Hello. This webinar will discuss how to receive funds under an awarded grant
from the State, Tribal, Local, Plans and Grants Division of the National Park Service.
These instructions are only for those who have been notified that they have received a grant.
Grant applicants should not follow these instructions.
Grants from the State, Tribal, Local, Plans and Grants Division are reimbursable grants.
Generally this means that you have spent your own money before
drawing down federal funds to pay yourself back.
Working with your grant manager you maybe permitted an advance.
This means that you will be drawing down federal funds
to meet your immediate cash needs without having spent your own money first.
For questions about this process please work with your assigned grant manager.
When you are ready to draw down funds we use a system called the
Automated Standard Application for Payments or ASAP to transfer money to you.
It is an electronic online payment application available 24/7.
Once you are awarded a grant, funds do not automatically show up in your bank.
You must make periodic draw downs using ASAP to move money into your bank account.
Instructions on how to draw down funds and general browser configuration requirements
are available at go.nps.gov/pay
For detailed questions on using ASAP, account maintenance, and user roles
please contact the ASAP helpdesk at 1-855-868-0151
and follow the options on this slide.
When you are ready to make a drawdown, as previously mentioned, our grants are generally reimbursement grants.
You will need to have a staff member with the appropriate roles login to ASAP
and make a drawdown using one of two options.
Either an ACH drawdown or Fedwire.
You should review roles and responsibilities in ASAP with your staff
to ensure an appropriate separation of duties, also called a separation of roles
and think strategically about who can do what in ASAP.
For example is it really appropriate for one person to have all the roles?
How will you handle drawing down if someone is unexpectedly out of the office?
When you have resolved these issues and are ready to make a payment request in ASAP
funds are pushed to your account using the ACH - automated Clearing House payment process
or the same-day Fedwire payment process previously mentioned.
ACH may be more familiar to you as it is a little bit like bill pay services
offered by many private banks. When you are ready to make a drawdown
you need several important pieces of information: your username and password
and appropriate privileges, your ASAP ID which is also called the recipient ID
which is unique to each organization, and your ASAP account ID. This will be a
combination of your grant number from the Park Service
and an additional four to eight alphanumeric characters.
When you have made a drawdown or when you are preparing to make a drawdown
usually you can do all of this yourself without involving your grant manager.
When you submit an interim or final report you will submit a summary of drawdowns made to date.
If your award has been determined high risk
or high risk with agency review, as defined in your grant agreement,
before making an award you may need to submit additional documentation to your grant manager.
If you make a mistake and draw down too much money, you have two ways to return
the funds depending on when the error is discovered. If the error is discovered
within 30 days of the draw, you can essentially reverse the action using ASAP.
If it is greater than 30 days since the improper draw was made, you must
write a check, payable to the National Park Service, putting your grant number
on the memo line. You should contact your grant manager before doing this and
should not mail the check using the US Postal Service because our mail is irradiated.
Again if you have general questions about enrollment, user roles,
and how to make draw downs we have step-by-step instructions at go.nps.gov/pay.
Detailed information, including the ability to speak with an actual person,
is available through the ASAP help desk number previously provided.
When you are ready to move forward in the ASAP enrollment process or the ASAP
drawdown process make sure that you have thought about the separation of duties
as previously mentioned. Please strongly consider creating a separate bank
account just for your grant project in order to separate funds and make it
easier to track incoming and outgoing costs. Make sure to consider some
unexpected circumstances, like a natural disaster, and how that could impact your
ability to work with your staff and your bank. And also make sure that you're
prepared to understand the implications of having employee changes on your end
and staying up with usernames and passwords and roles. We look forward to
working with you on your grant project and again more information is generally
available at go.nps.gov/pay.