**FTS-HRSA OA**

**Moderator: Lakisha Smith**

**February 26, 2008**

**10:00 am CT**

Woman: (Sabrina) you can first and I'll just, like we said yesterday.

(Sabrina): Okay.

Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. All lines will be
open for the duration of the conference and today's call is being
recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.
Ms. (Chapel) (TA) provider with the Georgia Health Policy Center, you
may begin.

(Sabrina Chapel): Thank you. Good morning everyone. My name is (Sabrina
Chapel) and I'm here at the Georgia Health Policy Center. I'd like to
welcome you to today's (Delta) State Rural Development Network,
Technical Assistance Call. This is our first call.

And just to introduce you to individuals who are participating in
today's call from the Georgia Health Policy Center we have (Stacy
Wilcox), myself (Sabrina Chapel), (Beverly Tyler), (Catherine Ramon),
(Amanda Phillip-Martinez) as well as we have from (HRSA), Lakisha Smith
participating and then of course all of you who have chimed in.

I'm going to be giving a brief overview of today's call and obviously
the purpose of today's call is not only to introduce to you the
importance of technical assistance as we will provide here from the
Georgia Health Policy Center, but also begin to provide you some
beginning thoughts around sustainability.

Hopefully everyone successfully received two documents. That is the
agenda for today as well the PowerPoint presentation. If you did not
receive those documents, I'll be more then happy to send those out to
you as well as we'll have those materials posted on the network assist
rural health Web site, which I can send to you as well.

We'll be hosting two additional technical assistance calls this project
year. Those dates were indicated in the flyer sent out to you, I would
say a couple of weeks ago. I will resend the flyer back out. Those
dates, just so you could please note on your calendars, will be June
24th, October 28th, 2008. And the time will be (unintelligible), 10:00
a.m. Central Standard time and that is 11:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time.

The primary focus of the upcoming calls and obviously of today's call
will be (unintelligible) related to sustainability and subjects related
to your (Delta) programs. However, we welcome grantees to contact their
TA with specific topics requests that we can address on these calls as
well.

If you have to chime out from this call or perhaps you don't have
everyone on the call today, you can revisit today's call and future
classes. They will be on a replay number of 866-491-9105 and that number
may change as we have these calls individually and I will indicate those
numbers on the flyer.

Today's transcript and related materials will also be posted on the
website indicated on the flyer and I will send that out again at the
conclusion of today's call.

Just to review some of the agenda topics, we're going to have a brief
administrative overview Lakisha Smith, an overview of the technical
assistance program provided by the Georgia Health Policy Center,
(Catherine Ramon). And an overview of sustainability and an introduction
to our sustainability curriculum (unintelligible) we will open it up for
questions and answers.

If we don't have any additional comments or concerns for today's call
we'll go ahead and put these as indicated in our agenda. Lakisha?

Lakisha Smith: Yes, thank you (Sabrina). Good morning everyone, thank
you for being on the call. I think this is the first time that we've had
such an early call, but I do thank you for being involved with this
series of technical assistance calls provided by the Technical
Assistance Team with GSU.

First, I just want to encourage you and your partners, specifically your
partners to be involved in these calls. You know it's one thing that
we're hoping to widen your knowledge base in terms of key issue areas,
specifically sustainability as that's one of the key topics that's
surrounding the technical assistance, this particular phase of this
current grant cycle.

So, please if you as the project director can't be a part of it, you
know to spread it down the (pike) and really let your folks know about
these calls as I believe there will really be some crucial and important
information that they can share along with some of the folks in their
organizations.

In terms of updates here from a programmatic standpoint, please check
your emails. I've sent out a major information email yesterday regarding
the non-competing continuation application for the (Delta) grant. And
it's pretty much a (synopsis) of when the anticipated available date
would be for the non-competing guidance, which should be released on
March 3rd. Now, that's not written in stone because the powers that be
here at (HRSA) determine that. So, what happens is we're going with the
March 3rd date, and if I find out any other date regarding the
availability whether it's earlier or later, I will let you know as soon
as I hear.

With that date, the March 3rd availability date in mind, the first due
date which would include the Grants.gov information that's due will be
due on May 5th. Subsequent to that would be the EHB, the Electronic
Handbooks due date, which will be May 19th.

So, its two portions that are expected from the grantees. And this is
the first time the (Delta) grantees have done this. You've done the
grants.gov portion before in your initial application, but now the
Electronic Handbooks is being incorporated into your submission for your
non-compete continuation.

Also as it relates to that the second quarterly report...it is not due
on this (later) date, which I believe was ending March 31st. Just
encompass what you've done from the last reporting period up until the
March 31st date in that non-competing continuation application.

I don't want you to have to submit so many reports to me when basically
you're telling me the same thing that will be inclusive in your
non-competing continuation. And that will be over the course of what
you've done thus far in the budget period as well as what you anticipate
to do for the remainder and into the next budget period.

So, I'll go into more information or detail about that on another call
if need be or via email. And if you have any questions about that,
please don't hesitate to give me a call.

I think save those questions for me off line of this call. I did just
want to let you know, that if you do just give me a call on my
individual line. Okay?

All right (Beverly) you can take it away.

(Catherine Ramon): I think I get to jump in on her first.

Lakisha Smith: Oh, sorry (Catherine).

(Catherine Ramon): That's okay Lakisha. (Beverly) your there as well,
right?

(Beverly Tyler): I am here.

(Catherine Ramon): Great. Hi everybody this is (Catherine Ramon), I am
the project consultant with the Georgia Health Policy Center. And know
many of you in person and look forward to meeting those of you that I
don't know yet.

Does everyone have the PowerPoint presentation that (Sabrina) forwarded
on Monday morning?

Woman: Yes.

(Catherine Ramon): Great, okay. If you do and you've got that pulled up
on your screen or some of you've printed that, that's what (Beverly) and
I'll be going through this morning and just wanted to be sure that folks
have that.

Wanted to just start off by giving a brief introduction about what the
technical assistance team will be doing for you. And give sort of an
introduction to those of you who aren't as familiar with the technical
assistance program.

Those of you who've been in the (Delta) States Program since 2002 are
very familiar with the Georgia Health Policy Center, but the technical
assistance that we offered back in 2002 has certainly grown and
progressed over the last six years.

And so we just want to give a quick overview before moving on more
thoroughly into the topic of the day for this call. We found in the past
that as we've provided technical assistance to the network and outreach
and planning grantees, some of the feedback that we get is from folks
who think technical assistance means that we're going to help them with
their IT needs.

Or, because we're based at the University that we may be just drowning
in academics and theory and other kind of jargon that may not fit with
some of the things that you're working on.

Or a perception that being based in Atlanta that we're just big city
folks and don't really know anything about rural communities, and
another misperception being that we're just there to be the grant
police. Where in reality, we're really none of those things at all.

Technical assistance consultants are there to serve many purposes for
you. First and foremost we'll become partners with you in each of your
projects. We're available to be that sounding board when you need
somebody to help think through issues, to bounce ideas off of or just to
give you that quick gut check to your thought process.

We can also answer any types of questions, help to find information and
resources, help you to make other connections to grantees or peers
across the country, not only in the (Delta) program, but among the other
grantee programs that we work with in making connections to your peers,
and finding folks who may have already tried to implement something that
your working on and hope not to recreate the wheel.

So, really we provide a very wide range of services. We come out into
your communities and we talk a little bit more about that in sites
visits. And can provide meeting facilitation, helping to conduct
interviews with your partners or facilitate other meetings with them as
well.

Some of the technical assistance and the process in general, we just
wanted to give you the quick overview about is that really it began last
fall when a TA consultant contacted each of you individually and went
through the process of reviewing your grant application.

And we began to understand where you are in the development process, if
they were new to the (Delta) program and any concerns or questions that
you may have had. Lakisha then was following up in December and sent out
sort of an announcement about our TA program to you. And introduced the
TA providers and TA consultants to you.

You should since have been having monthly calls with your TS consultant
and this will continue throughout the grant period. We all get to see
you in April in New Orleans and at the program meetings over the next
two years.

Additionally, as I mentioned your TA consultant will also make site
visits to your community. And those are very specific opportunities for
us to work with you, the community and your partners on something that
is very specific to your program and your needs. And will be really
targeted to each individual community.

Some of the other things we want to make sure that is stressed, is that
you know that one form of TA does not fit all. And so you with your
individual relationship with your TA consultant will help shape those
services and make sure that you get things that will meet your specific
need.

And so if you have questions, just ask your TA consultant. If we can't
personally or individually provide the help you need, we're going to
help to find resources for you so you don't have to reinvent the wheel,
connect you with the others who may be struggling with the same issues
or recommend an expert that can help.

If you flip onto the sixish Page of your presentation, you'll see the
list of each of the TA consultants assigned to the (Delta) program. And
so at any time if you need additional help, feel free to contact any of
us.

But one of the key areas that when we first called each of you last fall
and did some of that initial probing with you about your needs or
concerns, we heard one common theme from all of you. And that was really
a need to focus on sustainability.

Consequently, we decided to include sustainability planning as one
aspect of our TA process throughout the entire grant period that will be
targeted in some of each of our different opportunities to be with you,
in the monthly calls with your provider, in the meeting in April, et
cetera.

And so we wanted to start off today in this call with some more
specifics about how that sustainability program would be rolled out and
some other details about our thought process around sustainability and
what that may focus on.

So if there are questions about the TA process itself or connections to
your TA consultant, we could take those either now or at the end if you
think of one during the presentation. So, I'll pause and ask if there
are any questions?

And otherwise I'd like to introduce you to (Beverly Tyler) who is the
program director for the Community Health Systems Development Team in
Atlanta. And (Beverly) take it away.

(Beverly Tyler): Okay, thanks. Good morning everybody. My portion of the
presentation I hope will be interactive, so any time you have questions
or thoughts, I hope you'll just sort of jump in. And I have a couple of
questions I'm going to be asking you as a part of my presentation.

But, I wanted to begin with a quote or with a focus on, we've all heard
of the book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And the second
habit is to begin with the end in mind. And when we think about
sustainability, that really is one of the key -- keys to successful
sustainability is to begin with the end in mind.

So, we know that you all have an end in mind because you've created a
vision for what you want to have in your community by having written
these grants and gotten this funding. And so we want you to just sort of
think about taking that vision a little further, beyond the grant period
and what would you see in place as a continuing contribution to your
community as a result of the efforts that have.

So, that is what we talk about when we talk about beginning with the end
in mind. And that vision really is-having that vision is the most
powerful tool for a leader to create change and to implement change over
the long haul in your communities.

But, beginning with an end in mind also means that if we're all going to
talk about sustainability that we need to have the common definition of
what sustainability is. And there are a lot of definitions of
sustainability out there. If you get on the Web you'll look up
sustainability, you'll have a long list of what the different people's
interpretation of sustainability. So, for the purposes of our work
together we've come up with our definition of sustainability just so we
all have a common starting place.

And our definition of sustainability is achieving an organizational
state of programs and services are continually provided because they
have perceived value and received adequate financial support.

I want to talk about some of the elements of that definition. For the
first of those elements is the organizational state. What we mean by
that when we want you to create an organizational state is that you have
the right partners in place, that they solidified in their ability to
work together, that people have confidence, potential (vendors) would
have confidence that this organization would actually carry through what
their purposing to do.

(Unintelligible) we talk about things being valued. For something to be
sustainable to you, well I think we would all agree that people outside
of our contortion are going to have to value what we're doing and not
only value it, but value it to the point that they're willing to support
it.

And that doesn't necessarily also always mean that its cash money that
they're supporting it with, it may be their time, it may be their
commitment, it may be their goodwill. But, other people must value what
we're doing in order for it to be sustainability.

So the question you really always need to ask yourself as you go through
this is, are you prepared to continually provide your program and
services when your grant funding ends, if it ends in three years?

Some of you may have the opportunity to get another (Delta) grant, but
you should operate on the assumption that you may have to continue these
programs that you're putting in place now without that support from the
(Delta) grant.

So, why start sustainability planning now, why can't you just put it off
and do it closer to the end of your grant? Well, there's three important
reasons. And one is that time is relative.

Those three years will go by faster then you think and then all of the
sudden it will be the last year or the last six months and you'll be
worried about where the continuation funding is going to come from.

So, waiting until to the last minute will jeopardize your ability to
really be sustainable over the long haul. Doing it now will increase
your opportunities for success. It will give you more opportunity to
involve the right people in the planning process.

It will give you the right opportunity to test different ways of doing
things, so that you can get to be the most efficient and doing them in
the best way possible. It will give you the opportunity throughout the
three years to (litigate) your successes to the people who need to hear
about your successes.

And being purposeful in your (time) will allow you sustainability
because it's easier to (say) something that is more efficient, that cost
less in terms of time and effort and money. And so as you design those
programs, if you design them with sustainability in mind, then you want
to design them in the most feasible way possible that will take the
least amount of money to continue over time.

And it will also allow you to design an evaluation process that will
give you the data that would allow you to prove to potential funders
that your program has been successful.

So, at this point I'd just like to stop and ask anybody if you can think
of a program in your community that began with grant funding. And that
now has been successful over time without that grant funding?

Can anybody think of an example of a program in your community that's
done that?

Can you think of examples of programs in communities that got grant
funding and then disappeared after the grant funding went away?

Woman: Yes.

Woman: Yes.

(Beverly Tyler): So, why do you think that happened?

Woman: They didn't plan for sustainability.

(Beverly Tyler): Is it because those programs didn't have any, didn't
think about it in advance or made an attempt and it didn't work?

Woman: I think in general people do try to plan for sustainability,
unfortunately do to financial resources or the lack there of, it's hard
to find sustainability within a rural or under-served community.

(Beverly Tyler): Okay.

Woman: (Unintelligible) determinacies of health really are the driving
factors (unintelligible) beyond that.

(Beverly Tyler): Okay. Any other thoughts on this?

Woman: There are situation where the program wasn't a program that was
needed by, (community) saw the need or that the constituents saw the
need.

(Beverly Tyler): Right, so it wasn't valued by others, right?

Woman: Right.

Woman: or it was valued and then served its purpose and it didn't need
to be sustained.

(Beverly Tyler): Okay, all right. Okay, so as we think about
sustainability planning then, we want you, at the end of this process we
want you to be able to answer two very from the (middle) questions. And
one is, do you have the asking rights? Are you an organization that
people are going to want to give money to? And that's a very important
question and you need to be positioned to be able to have asked, what we
call asking rights.

And the other then, if you've got asking rights then how will you get
the money? And over the next two years we hope to be able to work with
you so that at the end of that process you will have that
identified-maybe how you can get the money.

So I want to begin with this concept of asking rights. And we call that
positioning yourself for sustainability and there's sort of
sub-components this part of being positioned for sustainability.

And a key one of those is leadership. Do you have the right leadership?
Do you have the people involved in your program that can open doors for
you and help you get that sustainability? Maybe they don't have to be
those leaders you need have to be involved in the day to day operations
or the day to day implementation of your program.

Maybe they're sort of not quite in the inner circle, but in the circle
and they know what you're doing and they're supporting what you're doing
maybe on a higher level. But, they have the opportunity to open doors
for you that would help you towards sustainability.

But as you think about the people who you are working with who are part
of your partnership, ask yourself the very serious question among
yourselves, do we have the leadership in our group that's going to be
able to open those doors for us in our community? And if we don't, how
can we get them involved in our circle? And in our program and be
committed to what we're doing? And you have time to do that if you ask
yourself those questions now.

Woman: I've got a question.

(Beverly Tyler): Uh-huh.

Woman: I'm wondering shouldn't sustainability efforts be considered in
the development of your program and not as a hindsight?

(Beverly Tyler): Absolutely, that's why we're talking about it now
instead of three years from now.

Woman: Okay.

(Beverly Tyler): (Unintelligible).

Woman: Oh, go ahead, sorry.

(Beverly Tyler): Go, ahead. So, that sort of opens up this issue of when
we're talking about positioning yourself for sustainability, it's the
strategic vision. If you don't have a strategic vision about how this
project is going to last over the long haul, then you're not going to be
successful for sustainability.

So, even as you develop the concept for your program, you should be
asking yourself, when I finish this, when we're doing what we're doing
in these three years, am I creating something that people will value and
want to sustain over the long haul?

Or perhaps, as somebody suggested, I recognize that maybe I only need to
do this for three to four years and it may not need to be sustained and
that's a reason for doing it too. But, what you don't want to get into
is a position where in three years you've got a very successful program
that is providing an essential service that is still needed in your
community and you have to end it.

So, that's why it's very important in that strategic vision to think
about how could this be funded without that funding from the Federal
Government? So, that should be a question that should always be on your
mind as you begin to undertake different aspects of your program and
that's part of that strategic vision and what you're trying to create
and what legacy you're trying to leave from this grant.

And part of that is the creating up front in your evaluation process a
method for collecting the data that is going to make your case. And
while it's really important to count heads and to count the number of
pamphlets that you pass out and the number of people that you see, for
funders that is not really make the case for wanting to give you more
money.

They're going to want to see; they're going to want to know what were
the outcomes from the fact that you passed out those pamphlet. How many
people's behavior changed? How many people got better? So, you need to
be thinking about at this very beginning part in your, forming your
evaluation if your getting the right data that is going to allow you to
make your case for sustainability?

And we're going to help you with all of these elements throughout the
coming two years so that we'll help you put these things in place.

We also want you to begin to think about how can you demonstrate that
your community is getting a return on investment from what you're doing?
Are you saving somebody money? Are you saving the health system money?
Are you saving businesses money because people are healthier and not
missing days out of work? Are you preventing people from going into the
emergency room and therefore saving the hospital money? (Unintelligible)
helping you thinking about those issues of return on investment and how
you can document that return on investment.

Another key element of this positioning for sustainability is
organizational capacity. You wan to be able to demonstrate to people
that you're going to ask for money, that you're the right organization
to be able to do what it is you've ask money for.

And that you have the capacity to carry out what you're doing. That the
people you have on your team are skilled and able to do what you're
asking, that people give you money to do. That you have sufficient staff
to be able to do the scope of work that you're asking to be funded.

So, all of that business about organizational capacity is really
important. If you're going to grant to foundations then you have to show
that somewhere in your (sector) there's a 501C3 that they can write the
check to, because foundations can only write checks to 501C3, so you
need to think about all of those things as you begin this process
towards sustainability.

Another important thing that you need to do, you need to do today if you
haven't already done is to start crowing about what your doing. And one
of the biggest things for you to crow about is that you have the
strength and that you're bringing an investment of Federal dollars into
your communities.

And it's really important that people, leadership people in your
community understand what you're doing because every dollar that you
bring in your community generates other dollars. And when you're
bringing Federal dollars from outside of your community into your
community you're generating an economic impact for people in your
community.

And so, certainly all of your business leaders in your community need to
know that that's happening, your elected officials love to know that
Federal dollars are coming to their community both at the State and your
Nationally elected positions -- Federal officials.

If your representative to the US Congress doesn't know that this grant
is coming to your community, you need to be telling them now. So, its
those kinds of things that you need to have a plan for keeping the
people who can open doors for you and recognize the importance of the
program your doing informed throughout this process so that the first
time they hear about your good work is not when your going to ask them
for money.

So, communications is a very important thing.

And the last thing about positioning for sustainability is being
efficient and practical. You want to make sure that you have this grant
period and nothing is as it could (unintelligible), you know we make
mistakes, we learn new things, we've got to figure out the best way to
do it.

And you have grant funding to do that. But, somewhere along the line
you've got to make sure that you got your programs operating as
efficiently as they possible can because inefficiency costs money. And
you don't want to be raising a lot of money that you don't need because
your programs are not operating as efficiently as they can.

And also practical. You wan to make sure, we want to do a lot of things
we have so many needs in our communities and so many things that we
could do to address those needs. But you need to always ask yourself, is
this a practical way to do this? Is this something that people are
really going to want to support over the long haul? Is it -- By doing
this in such a way that the people I'm serving are going to respond to
it because it's practical for them?

Am I not making them go out of their comfort zone? So, all these issues
of efficiency and practicality need to be in the forefront as we think
about positioning ourself for the sustainability.

And when we have all of those things in place we can say, yes we have
the asking rights. We have the right to go ad ask somebody to give us
money because we're doing things that are important, we have a vision,
we're the best organization to do it, we can prove that what we're doing
has an impact and we have the right to ask.

And then that leads us to developing a sustainability plan. So, once we
have all of those things in place, we're going to work on our
sustainability plan. And that answer the question of how will you get
the money.

And I will tell you that we hear all of the time when we go to
communities like yours, sort of the we're rural and there's no money in
our community. And we understand that it's very challenging. Its more
challenging when you're in a rural community then it is when you're in a
big city.

But, it doesn't mean that all the money that you want to get has to come
out of your rural community. There's probably foundations in your State
that give money throughout your State. There is maybe some money from
State government that may be applicable to you.

But, some of the money is going to come from your community and you'll
find that there's more money there then you might believe that there is.
So, when you think about a long-term sustainability plan you need to
think about diversification.

Unless you get another -- unless you're fortunate enough to get another
of the (Delta) grants, then you're probably not going to get the
substantial size money in one lump sum from one source that you were
fortunate enough to get through this grant. That means you're going to
have piecemeal the money together from a variety of sources.

And that's why you need to start thinking about that now, always, I say
often that sustainability is not for the fate of heart because it really
takes a lot of work. You have to work at this sustainability throughout
your program just as hard as your working at implementing your program.

So, what does sustainability planning look like? It looks like
developing a budget. And when you're going out for sustainability you
never want to ask for money for just one year. That means your going out
every single year and asking fro the same amount of money.

So, a sustainability plan should always either be for an ask of three
years or five years to sustain your program. So that you can do this
once every three years or every five years and not have to do this what
we call the campaign all of the time, not that your not keeping in touch
and always asking, but you want to be able to sort of to think about
three to five years with a budget.

You're going to have research and do a lot of research about funding
options. You're going to have to develop a fundraising plan, that means
forming committees and getting people to work on that fundraising just
like they work on the implementation of your plans, having a schedule
and then implementing your plan.

I wanted to talk just a minute about fundraising options unless there's
any comments or thoughts before I move onto that?

Okay. So, there are different ways to think about where you get
resources for your community and some of those for your projects and
some of those we call in kind funding sources. And those people are not
writing you a check or giving you cash, but they are either volunteering
or they're giving you pencils or papers or any kind of supplies that you
might need. Those are in kind contributions or volunteerism.

There's also something we call institutional support, which would be is
there some place, some (college), some help facility, business that has
an extra room that you could use as your space that you wont have to pay
for that can provide any kind of other institutional support like that?

But can't give you money because of the restriction of they're a big a
University or some other requirements that they have, but they could
support you in other ways.

Then there's what we call earned income. That is you've got a service
you're providing and your charging a fee for it. You have knowledge that
nobody else has and so you can consult to somebody and get a fee for
that and that maybe people outside of your community.

That you have a product that you've created and that you could sell. Or
that your getting reimbursement for your services form either insurance
or Medicaid or Medicare or some other source like that.

A lot of people create (unintelligible) in order to form, raise money.
They do sporting events, like golf tournaments (unintelligible) lunches,
may sponsor lunches and dinners. I often tell of a hospital there, the
hospital in (Middle) Georgia that there are physicians put on a skit at
a dinner once a year.

And its become sort of the event to go to in that community and
everybody in the community comes out and they raise a good bit of money
for the hospital and to see their doctors sing and dance and do other
kinds of skits and (unintelligible) and its become quite the thing in
that community.

So, there's different ways to do it and it has to be unique to your
community if you're going to do these kinds of events. And there's a
traditional contributions and sponsorship, so you may ask somebody to
sponsor a kid if you're in a physical fitness program or sponsor an
elderly person to go to a daycare center. So, there could be
sponsorships so that people say, okay I know it costs \$100 to do this
and so I'm going to give \$100 to sponsor one kid.

Or there's just straight contributions towards your program and they
usually come businesses or social and city clubs, maybe some churches
and some individuals in the community.

There's a more traditional one which you all are familiar with, which
are grants, government grants, which tend to have more parameters around
them and you have to sort of fit your programs into the parameters of
the grant that are being given out.

There private foundations that can be more less restrictive and as long
as you fit within their giving patterns that you'll be able to get some
money from private foundations.

And of course there what we all achieve -- would like to achieve, which
is to being a line item in somebody's budget, government budget, which
is county or the state or an earmark in the Federal budget.

So, each of these have their challenges. Each of these has different
approaches to be able to be successful at them. And again, throughout
the next two years we're going to be talking to you about how to
approach each of these things.

So, we have developed - now let me stop and see if there's any questions
or anything.

Okay. So, we sort of developed a sustainability training plan for you
for the next two years, which will allow us, the technical assistance
providers and Lakisha is the project officer, all of us to interact with
you continually over the next two years and help you develop the
sustainability plan. Help you position yourself with sustainability and
help you have a plan to be able to implement.

So, it begins with this overview and this call, but each of the
technical assistance calls that we'll over the next two years will deal
with one of these topics of sustainability and how do you make that
happen.

When we see you in April we'll be doing some workshops with you around
sustainability and we'll do that in the programs meetings over the next
two years.

When we come to your site visits there may be some opportunities, we may
have other issues we're doing at site visits, but we can also sort of
touch in on some of the topics around sustainability at the same time.

And then we're going to be developing some interactive modules that may
be web based. And tools that you can use to go in on the web or the
internet or some other, maybe they'll be printed. We're still
formulating some of this, for you to be able to do some work on your own
that doesn't require us to be with you or leading through the process to
work toward your sustainability plan.

And the timeline on this chart is across the top, the activities are
highlighted as you see. So, at the end of all of this process what we
really hope to achieve with you is that we've increased your
understanding of what successful sustainability planning is.

That we're helping you position your organization to be sustainable,
that we're creating opportunities for you to implement functions of this
sustainability planning throughout the two years and that we're
facilitating at the end, accomplishing a facility plan -- a
sustainability plan for your program and your organization.

Questions?

Does it seem daunting to you?

Woman: This is the time where all participants should reflect on two
presentations, the information presented today. Or perhaps you have
thoughts on the suggestions and things you'd like to see included in
this process.

Woman: I thought there was just a lot of information presented today
about sustainability that I hadn't really seen put up before, so I know
we all are worried about it and try to concentrate on it, but I thought
it was a real good presentation.

(Beverly Tyler): Well, let me just keep emphasizing that throughout this
process there are going to be pieces that we're going to work with you
in depth and so I know its sort of daunting right now, but there really
is a plan to sort help you get through all of these steps in more
details.

(Anna): This is (Anna) from Arkansas. I'm really excited about this
because we went through this process with our local networks and they
actually created sustainability plans with a consultant (Tom Rossa) of
Capital (unintelligible), I think that what the company is called.

Woman: It is.

(Anna): But we didn't do one ourselves and I was just sitting here with
some of the staff saying, if we had engaged in that process, we would be
well beyond, you know from behind the eight ball, we would be well ahead
right now. But, we really given it some thought and I'm excited about
this and know its going to be a lot of work, but its worth it and very
much needed. So, I'm really looking forward to this.

Woman: We are too. I will tell you that this the, we've talked about it
at the Policy Center, we've talked about sustainability a lot and we've
done different kinds of sustainability workshops, but we're using this
opportunity to work with you, the (Delta) grantees as an opportunity to
build this curriculum specifically for you that we can then take out to
other grantees after this process.

So, we're real excited about the opportunity to have two years with you
to work on this curriculum and to get your feedback and tell us what
works for you and maybe how we could have done it differently. So, we'll
be going through this process together.

Woman: (Unintelligible) are there any additional questions for (Beverly)
or for (Catherine)?

(Beverly Tyler): Okay, if there's no additional questions, Lakisha did
you have any last minutes words for the call today?

Lakisha Smith: I think the only I did wan to mention outside of the
sustainability piece was just to remind folks about getting registered
for the meetings.

And that hopefully once we get to New Orleans and we have the
sustainability workshop that you all will engage in, that hopefully it
will be a little bit more interactive and we can kind of, because I know
I'm a visual person and the slides were very helpful, but I think in a
group setting that we'll be able to really dig deeper into this whole
notion of sustainability for the lead applicants as well as for
partnering organizations and multi-county networks.

So, good job and that's pretty much it. Anybody else have any questions
at the final moment?

(Sabrina): Okay, so our next, again our next call is scheduled for June
24th. However we know that we will continue speaking with each and
everyone of you over the next couple of months and we know that we look
forward to seeing you all in March.

And as we indicated earlier please do not hesitate to call any of the TA
providers should you have needs in the mean time and in between time.
I'm going to send out the flyer one more time, so that you all have the
links and telephone numbers for the audio replay which will be available
one hour after the call. And then if you wanted to access, which will be
up shortly, not within the hour, but maybe tomorrow sometime, we'll have
the materials and call in information on the website.

Lakisha Smith: And one more thing (Sabrina) I believe you and I talked
about this, but for future calls the dial-in number will change, so just
look out for those flyers because that number that 888 number that we're
using now will change for subsequent calls.

(Sabrina): Yes, thank you for reminding me about that Lakisha.

Well, again thank you all for your participation. We look forward to
moving forward with you on sustainability and we'll see you all in
March, April.

March 31st, April 1st and April 2nd.

Woman: Sounds good, bye-bye.

Woman: All right, take everybody.

Woman: Thank you.

END