So now we're going to, wow, that's pretty loud. I'll get away from that. We're going to begin the workshop part of the day. But before I do that, give me a hands in the air if you were at the press conference this morning or earlier. OK, so I don't have to repeat anything, OK? Very good. Let me just say again, we're so pleased that you're here. This now begins a process that you've been engaged into a large degree.  OK, so remember who those hands are, because that's a direct line into various programs and services of my offices. I want to thank you all again for participating in this process and many of you for many years working with us. And I think we have the opportunity and the possibility here to do something great in this area of the state. And so with that, I'm not going to say more, because I said it this morning and you heard it already. And I don't need to repeat myself. So again, I'm going to give you Stephanie and her team to go over lots of information and data. And they've done a great job. And Stephanie and her team were part of the group of people that wrote this. And so they know all the detail much better than I do. And here's Stephanie, thank you. Hi, wow, this is great that we have so many people together. We're going to talk about the Social Innovation Fund grant called C-Texas, Social Innovation for a Healthy South Texas. You'll see up here a couple of different logos. We have Methodist Health Care Ministries, as you heard earlier, is the intermediary organization. We were awarded a Social Innovation Fund, or CIF grant. That grant comes through the Corporation for National and Community Service, which also does programs like AmeriCorps and Senior Corps. To me, I've heard of them before. And so we're going to get started on our C-Texas initiative. And I don't have a clicker today, so I'm going to give a nod towards May every once in a while to let her know it's time to switch slides. All right, social media, if you're into this sort of thing, here's what you have. With social media, we have our hashtag M-H-M-C-Texas. We did not put the accent, so you don't have to do that extra part on the hashtag there. Twitter handles for M-H-M is at M-H-M-S-T-X. The Social Innovation Fund loves to retweet, so if you add them at S-I Fund, they'll retweet your stuff. All right, let's go to the next one, and we will introduce our team. We have, most everybody here in the room, fortunately. So Becca Brun, who you heard from earlier, I don't think she's back down here yet, but we'll see her a little bit later on. VP for Strategic Planning and Growth. I'm the project impact manager, Stephanie McClain. I just took on this role after we got the grant. I was hired in January to write grants, and then I got one, and they said, stop doing that. Go manage it. We don't want any more just yet. So now I'm managing this one. Then we have Santiago Garcia over on the side of the room. He's our program officer, so you'll be seeing a lot more of him. He'll be traveling to the region working with our sub-grantee partners as we go through the next five years together. And we have Mae, who I pointed out earlier. She's our federal grants and programs assistant. And the accounting team is over there hanging out with Pastor Mickey. We have Annabelle Moreno and Vanessa Medina on that side of the room. Our evaluation team is not in here right this moment. Ann Connor is in town. He may have talked to her earlier. I think she's heading back pretty soon. And then Michelle Bradeski just had a baby, so she'll be back in action really soon. And then we also have external evaluators. I think you heard earlier that we're reviewing 12 really excellent proposals for that contract. So when that's announced, we will have an external evaluation partner also as part of our evaluation team. I'd like to go around the room and get an idea of who's here. So we'll start over here and go around clockwise-ish. If you can just say who you are, what organization you're with, and what brings you here. If you're a potential sub-grantee or a partner or just someone from the community that's curious or a funder, I know we have a lot of different people in the room today. Do you want to get us started? OK. Rachel, you know that MHP's saluted here because we're interested in applying for the opportunity. Hi. We're studying summer in Hollywood, not only at the General Medical Center and Rio Grande Regional Hospital. And we are here because we're also interested in the experience of our students. And here's you, and I'm here as a board member of the Public Department. I'm going to be a senator at the Gallup and past crime writer and just involved in health care in the family. My name is Diku George, and I'm going to be able to send to faculty for the new family medicine presidency for the university. I'm Dr. Adele Valdez, I'm a assistant regional dean, and we're very much interested in participating as well. Chris Lawson, I'm a second director of Adminado Clinic. MHM has been a terrific, terrific funder for us for over 10 years. And I'm here because I'm interested in perhaps applying. I'm Candy Wiley. I'm the western nurse in Laveria. And obviously, I'm here for support of MHM. I'm very excited about the city of Texas and Robert and the committee opportunities that will be available to us. OK. I am Shirley Adlund. I'm the clinic administrator and projector as a royal and company does. And how we're here, we have the western nurses involved with our community center and also the counseling service involved in our center. And here it's more information. My name is Senator Dada. I'm a registered physician with a current grant of health department and I'm here to do some work with you. Well, I was at the site of the Valdez Counseling Department. And we're here also to meet this morning. I'm the second part of the week. I'm willing to do the valdez conference as well. I'm the director of community counseling for your friend, Dr. Adele Valdez. 2-1-1 to the Texas. I'm here because at this point, I'm curious. Oh, OK. I think my new list is coming in. I'm the director of programs that fail. And good morning to that community. My name is Stephanie Afganas. I'm the new chief of the line. I'm here to give you a little help. I'm here to give you a review of what's in the nursing department. Also, we have a western nurse from the center. Ginger Sprule, a western nurse from Bradford School. Jack White, a local family and nutrition organization funded by the health care community. And also, we'll give you all the parts on how to volunteer with your family and nutrition. So this is the panel from the college director. He's the director of these programs. We are a local organization. OK. He's the director and performer of these programs. And I'm here to see him. And I'm here to pay him our review. We're kind of on top of the project. And we're on the bros. And then you can be out with the staff with you.  I'm good. It's very important. My name is Rose Timber. And I'm with Health and Communities. It's a proud thing. We've dropped with a stable hospital for interstitial frustrations for immigration reasons. Your best thoughts about this? Mary Valencia with the Real Grand State Center in Parliament. Also a little bit to collaborate and partner in something. I'm Sam Boena. I'm the grant writer for the Clinical Center in Bargainson. I'm Sandy Bishop. I'm also a nurse in Hedgburg. I'm in support for international health companies too. Very deeply. I'm in support of system demo students who are seeing the medical and mental services in this business idea. And we're looking at this thing for a day or time. I'm Baba Salana. I'm a local health and my time is super long. It's an interstitial development. We don't really know, but we're having a really nice time. Santiago, I think we have one more at the table back in the corner. Was there one person that didn't get to go? I'm Bill West, a nurse at the Center. I'm Tucker. I'm the grant writer for the Real Grand State Center. I basically am a home product specialist at where some areas are being taken. There are some products in the Real Grand Valley. Today I'm here representing the Boyle Coast Club of the Real Grand Valley and the Real Grand Valley that we've been at. My name is Hannah Hyatt. I'm the Dixie Director of the Clinical Center. I'm the Clinical Center Director for the Real Grand Valley and the Real Grand Valley. Hi, my name is Devin. I'm in the Texas Identity Health Science Center. I'm from Fort Lee Group at the same health science center and I'm here to get information on. That's me. My name is Tara Flannis. I'm the Director of the Coastal Health Identity Center at the Texas Identity Health Science Center and we're getting more information. I'm the Boyle Minority Director of the Animal Health Identity Center for our creative collaboration. Hi, my name is Charles Stilett. I'm the Executive Director for the Real Grand Valley. I'm from the software ministries with our Behavioral Health Services and your... I'm from Lausanne, I'm an independent grant writer and currently a grant writer for... I'm from Lausanne, I'm a grant writer and we keep that American. Here we've got our information for the DDA at New York. I'm a Methodist preacher and I'm here to pray that all of you are successful. Amen. Church, Harlingen, Texas. Thank you. Do we get everybody? I think so. Let's go to the next slide and we'll dive into this grant. So we're looking at the C-Tex's RFP. Here's a little overview. I'm sure you already are familiar with these details, but we'll run through them to make sure we're all starting on the same page. The anticipated funding is six and a half million per year. That's what MHM would like to distribute through the C-Tex's program. So we're hoping for a lot of stellar applications in the range of $250,000 to $2 million. Now there's a little subtlety in here. The floor is $250,000. The ceiling is, as you'll see in the RFP, 25% of your operating budget. Now we estimate that most of the grants will be between $250,000 to $2 million, but if you have a big operating budget you can ask for more than $2 million. You just also have to be ready to match it with that one-to-one match requirement. So you see the one-to-one match requirement here. We'll talk a little bit more about that later. There are some support systems in place, so we don't need to be fearful of that. It's a really great opportunity. And the focus, of course, is integrated primary care and behavioral health programs together. And for the purposes of this grant, behavioral health includes mental health and substance use disorders together. Here is the map. You saw this earlier on the other side of the room, the big giant map. Here it is again, and it's also in your packet just because it's so pretty. And you can see all the, these are all the counties. The organizations that are eligible for this grant serve populations in these counties, so they don't physically have to be located here, but they do have to serve these 12 counties. So why are we doing the C-Texas thing? This is a quote from President Obama that gets us pretty close. The foundations across the nation, Becca Brunett alluded to this earlier, but the foundations across the nation and the folks in D.C. consider us to be a hard-to-reach population. So when they write their documents for grants, they actually call us that. We're a hard-to-reach population. And we don't think we're hard to reach, we're right here. But they need some help getting to us. So they look for, this is true across the nation, there are different hard-to-reach populations, but we have a pretty special one here. So they look for high-performing intermediaries who have access to the communities that we want to serve. And so that's why we have this structure of the intermediary and the sub-grantee partners all working together to get things done. MHM has been working in this area for almost 20 years now, and we know there are organizations already doing what works. And that's the impetus of this grant is to do what works. We're doing what works here in South Texas. We want to do more of it. We want to make it sustainable, expand it, and share it with the rest of the nation. This is really a rare opportunity to do that through the C-Texas program. So what is, oops, back one, please. That's all right. It's exciting. You get excited and want to go ahead. There we go. So what is C-Texas? The competitive applicants. This is kind of an overview of what does a competitive applicant look like. A competitive applicant will propose an innovative community-based solution that is already going. So the community-based solutions are already happening, and the solutions are sort of quietly solving problems in the background. And we want to use this opportunity to spotlight those innovations and help them to grow. Building evidence. You'll see a lot of language in the RFP about building evidence. We will have rigorously evaluated and shared programs. Organizations need to be able to evaluate things already to some degree, but more than that need to be willing to scale up their evaluation efforts through the support mechanisms available in this grant. It is an unusual grant. A lot of grants you'll see limit the amount of money you can spend on evaluation. This one does completely the opposite. You're very strongly encouraged to dedicate funds to supporting your evaluation. And it was the same at our level when I wrote the application to submit it to CIF. We had some negotiations back where our funds going toward evaluation actually went up before we were finished negotiating. And then your interventions will be scalable and sustainable. Regarding the sustainability, we get back to that one-to-one match opportunity to bring in new supporters. People across the nation are looking at South Texas right now because of this opportunity. So we have a great chance to bring in new supporters and to show people the work that we're already doing. While we're scaling up our interventions, which it doesn't mean just counting more heads. When we talk about scaling up, we can do more of the same thing. We can make it bigger or we can make it better. So it doesn't have to be just more numbers. The little line doesn't have to keep going up. It can be scalable in a different way. And while we're doing all of these things simultaneously, this is just as important as doing the interventions in this grant, we are also building the capacity of the organizations that are participating in this. So by the end of this grant, we want to have the strongest interventions, the most robust evaluations, and the most attractive programs to other funders and other supporters and other partners throughout the whole nation. Now we can go. This slide shows how the Social Innovation Fund works. How it all fits together and how the Social Innovation Fund and the corporation has decided to expand their reach. This is from last year. Our numbers now, you see 20 intermediary grantees. Now we are 27. And the nonprofit organizations that we work with last year were 217. We will become a lot more than that. And again, exponential impact on the number of people that were impacting throughout the nation. This is in your RFP. This is our theory of change. When we applied for the grant, we had this theory of change. We've got to stick with the theory of change. And when sub recipients are applying for these funds, the theory of change needs to remain consistent throughout. So integrated behavioral health is a team-based model, which medical and mental health providers coordinate and collaborate to more fully address the range of patient needs. So this is what we're going to stick with throughout the grant. And it's very important when you apply for the grant to remain consistent with this theory of change throughout your work plan and all the other documents that go along with the application. On page 18 of the RFP, there's a quick list of the qualities of a successful applicant. And these are just a few of them that I wanted to point out. Can you go back one more? Oh, there's one in between. There we go. Obviously, you operate IBH programs already. You have a clear plan and a sufficient budget. So whatever is proposed in the plan should also match with the budget. This isn't the time to try and be too modest in what you're requesting. This is where you can be bold. You're trying to scale an intervention that's working. So be bold, make your plan, propose a budget that will support that plan. We want to see an evidence of strong leadership in your organization and the capacity of your organization either now or the awareness of how to achieve the capacity that you need to run the program that you want to run. And most of all, the commitment. So demonstrating the commitment of your staff, your leaders, your board, the people who are involved in the program, your partners, and having a strong commitment to making this successful will be very important. That went backwards. Look for the, I think the next one's the chart. There we go. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. You were on the right. Yeah. The last one is the IBH definition. Can I show you that one? Yeah, I showed you this one. Okay. We're good. This is the definition of IBH. This is also in your packet. And the next one shows the, here we go, the SAMHSA HRSA IBH framework. So throughout the RFP, we refer to this framework. It is on page six of your RFP. And you can look in here to see where your organization falls in terms of integration. So integrating your primary care and your behavioral health together. And you'll notice that at level one and two, what we're calling integration is things like appreciating each other's roles, being aware of the other group's services. So this doesn't mean that you're already living in the same space and sharing the EMR and seeing each other every day and going to each other's meetings. You just need to be aware of each other and communicating, not all the time, but sometimes. So you can look through these descriptions on this framework and kind of identify where your organization fits in. And an important thing to do when you're writing the proposal is to know how you can move along this continuum to become more integrated.  There was one more thing I wanted to point out on this slide on the chart on level four. You'll see that there are some, if you're using similar, using the same systems for doing your health care. One of the opportunities that MHM has to offer is what we call the INAC system. It's a unified referral system. And that's something you wouldn't need to include in your budget. MHM is already paying for this. It's available to all of the sub grantees. So you would automatically have that resource at hand to have a referral system in place. So that would be one tool that would help you move along the continuum that's already there for you. These points go back to what I was saying earlier about the ways that you can scale up and the things you need to make your plan very clear. You want to replicate support or enhance your model. You want to measure your improvements and show health improvements within the five-year project plan period. And you want to have a clear, there's a work plan and a logic model attachment. In your RFP, you'll see that there is a sample work plan. When you go online, I don't think we put it in the packet yet. But when you go online, there's a whole packet of all of the extra materials that go along with the application. And one of them is a sample work plan. You can use that one. If you have your own work plan, you can use that one. Same thing with the logic model. It's an example. You can use any logic model that works for your organization. You probably have some of these things already in place. So you don't have to use the exact ones that we put in there. All right. Next slide. When you're looking at your levels of evidence, you need to be able to show that your intervention has at least preliminary levels of evidence. And your plan needs to show how you are going to move to either moderate or strong levels of evidence. You'll see a full description of that on page seven in the RFP. There's a subtlety that I want to point out on here. You'll have a chance to describe your evaluation capacity. And that's different than your levels of evidence. So your evaluation capacity describes your organization's ability to carry out the evaluation. And then what we're talking about here, the levels of evidence will describe your actual intervention. And so you can see primary levels of evidence include things like literature review, or someone else has done the intervention, and it's shown to be effective. And so you can presume that the intervention is effective in your area, or you've done pre-post test, or you've done a survey with clients afterwards. So it's these kinds of things. And then as you move into moderate, you're looking at quasi-experimental design and all these evaluator words that our evaluation team likes to use. But more rigorous models of evaluation. And then strong is, of course, even more of this evaluator language that I will say for our evaluation team to talk about when we get the chance for that. All right, let's go on. When we talk about organizational capacity, we're talking about the commitment of the organizational leadership, the systems that you have in place, the capacity to evaluate your interest to grow. So you'll have a chance to explain all of these things in your work plan. You'll also notice that there are two tools that are required attachments on the grant. They're the monitoring and evaluation capacity assessment tool to look at your ability to do evaluation. And then the HEMS Delta analytics assessment, which is a similar tool, a slightly different tool. You'll do these. And then the expectation is not that if you score low on these assessments that your grant will score low. The expectation is that you would use these tools to understand your program and have a very clear understanding of where you are in this moment, where you plan to be, and then how you plan to get there. So you'll be able to reveal any weaknesses in these areas and then describe how you'll address those. Maybe you will discover that you need to include something in your budget that you hadn't thought of previously. Just make sure to include that. So when you're doing these, really give these assessments the time you need to integrate them into your plan. It's not something you'd want to wait until the very end and do them and just throw them in the packet as an afterthought. Next slide. We touched on this a little bit earlier. The evaluation component is a very, very important part of this grant. To us, it looks like as much an evaluation grant as it is an implementation grant. At the programs across the nation, we went to the SIF convening where all the programs from across the nation come together and they're talking about what they're doing. And they're bringing extremely rigorous evaluation and they're starting to focus it on stories, which is so cool because you bring all this data stuff that is pile of numbers and I'm sure it's very interesting to people that do that. But then we get to start turning it into stories about what's going on in the communities. I think that's really exciting. I'm really excited to see our community start to do that where we collect this data together and then we begin to make stories with it. Yes. That's a good question. I don't know. I don't want to answer that without knowing for sure. I know we got 12 applicants. But I'll put that on the FAQs. The question was if any of the evaluators are local. So we put out the request for bid. We received 12 applicants and the bids are being reviewed right now and I don't know the answer to that. So I'll hold off and answer that one on the FAQs on the website. When you're working on your plan, you want to make sure, of course, that you have sufficient budget to do the plan and that would include a two-year budget. So we've talked, this is a little confusing. We have a five-year program with a two-year budget and a one-year detailed budget. So when you see that, it's not a typo. It's for real. The project plan, we have a commitment from SIF for a five-year project. Because of the way federal spending works, we have a two-year commitment on the funding with a high likelihood, I hope, of renewal to go throughout the whole five years. But right now, we're looking at two years of funding. And then on the budget forms, you'll see that you do a one-year detailed budget. So with all the categories and everything. And then for year two, there's a blank at the bottom. It says you're two budget and you put the dollar amount right there. And so that's all you need to do on that. The one-to-one match, we want to see that you have a strong commitment to the match. And so that's what we're looking for. You have some time. The grant programs, the sub-grant programs will begin in May of 2016. I mean, 2015. And so you have a year from when you begin the program to secure the whole match. So you have until April 2016 and with lots of support from MHM, also from SIF. They're interested in helping us make connections with new funders, introduce people to our programs that weren't aware of them before. Yes? I'm sorry, one more time? Okay, so for the year two match, yes, I think so. I'm going to make sure, and I'll put it on the FAQ so you have the official answer. But yes, you have a 12-month period in which to secure the match for that year. Other points on the budget. I was asked about construction costs but naturally we're doing integrated behavioral health. Co-location is a part of that. So can the grant pay for construction? Unfortunately not. It's a non-construction program that this comes through. This is where the innovation part comes in. How are you going to deal with that parameter? It will pay for all of the other typical costs, so technology, personnel, supplies and travel and all of the other pretty standard costs in the federal grant, but not construction on this one. Can the match be for building? Again, I'm going to verify and post it on the FAQs, but my hunch is that the match has to follow the same rules as the original federal funding, and so I'm thinking that no, for construction dollars could not count as your match dollars. Yes? Correct. Yeah, so it can be a little tricky on the timeline. For that grant year. Yeah, and there are some subtleties in there. I know Becca had a conversation with our federal partners, so if she's able to come back in here before we finish, I'd like to circle back to that question because she has a lot more detail on the timeline and how the match fits in into your spending and when you're going to draw down funds and all of these details. He was asking about the match and the match that is due by April 2016 is for the prior year, not the year that follows after. All right, let's go to the next one. This graphic is from the Social Innovation Fund and shows, again, the multiplying effect in a little bit different way, so you see the little seed over here of the government investment in the program, and then it comes to the intermediary and the seed begins to grow leaves and we have the government investment plus the intermediary investment. It goes to the community. We add the nonprofit investment along with the other two and we grow our tree and then we partner in this community of funders throughout the nation and that's how we have our little forest there. I'm a graphical person when I think of things so I like this to see how things will progress for us. One more thing. By the end of the year we estimate that this $600 million in community solutions will be about $750 million in community solutions by the end of this grant year. Let's see the next one. These are the scoring criteria they're on page 18 where you have all the detail that you need. This is just a quick summary so you can see the overall areas where you're scored and the relative points assigned to each area. The reviewers of this grant are not MHM people. We've engaged a whole new process to review our grants this time. We've got external reviewers that include an evaluation professional and integrated behavioral health professional and a funder on each team. So when the grants are submitted they go through a rigorous review with each of these teams. They're scoring using an established rubric so it's a very fair and open scoring process for this grant. Let's look at the next slide. I think it has our list. There we go. That's our list of applicant reviewer teams. Also this speaks to the necessity for the mandatory letter of intent. That's a little unusual I know. A lot of times letters of intent are optional. They're mandatory by December 19 so that we can make sure that we have enough external reviewers. If we were using in-house staff we could just add more to the list but we're using external people from all across the nation to review these. We've had inquiries, a somewhat competitive process to be a reviewer on this grant and we had inquiries from, we have an IBH provider from the West Coast who I think wants to learn about how we in South Texas are addressing these issues. By being a grant reviewer they also get a peek at how we're solving problems that they're having to deal with too so I thought that was pretty encouraging that we already have this level of interest. Let's go to the next one. Here's your timeline. The RFP was available on Halloween. You can find it at mhm.org. You'll also find on that website our FAQs. From today we're collecting the questions. We'll have the official answers to all of these questions to ensure an opening competitive process so that even the people who aren't in this room can get the answers at the same time. We will post all of those to the website and then the mandatory LOI deadline of December 19th. The grant application is due January 5th by midnight and the grant application form that is not available yet. You have the RFP. Later this week you'll have all of the attachments that go with the RFP so you can begin working on applications right away. You have everything you need for that. The online application system is really an upload place so you'll collect all of your materials, get them put into PDFs and then upload them through the online application system. The project start date of course is May of 2015. In here between the January and the May, I know that's a long stretch between the application and then you find out in April and then you start in May. There's a multi-level review process that happens where it's not just a you submit the application, we score and we say yes or no. There's going to be some communication about the programs and negotiation and so by the time it's final it will have taken that long. Let's see the next one. I know we have a big audience here and not everybody here is going to be a grantee so there are other ways you can get involved. You can become a partner with another organization that wants to become a grantee. You can of course donate to that one-to-one match and help out in that way. You can also volunteer to be an expert reviewer. We have a form on the website excuse me at mhm.org there's a reviewer interest form if you would like to apply to be a reviewer. That way we have enough people to make sure that we can review all of the applications that come in this cycle and if necessary in a future cycle of this grant. When you need to ask questions as you're going along any questions you ask today we'll collect and get those on the FAQs. If you have a question later on or you'd like to ask it without speaking today you can send it to ctexes at mhm.org May and I check that email daily and we'll get the right person to answer your question and get it back to you. The FAQ page as I mentioned is on the website there are ctexes inquiries that are not questions we would need to post on the FAQs you can call us at this number<PHONE_NUMBER> or you can send other inquiries to ctexes at mhm.org I think that's what we have today there's the websites again if you're curious about the Corporation for National and Community Service and CIF and how it all fits together on the national stage you can go to ctexes.gov to learn more about our funder and how this is coming together. Yes, ma'am. I was looking at the deadlines and the holidays and a lot of these organizations are small resources. I'm wondering is that fixed set in stone? Yes, the question is about deadlines and the deadlines are hard deadlines we can't have any exceptions to the deadlines because we do have to assure a fair and equitable process for reviewing all of the grants so that is the deadline. I know we have a couple of grant writers sitting over on this side of the room in case you need some help. Yes. The 30 page limit includes the narrative and the budget narrative and then the attachments are separate like the logic model I think that's outside of the grant. Yes, those would be outside. The HEMS delta and the yeah. Do you have any other questions while we're here together? The smaller that's a good question. So the question is about how what is the nature of partnership among applicants. So if you have some smaller applicants that aren't eligible or not interested in applying for the grant, can you still work together? And the answer is a little bit tricky so yes, you can work together but you can only have one applicant and you can only have one budget. One organization is responsible for the match, one organization is responsible for the administration of the grant. It's got to be very clear in that way. But you can set up vendor relationships you cannot sub-grant so MHM is the intermediary we are sub-granting awards to people. Our sub-grantees cannot sub-grant again but you can set up vendor relationships so if you have a partner and you want to write a contract for a specific service that is possible through the grant. You just have to follow the federal procurement guidelines and all that sort of thing. It's federal money so you have to follow the federal money rules. Good question, thank you for asking. I think that's a great idea. Are you guys good with that? Do you have a website? Yeah, great. That's why we had Santiago was recording as we were running around. The mic has a cord so it would have been a little unwieldy to drag it through your lunch but Santiago was recording your introduction so we'll get a list posted on our website of who's here today. And then we have another workshop taking place in Laredo on Thursday with the same information so you'll be able to see who's attending that to. That's great. Is that set aside for example counting or six and a half million for all those 12 counties? Yeah, the six and a half million is for all 12 counties per year. I'll shut it down for right now. Oh, I have one more question. Yes, I'm glad you asked. The question is about being bold in your request if you're asking for one of the larger grant amounts. We are required to align the dollar amounts of evidence so this is an important thing to bring out. It's in the RFP but I do want to point that out that if you're coming forward with a program that has very preliminary evidence of the intervention then you would be eligible for a lesser award amount than someone who came forward with more evidence that the intervention works so with a stronger preliminary evidence or with a moderate level of evidence they would be eligible for a greater award amount. That big gap between the January application and the May start date, one of the things that happens in there is that our review committee will look at the applications in terms of evidence and then we will have to align them with the grant amounts. Yes, there could be negotiation on the budget. Thank you guys for being here. This is an excellent turnout. I'm so excited to work with you and to see what comes forward. Don't hesitate to ask questions as they come to mind as you're going through the packet and the materials and the website and learning about the opportunity. Get back in touch with us and let us know what you have going. Thank you.


Resolute Dragon 21, we conducted bilateral functional training with our Japanese Ground Self Defense Force, specifically the 5th Brigade. That evolved into comprehensive training where we executed a force-on-force scenario with U.S. forces alongside Japanese forces on a simulated island in the first island chain. Force-on-force that we are doing with Second Company, as of right now, is we're splitting the AO together and the Japanese are defending their own objective while we are defending ours. However, we are integrating our COCs together so we can communicate. We're grading our fires together as well as any intel that we achieve. Our goal is to defeat or deny the enemy from taking each other's objective through similar tactics, techniques, and procedures inside the force-on-force. I think that the most important takeaway coming out of this exercise is that in order to build trust with foreign partners, we have to do more exercises like this. The Japanese are able to achieve their objectives as professional warfighters and the Marines seeing that builds the trust and confidence that our partners are able to fight alongside us.


Income tax 2023-2024, name and address, get ready and some coffee so we can avoid having to move into a shack by learning some income tax preparation 2023-2024. Most of this information can be found in the line instructions of the Form 1040 Instructions Tax Year 2023, which you can find on the IRS website at irs.gov, irs.gov, looking at the name and address, which seems fairly basic, fairly straightforward, but there are some nuances that we want to touch on and point out here, obviously. The IRS is going to want, when we fill out our tax return, our legal name, our address, and then they're going to want our identification number, typically our social security number, so that they can turn us into a number and then require that we're going to pay taxes, and if we don't pay taxes, they know where we live so they can come after us and make us okay. So the name and address, so you're going to print or type the information in the space provided if you are married, filing a separate return, enter your spouse's name in the entry space below the filing status, check boxes instead of below your name. In other words, at the top of the Form 1040, we're going to have the name information. If we're going to get into the filing statuses, if we're single, you would think we would just have one individual and not have a spouse, so we wouldn't be putting a name into the spouse's line item. However, if we're married, we might be able to choose to file married filing joint, which is the preferred filing status, typically, but we could choose married filing separately. If we choose married filing separately, we're still going to have our name as the primary taxpayer on the return, but then they still want the name of the spouse, typically, even though we're filing a separate return. First, a word from our sponsor.  Like our, trust me, I'm an accountant product line. Yeah, it's paramount that you let people know that you're an accountant because apparently we're among the only ones equipped with the number crunching skills to answer society's current deep, complex, and nuanced questions. If you would like a commercial-free experience, consider subscribing to our website at accountinginstruction.com or accountinginstruction.thinkific.com and theoretically the spouse would then also have to file a return so that the IRS knows what's going on and can kind of mirror what is happening on their side from both people that are filing a married filing separate return. So tip, if you filed a joint return for 2022 and you are filing a joint return for 2023 with the same spouse, be sure to enter your names and social security numbers, which are abbreviated as SSNs whenever you see that in the same order as on your 2022 return. In other words, usually when you look at the tax return, you're going to have to list one name before the other name and traditionally that would be if you're married filing a joint, the husband would be the primary taxpayer and then the spouse would be also on the return, the second name on the return. If you flip the order of that and in the following year you put the spouse as the first name, primary taxpayer and then the other spouse as the second, you're going to confuse the IRS, your potentially and you don't want to confuse the IRS because when you do that, then that usually cause delays and problems. So you want to keep the ordering typically the same from year to year. So by the way, it doesn't really technically matter which spouse because if you're single, two single individuals get married, you're basically one legal entity for tax purposes, but obviously from a logistic standpoint, there's going to be, you're going to have to list one name and then the other and then the IRS is usually going to basically process the return, you would think by the first name that was filed on the tax return or at least the first social security number of the spouse on the tax return. Okay, what about a name change? If you change your name because of marriage, divorce, etc., be sure to report the change to the Social Security Administration, SSA before filing your return. So notice that when we, a lot of times when people think of a government entity, we kind of think as though they're all connected in one thing and they're not really, they all have their own thief stumps, right? Their own little areas that they're going to be operating in, especially there's going to be big differences between state and the federal government, although there could be communication between them. So clearly when you have a name change, you want to make sure you go through the process of changing the legal name and that's, you could do that oftentimes with the Social Security Administration, which also is part of in essence the federal government as opposed to the state government. And hopefully they will communicate that properly with the IRS, for example, so that when you try to file your return, it will process, which is something you can often see with these electronic filings because if you try to put a Social Security Number that does not line up to the name, it's possible that the electronic filing will kick back the return, will not recognize it and you'll run into a problem in which case you can try to figure that out and say, okay, there was a name change, was that processed properly and then figure out how you're going to deal with that from that point forward. Do you put in the name that you think the software will recognize? Do you try to change it with the Social Security Administration and then update the return and electronically file it later? Should you try to paper file it, which might take longer, but maybe processed in a paper filing type of situation? If you can't get the electronic file to go through because the Social Security Number doesn't seem to be processing. All right, so this prevents delays in processing your return and issuing refunds. So it also safeguards your future Social Security benefits, which is another key component, which isn't really part of the income tax. But remember that the Social Security is the place that if we make our name change, we want to make sure that they are properly tracking the amount of money that we are putting into the Social Security system. The Social Security system more and more these days acting like kind of a federal retirement program, as opposed to a safety net program. And therefore the money that we put into Social Security, typically withheld from our W-2 income in the form of payroll taxes, is going to affect the benefits we get at retirement if Social Security is still around when we retire, which I'm not betting on. But if it is, then we should get a larger benefit the more we pay into the Social Security. And so we want to make sure that we're getting the proper allocation of the money that we put into the system to our proper Social Security Number and so on so that we can maximize the benefits that we will get at retirement time. So address change. If you plan to move after filing your return, use Form 8822 to notify the IRS of your new address.  If the IRS is sending you a check for a refund, then you want to make sure it goes to the right address. You can alleviate that problem to some degree by having an electronic transfer. Some people are still skeptical of an electronic transfer from the IRS because they have to give their banking information to their tax preparer or at the least put it into the tax software. But if you're comfortable with that, and a lot of people do it these days, electronic transfers are kind of the way it's going these days, then it might not be as urgent to make sure that your address is properly updated because you'll get your check electronically. But still, if there's a problem with any kind of return, the IRS will typically still use Snail Mail or the good old post office. I get stuff stolen over here all the time. So I'm not very happy with the whole system right now. I'm not very happy with it. But in any case, they're still going to go through that kind of long-term slow method. So you want to make sure that you're getting the notifications from the IRS so that you can properly respond to avoid the sticks that the penalties and interest sticks that they hit you with. So PO Box, enter your box number only if your post office doesn't deliver mail to your home. So foreign address, if you have a foreign address, enter the city name on the appropriate line. Don't enter any other information on that line, but also complete the spaces below that line. Don't abbreviate the country name. You don't want to confuse the IRS with these abbreviated country names. Follow the country's practice for entering the postal code and the name of the province, county or state. So obviously you want to be as clear as possible with the IRS using most likely the most formal kind of structure to make sure that they know where you're at. Death of a taxpayer. So if a taxpayer died before filing a return for 2023, the taxpayer's spouse or personal representative may have to file and sign a return for that taxpayer. So someone dies, right? If they die and they were married, well, we know with the filing status that the other spouse would still file, you would think as married filing joint. But you have a signature problem on it because when you sign the return, even if married, the one person has passed away, you would need their signature typically or technically, right? So you need to get authorization. If someone died and they were not married, then they probably still had income in the year of death and therefore need to close up and finish out the tax obligations, right? So there's only two things that are sure in life, death and taxes, right? And as we know, death is the sweet, sweet release from taxes, but you don't get released like right when you die. It takes a little bit of time before they stop picking your pockets. That's actually worse, right? After you die, they come after your corpse for a while. So that means that you got to... So you might have to have someone, of course, to sign the return to finish the job there. So a personal representative can be an executor, administrator, or anyone who is in charge of the deceased person's property. So that would depend upon who's in charge of it, if they have like a will, or if they didn't have a will as they're going through probate, if do they have a trust that might handle that type of situation? This touches in on tax planning, by the way, which is another whole area of itself, which becomes more and more important for higher income individuals so that they can try to stop the IRS from picking their corpse's body given a cavity search to see if they can get some cash out of it or something. But that's beyond our topic here. So if the deceased taxpayer didn't have to file a return, but had tax withheld, a return must be filed to get a refund. So clearly if there was withholding, you still got to file the return. So they had W-2 income. They withheld money from the W-2 income. They might not owe any tax in the year of death because they didn't earn as much money, but the money that they put into the government, even if you're below the threshold that you don't have to file in terms of income, you may want to because they may qualify for or they may need to get the refund of the money that was withholded from the W-2 income. So the person who files the return must enter deceased, the deceased taxpayer's name and the date of death across the top of the return. Most tax softwares has the capacity to kind of do that so that you can tell the IRS this person is deceased. If this information isn't provided, it may delay the processing. Why? Because the IRS is going to want that person's identification and signature and so on. If you're saying they're deceased, the IRS has to know that as basically a reason why someone else is processing or signing the return possibly. So if your spouse died in 2023 and you didn't remarry in 2023, it was nice of you to wait at least part of the year. So or if your spouse died in 2024 before filing a return for 2023, you can file a joint return. That's generally the idea, right? So if a spouse dies, you're married. We talked about this in the statuses. You're still typically going to file married filing joint in part because you were married for the part of the year that that individual died. Now, if you got married in the same year, that's a little weird. I mean, that's a little weird. I don't know. But if that happened, then maybe that wouldn't be the case because now you'd be married somewhere else which would be kind of unusual. But normally that would be the case. Okay, so a joint return should show your spouse's 2023 income before death and your income for all of 2023. Enter filing as surviving spouse in the area where you signed the return. So you still have the situation of saying, I'm filing married filing joint, but my spouse died and therefore I have this signature problem to have the spouse sign the return. So if someone else is in the personal representative, they must also sign. So all pairs of income, including financial institution, should be promptly notified of the taxpayer's death. This will ensure proper reporting of income earned by the taxpayer's estate or heirs. In other words, when someone dies, then they still could be earning income because although they're not going to get earned income from a W-2 job, you would think. You might want to notify the job, say they're not coming in tomorrow, but they might get income from like dividend income, investment income, and so on and so forth. So all of the income sources that they might be receiving, you don't want them going to the social security number of the person that died in the following year, in this case, 2024, because that means that's going to cause you tax problems because you can't, because the income should be assigned to someone who's living, so if they had a will, it might go through probate, it might be in their estate, for example, if there's tax planning, there might be a trust involved, like a marital trust. Again, that kind of goes beyond what we're really diving into here, but it's an interesting area of itself that a tax preparer often touches in on, that being basically tax planning for death, like estate planning and that kind of thing. So a deceased taxpayer's social security number shouldn't be used for tax years after the year of death, except for estate tax return purposes.