Person

What I Have Funded

NS Naomi Sandoval

Eleven years of applications for districts most people have never heard of. Here are four awards with the actual numbers, one rejection worth studying, and the plain rules I follow. If you sit on a small board, the rules section is the part to read.

01 Awards

Four applications, what they asked for and why they scored. Every figure here is public record in the award announcements.

SCBA Replacement, 214,000 dollars, Assistance to Firefighters

My first win, written on nights and weekends while I was the part time admin officer. The application that made this a career.

The district had 22 self contained breathing apparatus units, all of them coming out of NFPA compliance within eighteen months, and no plan and no money. What made it score: we did not ask for anything else. No engine, no radios, no training line item, just the compliance problem with a dated inventory showing every unit's manufacture year and a letter from the manufacturer confirming the end of support. Reviewers can approve a narrow, documented request quickly. Award came in at 214,000 with a five percent match. What I learned and still use: the strongest application asks for the one thing you can prove you must replace, not the wish list from the board meeting.

Water Line Replacement, 1.9 million, USDA Rural Development

A town of 640 people with a 1954 cast iron main breaking four times a winter. Grant and loan package, eighteen months from first call to closing.

The engineering was solid before I arrived, which is half the reason this worked. What was missing was the median household income documentation that drives the grant to loan ratio, and getting that right moved about 400,000 dollars from loan to grant. We pulled a targeted income survey rather than relying on the census figure, which for a town that small was badly out of date. Six weeks of volunteer door knocking by the town board. That survey was the highest value work in the entire application and it cost almost nothing. Breaks are down to zero in two winters. The town's water rate did not go up as much as it would have.

Culvert Upsizing and Channel Work, 780,000 dollars, FEMA mitigation

Repetitive flood loss on a county road that cut off eleven households every spring. Benefit cost ratio came in at 2.4 and that number was the whole application.

FEMA mitigation lives and dies on the benefit cost analysis. Everything else in the file is supporting material. We spent most of the effort documenting historical damages: county road repair invoices going back fourteen years, emergency response records for the road closures, and photographs with dates. Then a civil engineer who actually knew the BCA toolkit ran the hydrology properly. BCR of 2.4. Anything over 1.0 is eligible and anything over 2.0 gets attention. I have seen good projects fail at 0.9 because nobody dug up the old invoices. Dig up the invoices.
02 The Rejection and the Rules

The application I lost that taught me the most, and the short list of rules I give every board on the first call.

SAFER, Declined, 2019

A staffing application for six firefighters that I still think was the right project. It failed on sustainability and I did not see it coming.

SAFER pays firefighter salaries for three years and then the district has to keep them. Our narrative said the district intended to seek a mill levy increase in year three. Intended. That was the word that killed it. There was no board resolution, no ballot language, no polling, nothing to show the plan was real. A reviewer reading that sees six firefighters laid off in year four and scores accordingly. We reapplied in 2021 with a board resolution committing to place the measure, a timeline and a communications plan. Funded. The lesson generalizes: on any multi year award, write the sustainability section as though the reviewer expects you to fail at it, then prove you will not.

Six Rules for Small Boards

What I tell every fire board, water board and small nonprofit on the first call, before anybody talks about a fee.

One. Keep your audit current. Being two years behind makes you ineligible for most federal programmes no matter how good the project is. Two. Renew your SAM registration before it lapses. It takes weeks to fix and it has cost districts entire cycles. Three. Never pay a grant writer a percentage of the award. It is prohibited on federal funds and it means their interest is in submitting, not in whether you should. Four. Apply for the compliance problem, not the wish list. Five. Keep your hazard mitigation plan current. An expired plan makes you ineligible for the mitigation money you most need. Six. Document your match with a board vote in the minutes, with a dollar figure, before you apply. Reviewers read minutes.

Book a call and I will tell you whether your district is competitive this cycle. I say no about a third of the time and there is no charge either way.

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