Podcast transcript: how to get grant funding to those most in need

14 min approx | 01 Nov 2023

Intro

Granting the Future from EY.

Tim Smith

Hello and welcome to Granting the Future, a new podcast series from EY for grant and public fund managers around the world. I'm your host, Tim Smith, and each episode we’ll be sharing expert insight about transforming the grants process to overcome challenges and meet citizens’ needs.

Smith

On this episode we're looking at how people applying for grants can successfully access aid more efficiently. Joining me to discuss this is Steve Fussell, who was Chief Administrator, Office of Organizational Excellence, Seminole County Government in Florida at a pivotal time during the COVID-19 pandemic. Well Steve is now Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at Sanford Airport Authority in Florida, and he joins me now. Steve, hello, welcome to the podcast. How is it in Florida?

Steve Fussell

It's hot and humid, Tim, and thanks for having me.

Tim smith You're very welcome. Thank you for joining us. Also with us today is Amy Fenstermacher, EY Americas Grants and Relief Funds Management Leader. Amy, hello, welcome to you.

Amy Fenstermacher

Thanks, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Smith

There's a really interesting story here first of all, set in Seminole County, which is home, by the way, to about 470,000 people. Seminole County Government was acclaimed for the efficient way it distributed federal government grants to its citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now this aid helped people fund their businesses and pay their housing costs. So, first of all, Steve, let me turn to you. Who were the people and what type of businesses benefited from this. I mean, you've got a big employer for one example, haven't you, in Disney, very close by?

Fussell

Right, these were mainly small businesses, up to 52 employees. We had a tiered system where really small businesses got up to US$5,000, medium-sized small businesses up to US$10,000 and then up to US$15,000 for our larger small businesses. We funneled federal and state funds to nonprofit organizations and local governments, you know, everything from the Sheriff's Department to the zoo. It was quite a heavy lift for an organization that, you know, was not used to this at all.

Smith

And I believe also, Steve, that many people applying for help had never applied for help before. I mean, they were very anxious, weren't they, in what were unprecedented times?

Fussell

They were, and I think that's where the partnership, that working together with Ernst and Young really paid off. Part of the funding, there was this Federal Cares Act that came out and within Florida, within the state of Florida, counties that were under 500,000 in population, that money was funneled to the state. What that ultimately ended up being is that the state, you know, as they were developing their processes, really held that funding for about two months longer than other counties, than the larger counties. So there was a disparity there. 

And so really, when we finally got the okay for funding, we had a very short fuse to try to develop a system and get that funding out to our individuals and families and small businesses. It was a very tight timeline.

Smith

Now, Seminole County has issued more than 8,500 grants totaling over US$45 million through their programs. Comparing that period, Steve, during the height of the pandemic to, say, a typical non-COVID week, what was the scale of the difference in the volume of grants being applied for?

Fussell

This eclipsed everything that we had ever even anticipated that we would have. Now the challenge is, while we were handling this new grant funding, we still had to handle all the customers, all of our constituents and clients that we had previous to that. So that didn't stop. So this was just on top of everything. It was a tremendous challenge and a very, very heavy lift for staff.

Smith

Amy, let me bring you into the conversation. This was, as we've indicated and as everybody knows, it was an exceptional scenario of course. It required new systems and more staff at a time when the in-person office environment was clearly not functioning as normal. What digital solutions were successfully employed to help Steve and his team get aid to their citizens efficiently?

Fenstermacher

When we came in to support Steve and his team, first thing we did was set up an external facing portal. As you can imagine, a very quick job given the fact that we had to design it, we had to also really untangle the legislation associated with it and make sure that all of the data that we were collecting was going to satisfy some of the requirements for reporting down the line. So portal up live, accepting applications. We then worked with Steve and his team to design the business process workflow capabilities to actually review and process all of these applications, track the financials.

So when we worked on that we ultimately implemented an admin workspace in our EY Grants Accelerator that gave us those configurable workflow capabilities, as well as a review checklist, and really as much automation as we could muster. And we continue to add new automations over time as we recognized bottlenecks in the process.  

From there, we really focused on making sure that we had a good view of not just the operational data associated with each of the grant programs, so that Steve could monitor the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, but also some view of the impacts.

Our impact analysis really covered questions like: Where in the county is all of the funding going? So that we could see if some of the county’s marketing campaigns were reaching a variety of geographical areas. What kinds of families or businesses were applying and whether we needed to adjust our targeting, as we say, to get the right funding to the right people. You know, one of the challenges that many government agencies and units of government are managing right now is how to tell the story of the funds expenditure that happened in obviously a very hectic time.

And sometimes the documentation is a little hard to cobble together. You've got emails going back and forth. So one of the things we really focused on was having all of that information in one place, having communications between recipients and the county included as part of the data in the portal, so that the package that we ultimately were able to pull together from the system was considered by the corresponding entity at the state of Florida level, to be one of the most pristine audit packages they'd ever seen. Our team had the opportunity to see the remarkable dedication that our public servants have to frankly serving the public. It’s something, it’s a theme that we’ve seen repeated over and over in the space of grants management. But it frequently goes overlooked, the passion that our public servants have for doing good and making an impact.

Smith

Steve, what did you learn about how relief programs can be designed to improve access for people applying for grants that could be applied by grant managers elsewhere?

Fussell

In our discussions, it was all about helping people and businesses who had been impacted by COVID, and so that was the discussion: How do we get there? And so there was this really quick iterative process whereby, and some risk involved, some calculated risk, where we both determined that perhaps the best way to do this was to build the front end first so that people could begin applying for relief and have that sense of feeling that they were being heard and that their needs were being documented. And then, as we were doing that, building the back end of the system so that we could begin pushing those applications through and actually providing the funds that were necessary to keep these individuals, these families and businesses afloat.

Over 45, 46 million dollars’ worth of funding for individuals and families and small businesses, on average US$8,000 at a time, with a lot of requirements that were constantly changing.

Smith

And Amy, I mean, this might be a difficult question, it's a big question. I mean, what do you think was the key to getting it right? Because when delivering aid at speed like this, as Steve has just indicated, how do you ensure that legislation is complied with, that you minimize the risk and indeed you target the right beneficiaries?

Fenstermacher

You have to think about the entire process. It's not just, quick, get a technology solution in place and stuff a bunch of data through that solution. That doesn't solve the problem. So, we brought in people from our Parthenon Strategy practice to think about the design of the program and how it would be most effective. We brought in our forensics team which specializes, this bread and butter, is them thinking about how to comply with a lot of these funds management requirements. How to make sure that you're ready to defend the expenditure of that funding and prove that it was done in an allowable and appropriate way down the line.

Most governments in the world will recognize is now becoming the next challenge, is proving how those dollars are spent. And then having the connectivity to our call center team and our review team, getting constant feedback on where their friction points were and being able to see all of the data on where applications were getting stuck in the process and then make flexible, iterative changes. 

So being able to use a flexible, configurable system was a critical piece of it, but also thinking about how each of our design choices collectively was going to impact everyone else.

Smith

Well, I certainly think anybody listening to this will accept and acknowledge what a successful program this was amid extraordinary circumstances. Following on from that, and a question to you both, knowing what you know now and despite all of that success, and I know the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing, but what would you do differently for an even more efficient outcome for citizens applying for aid? Amy, let me put that to you first.

Fenstermacher

Well, the first thing is, I am incredibly thankful to Steve and his team for teaching us, and I think that we have applied a lot of what we learned from them right back into the way that we now do business and the way that we now deliver grant programs. So, there's been a tremendous amount that we've picked up and would then apply in retrospect.

Fenstermacher

I think that the key piece that I would say was a little bit of a surprise to us, but becomes again clear in retrospect, is how important mobile accessibility is right from the outset. I remember when I first discovered that Amazon had a mobile app. I said, that's ridiculous. Who's going to buy, you know, expensive things? Who's going to buy, you know, dresses on their phone? Who's going to buy all of these important devices on their phone? And they can't even see these teeny tiny pictures, ridiculous. And now I can't remember the last time I bought something on my actual laptop computer. It's all mobile phone, and I think that mindset transition for us, thinking about the fact that people are truly mobile-first these days, it obviously gets more substantial the farther out you go from a stable internet connection. But it's also that way for people who even have stable internet connections. They're absolutely mobile-first. So, recognizing that as a core piece of our delivery model, testing everything we do to make sure that it works exactly as flawlessly on mobile as it does on a desktop computer. I think that's something that we would prioritize even more heavily at the outset, if I did it again.

Smith

Okay. Thank you, Amy. And if it's any consolation, by the way, I also once said, nobody's going to go shopping on their home computer, are they? Nobody wants to sit at home and do that. People want to go to the shops. How wrong can you be. Steve, same question to you. As I say, benefit of hindsight, it is a great thing, but what would you do differently if you had the opportunity? 

Fussell

What I would do first is partner with other organizations, including other organizations that are providing funding through portals like we were providing funding: other local governments. When you come together like that, you’re using the same glossary. And when we went and built a dashboard so that we would have performance management, real time, that was very very useful for seeing what we would do next and how we would do next. Then also in the hierarchy, also coordinate with state and the federal government so that we can look and see if we couldn't develop a more standardized system of providing this. And I refer to it as a customized system versus off the shelf. Seems like a lot of local governments had customized systems based on what our political opinions were, as opposed to an off-the-shelf system that perhaps could have been rolled out with the programs by the federal government or the state government. 

And then the second part of that is to be a little bit more proactive in documenting processes and also contact lists, those things that we would anticipate that we would have to leverage in a larger program like this, so that we wouldn't have to develop it while we were rolling out the program. 

Fussell

And also, in the United States, we have a large framework for disaster recovery called the National Incident Management System, where disparate organizations can come together in a crisis and be organized so that they can get up to speed a lot faster, provide the services that they need to and then also, on the back end of that, of course, provide the reporting and the accountability that's required for federal and state funds. And it would be great if we could integrate the grant management portion of disaster recovery into this National Incident Management System in a way that it would just lock in and automatically be a part of that solution.

Smith

Okay. Well, on that note, unfortunately that's it, we're out of time. Thanks very much indeed to both of you for such an interesting, I think fascinating, and certainly valuable conversation. Steve, thanks very much indeed for joining us. Really enjoyed your contributions. 

Fussell

Thanks, Tim. 

Smith

And likewise, Amy, thank you very much for your input. That was fascinating stuff. 

Fenstermacher

Thanks very much.

Smith

Do join us again soon, when we'll continue to look at transforming the grants process. And please subscribe to this series so you won't miss an episode. For now, though, from me, Tim Smith, thanks for listening and goodbye.

Outro

Granting the Future — back soon.