 8. Budget | 539 | 17% | Support requested | 5% | 9% |
| 9. Risks and 10. Sustainability | 656 | 20% | Impact | 15% | 0% |
| 11. Attachments | 132 | 4% | Evidence, scored inside other criteria | n/a | n/a |
The section this proposal under-serves relative to the evidence is capacity and program design, at 20% against a corpus median of 56%. That is the honest weakness of a foundation-length document. A federal application at this weighting would lose points.
Read the gaps honestly. Need sits at 9%, under both the HRSA weight and the corpus median, and that is the deliberate part: most proposals spend their best paragraphs on the problem, and the evidence says the problem is the cheapest section on the page.
Three departures run the other way. Budget takes 17% of the words for 5% of the HRSA points, and evaluation plus objectives take 25% for 15%, because the automatic-hold conditions live in those two places: lines that do not sum, and targets with no ancestor in the organization's own history. Cheap sections to write, expensive sections to fail. Risks and sustainability take 20% against a corpus median of zero, because eight of the fourteen notices pay for barrier-naming inside other criteria even when no criterion is called that.
The risks section exists because rubrics pay for it.
Eight of the fourteen scored notices award points for naming barriers. HRSA-26-095 prices it as a standalone criterion: "Resolution of Challenges (5 points): Describes the obstacles and challenges you may face during project design and implementation. This includes the quality of your plan to deal with them." HRSA-26-046 asks for "realistic challenges and barriers that may occur during the project period and provides a strong plan to resolve them." ACF-CU-0021 asks applicants to "Describe the factors that could speed or hinder project implementation." Most foundation proposals contain no risks section at all. Writing one costs four paragraphs and reads as competence rather than doubt, particularly the fourth risk, which is the applicant volunteering a condition under which it would stop.
Three objectives, not seven.
ACF's Native Language notice awards points for a narrative that "Identifies no more than three objectives that effectively describe a specific measurable achievement," and separately for one that "Describes only one current community condition." Restraint is scored. The need section names one condition. The objectives table holds three rows and says so.
No cross-references.
SAMHSA SM-26-019 instructs reviewers: "Do not combine two or more criteria or refer to another section of the Project Narrative in your response. Reviewers will only consider information included in the appropriate numbered criterion." HRSA repeats it. OVW's peer review guidelines state that "Each section is reviewed and scored independently" and that misplaced content "may result in point deductions." So the 79% induction rate and the 60% retention rate appear in full in the program design section, again in the objectives table, and again in the evaluation section, rather than being cited once and pointed at. Controlled repetition is not sloppiness here. It is the reviewing model.
A logic model, because it is a priced line item.
ED SEED 84.423A awards "Up to 8 points" for "the quality of the logic model or other conceptual framework underlying the proposed project, including how inputs are related to outcomes." ACF-CU-0021 asks for one "demonstrating strong links between proposed inputs and activities and intended short- and long-term outcomes." The model here carries the actual projected numbers, 60 enrollments, 45 inductions, 36 retained, so the arithmetic in section 5 and section 8 can be checked against it. It also names the assumption most likely to break.
A named evaluator, a signed MOU and a position description.
ACF-CU-0021 scores "documentation of required partners through signed MOAs/MOUs" and requires applicants to "Identify an evaluator or evaluation team with experience with research and evaluation in working with the proposed target population." DOL ETA-26-19 makes missing letters of commitment fatal: "Failure to submit LOCs from or MOUs with required partners will result in the application being deemed non-responsive." ACF twice says general letters of support do not count. The attachment list is written to that standard.
Targets set at or below prior actuals, with the reason in the text.
75% against a demonstrated 79%, because the overnight prescriber is off site. 60% against a demonstrated 60%, held flat. 60 participants against a demonstrated 89 per peer FTE. A target above an organization's own history needs a reason in the sentence or it is inflation, and reviewers read it as inflation.
Unknown counts as failure.
The evaluator counts unknown 90-day status as not retained. That pushes the reported rate down. Saying so is worth more than the two percentage points it costs.
The ask is $74,985.
Because that is what the lines add to.