**UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT**

**CFBCI PARTNERSHIP CONFERENCE BREAKOUT SESSION:**

**USAID PARTNERSHIP 101**

**WELCOME AND MODERATOR:**

TERRI HASDORFF,

DIRECTOR,

CENTER FOR FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, USAID

HEATHER MACLEAN,

SENIOR ADVISOR,

CENTER FOR FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, USAID

**SPEAKERS:**

KAREN TURNER,

DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS,USAID

JOCELYN ROWE,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON VOLUNTARY FOREIGN AID, USAID

MARK WALTHER,

DIVISION CHIEF,

OFFICE OF ACQUISITION AND ASSISTANCE,USAID

MARY NEWTON,

REGISTRAR, PRIVATE VOLUNTARY COOPERATION DIVISION,

OFFICE OF DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS, USAID

MIKE BERKLY,

OFFICER, U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE

**FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2008**

*Transcript by*

*Federal News Service*

*Washington, D.C.*

TERRI HASDORFF: I'm going to go ahead and get started. I'm Terri
Hasdorff, director of the faith-based office here at USAID. I'm going to
give you a brief overview of what the USAID Faith-Based Initiative is
all about, and then kind of a history of the Faith and Community-Based
Initiative, just real quick, and tell you a little bit about what the
center does. And then we'll break into some talks with some folks here
who know a whole lot more about this agency than I do and they are
pretty incredible -- the collection of wisdom that you have up here on
this panel.

Let me start off by telling you a little bit of background on the
Faith-Based and Community Initiative. I know that you heard this morning
from Jedd, who is the director of the White House faith-based office.
There's three basic things that I tell folks to keep in mind when you
are thinking about partnering with government. First and foremost, the
government can fund compassion, but cannot fund conversion. No
witnessing or actually proselytizing. Heather MacLean is senior advisor
on my staff and she's going to get in to tell you a little bit more
about the dos and don'ts if you partner with government, what that's
going to mean for your organization, how you need structure things.

So I won't get into that too much in depth, but the analogy that I like
to use for this is one that Dr. Amy Sherman put together. She's one of
the leading experts in the field on the Faith and Community-Based
Initiative. She talks about how some organizations are structured more
like a salad and others are structured more like a cake. If your
organization is like a salad, where you can separate out the lettuce and
the tomatoes and the carrots -- in other words, you can separate out
portions of your program to provide specific services -- you have a food
program; you have a homeless program; you have a program where you work
with orphans or vulnerable children -- and you can separate that out in
such a way so that there's not an overtly religious aspect to it --
there's no conversion aspect to it -- then that would be an excellent
program to target federal funding for.

If your organization is more like a cake, where the flour and the sugar
and the eggs are so grafted together that you can't separate them out --
in other words, you have such an overtly religious component to your
program that there's no way that you feel like you could do your program
without having that component to it, then you do not want to go after
federal funds. Federal government programming would not be right for
your organization because, in order to stay in compliance with
government funds, you would have to be able to separate those activities
out. So that's a good rule of thumb. Heather's going to give you more
guidance on that.

The second C that I encourage people to keep in mind is capacity, and
that is such an important one, because, first and foremost, you can go
out and hire great writers, sometimes, to get a grant for your
organization, but if you don't have the structural capacity to handle
that, it can run you into a lot of trouble. And you don't want to have
compliance issues or things like that. What you want to do is make sure
that your board is strong, and that's why we've got BoardSource here,
which is just an incredible resource for you.

You want to make sure that you have your accounting systems in place and
all of the things that are going to help have your organization have
good staff, well-trained staff, sustainability so that your program is
not dependent on a government grant, so if that grant dries up and goes
away, as they often do -- they shift and turn and they'll go in
three-year cycles and then there's a different grant focus and that
funding you've been relying on is gone -- you want to make sure that
your program is going to keep doing what you do best no matter what. And
that's the kind of program that a government funder looks for, too; they
like to see programs that are sustainable.

The third C to keep in mind is collaboration. And that's what's
wonderful about conferences like this, because you have all sorts of
opportunities -- I was just sitting at lunch with someone and they said,
you know what, we were just talking with somebody from LifeWater
International who's hear to speak for one of your panels and we're doing
a water project. And she told us that there might be a possibility of a
sub-grant opportunity or an intermediary partnership opportunity. How
cool is that? Now, that happened right here, just this morning! So you
are surrounded by people who you can collaborate with. Even if they are
not a large NGO that has the opportunity to sub-grant funding to you,
you might have the opportunity to write a grant proposal with two small
NGOs together that makes you leverage resources better, makes you more
strategic, so that you're more efficient and your proposal's going to
stand out because of that.

And it's not just USAID grants you want to think about; it's foundation
grants and lots of others. But that's a quick overview of three things
you want to keep in mind. Now, the Faith and Community-Based Initiative
at USAID is geared towards the international side, of course. This
initiative is about partnering government with community; it's about
partnering faith and community-based organizations with one another as
much as it is about government, though. So that's part of what the
center is here to do. The faith-based office at USAID -- or the Center
for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives -- is designed to help you
with several things. Number one: to give you resources and information.
If you aren't on the e-mail newsletter list, you need to be. I encourage
you to go to USAID.gov and do a keyword search for "faith" and sign up
for our newsletter list, because we give you lots of information and
capacity-building resources through that.

Second of all, the initiative in the faith-based center is really about
helping you to have a navigation point in the agency. Sometimes, USAID
can be a little bit confusing; it's a big organization to work with. And
so our job is to help connect you to people who can give you the
information you need to move forward with partnership. And then the
third thing we try to do is we try to build collaboration. So if you're
looking for an intermediary partner or somebody that you can work with
and you're having a hard time finding them, come to us and let us help
you with that, too.

So I'm not going to take any more time. I want to give you the
opportunity to hear from some of these incredible panelists that we've
got. First, I want to welcome Karen Turner. Karen is the head of our
Office of Development Partners here at USAID. This is the office that
oversees the PVO registration process, which is a very important thing.
If you're new to the agency, you have to register as a PVO in order to
partner with us, and so that's something you want to hear about. And
then we've got several other speakers. I've got to run upstairs because
the administrator is having a function in our office's honor --
(chuckles) -- which is why she's wearing green today, because our office
went green on the president's management agenda. So I'm going to run
upstairs. Heather MacLean, the senior advisor on our staff, is going to
continue to moderate and I'll be back in about 20 or 30 minutes. So
Karen, if you'll please come join us, thanks so much.

(Applause.)

KAREN TURNER: Thank you, Terri. What I would first like to talk briefly
about is just my office, because I think that it's important to the
whole concept we're talking about -- partnership. And then I'm going to
talk about a couple of initiatives that we have underway to support
partnership, particularly with the NGO, PVO community. My office, the
Office of Development Partners, was created in about March of 2007. And
it was created to -- and it was before I arrived; I came here, back to
Washington, in last September.

But it was created in the reflection that partnership is really where
it's critical to development these days. A reflection of that fact that
what we've seen -- and I think you may have heard this earlier in the
day -- that if we look back in the '60s and '70s the kind of assistance
that USAID provided was -- things provided by the U.S. government
through USAID and others -- was -- made up about 70, 80 percent of it
flows to the developing world. Well, that has really reversed, and today
what we know is that most of the flows from the U.S. to the developing
world are from organizations such as yourselves, from the diaspora and
in fact even though the U.S. government has tripled assistance in many
cases -- doubled assistance in many cases, the private sector, among
others, has tripled.

And so what that means is that if we're really talking about the
development, AID has recognized that our role really is to facilitate
the effectiveness of a lot of the actors that are involved in the
developing world, and that by facilitating the involvement of
organizations such as yourselves and others that are working with the
grassroots, then we are in fact helping development to be done more
effectively. So my office has been cobbled together; our linkage is with
the private sector, so our public-private alliances, which includes
foundations, which includes work with diaspora. Our work with other
donors: We -- my office liaisons with both bilateral donors -- the
Germans, the Europeans, World Bank and so forth.

In fact, we have a representative from my office that sits at the World
Bank but works in the USAID; in addition, we have from my office
representatives that sit and work with agencies around the world. So we
just recently put a representative in Beijing to liaise with the Chinese
because of their increasing role as a donor around the world,
particularly in Africa. We also have a representative in Paris that
works with the OECD, which are basically the major countries on
development issues; we have a representative in Brussels that works with
the European Commission; we also have a representative in Tokyo in order
to work with Japanese in terms of coordinating our assistance.

And our -- the most recent addition to our portfolio of donor-liaison
positions is an Arab donor position, which we've just recently created
to liaise with various organizations throughout the Arab world, which
provide assistance. We also serve as the liaison with a variety of other
U.S. government agencies that provide assistance, and in fact we manage
on behalf of the -- you could say the administrator of something that's
called the Development Policy Coordinating Committee. That committee is
-- representatives chaired by administrator of the USAID, and brings
together at the assistant secretary and undersecretary level
representatives from various U.S. government agencies that are involved
in development in an effort to coordinate our efforts and the way in
which we work around the world.

In addition, my office manages our liaison with the Millennium Challenge
Corporation and also manages resources and USAID's implementation of
threshold programs for the Millennium Challenge Corporation around the
world. The USAID administrator is a board member of the Millennium
Challenge Corporation and we support her in that role. In addition, as I
mentioned we use -- we have a unit that supports the relationship of the
agency with the NGO community and with cooperatives and it's -- we have
Larry, who we'll be hearing from later, who manages the registration
process for community care and PVO community. In addition, we manage the
relationship with agriculture universities, and so as you see we have a
variety of external partnerships, and through that we try to look and
bring together the various partners and external relationships in a way
that helps those agencies as well as helps USAID in terms of what we're
trying to accomplish in development.

One of the most important initiatives that we got underway this year is
something called the Development Grants Program, and hopefully some of
you have heard about that. The Development Grants Program was mandated
in the appropriations legislation this year and was aimed at
facilitating the ability of the agency to reengage and to provide grants
directly to organizations, particularly organizations that had not
traditionally been able to get them to work with USAID. This recognition
that -- for a whole host of reasons, partly a result of not sufficient
personnel to manage direct grant programs -- AID had largely gotten away
with those sorts of relationships, and many of you would have been
familiar with that we were doing grants with the contracts, we were
doing much larger grants and it made it very difficult for small
organizations to enter into a relationship with us.

In addition, as Terri mentioned we can be a bit vulnerable in terms of
figuring out where exactly you get to the organization and how you do
business with us and the Development Grants Program is an effort by the
Congress, which we had embraced to be able to reinvigorate our ability
to partner with the NGO community, and particularly with smaller NGOs
and NGOs that have not been able to receive grants. There's ceilings --
there's a ceiling -- a \$2 million ceiling on what you can receive, and
also it's aimed at organizations that haven't received more than \$5
million over five years. The EPS, the end-of-program statement for that,
went out a while ago but the bottom line is that we expect that this
assistance -- this kind of assistance to remain within the agency, and
what we're trying to do is to create, you know, in-house and the Office
of Development Partners our ability -- and to provide leadership to the
agency's ability -- to engage with the NGO and PBF community, both the
U.S. PBF community as well as indigenous NGOs.

And what that means is that we're trying to gather and disseminate best
practices and partnerships with NGOs, where you house the ability to
provide capacity, building assistance on behalf of our missions, in
recognition of the important role that NGO's play. And I give the
example -- my most recent overseas post was Jamaica, and I was there in
2004 managing our programs in the eastern Caribbean and in Jamaica. When
we had Hurricane Ike -- and Hurricane Ivan devastated a number of the
island, especially the island of Grenada -- the assistance that we
needed to provide we wanted to provide through NGOs -- we really wanted
to reach the grassroots.

Well, the challenge that we faced was that there really were not, in
terms of U.S. NGOs, PDOs or local indigenous NGOs -- really was not the
capacity to move the amount of resources that we wanted to move. We had
about \$40 million that we were tasked with trying to move and a period
of about 12 months, 12 to 18 months in Grenada. It made it very
challenging to get that assistance underway very quickly and also to
reach the grassroots, because there really was not the capacity -- the
NGO capacity. And what we really would have welcomed was that if we had
already made the investment in building the capacity in NGOs, in local
as well as U.S. NGOs that could have gone in to work with the local
organizations there.

And so what we're hoping through the Development Grants Program is to
support the efforts of -- to work with indigenous NGOs, to work with --
directly with U.S. PDOs and to --through other mechanisms that we may
have -- to build the capacity so that you can be sustainable and so that
we can also, through other relationships that we may have, to build
partnerships with other organizations to accomplish our objectives. What
also hope through the Office of Development Partners is to be a place
similar to -- Terri's office deals with specific -- with the faith-based
organizations, and we work very closely with her office.

We're trying to look across the agency and look at the NGO relationship
to provide leadership and information about how we should be doing that
-- to be a place where NGOs and PDOs feel that they can come to get
information about how to do business with USAID, so that we can learn
about the challenges that you may be having in doing business with USAID
so that we can target our efforts to address those, so that we can
provide outreach to the communities, because the bottom line is -- and
what we recognize is that, especially if you're trying to deal with
reaching grassroots, NGOs and PDOs do that best. It's also recognition
that, as the global development effort is aimed at country ownership,
countries taking a leadership role in their development, that is going
to be through organizations such as yourselves who are working very
closely with local organizations there to strengthen them, to help them
utilize the things that you have learned in implementing activities here
in the U.S., or just knowledge and experience that you can transfer.

And so we see the role that the -- your organizations play as being very
directly related to the current global agenda for development, which is
to strengthen the capacity of local institutions to play more of a
leadership role in their development, and that starts at the grassroots
level. And so as we go forward I hope that some of you have participated
and applied for the Development Grants Program for this year, I hope in
the future if you haven't that you will consider participating and that
if you're interested in learning more about partnering with USAID or if
it's in some way that we can help to facilitate your ability to partner
with USAID to look at the issue of public-private partnerships and we
would like to offer to -- able to help you with that. Thanks.

HEATHER MACLEAN: Karen, thank you very much. I think you could hear from
her comments how important her office is going to be in the coming
years, just moving forward -- especially when it comes to the PDO and
indigenous NGO efforts and how USAID can better support them. We
actually -- I don't think you have a schedule that lines out what order
the speakers are coming in, so for the benefit of us panelists and for
you I'll just wind that out right now. Jocelyn's going to speak next,
Jocelyn Rowe, and then Mark, and then Mary, and then Mike and then I'll
finish it up. But our next speaker is Jocelyn Rowe and she is the
executive director of the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid.
And I'll let her explain to you a little bit more about the role of her
office and the function that it plays here in the agency.

JOCELYN ROWE: Thank you, Heather, and thank you all for joining myself
and my colleagues here today. I know it's -- we just had lunch, so I
guess our challenge is to -- maybe that prevented an energy boost in the
room. I have a question, first of all, to start off my quick talk, is:
Have any of you ever been to a meeting of the advisory committee. Ok,
are a couple hands. All right, well our next meeting is scheduled for
March 11^th^, it will be here in Washington, our location is to be
determined. We try -- often we go to the Press Club, which is just up
the street -- probably will not be there for this time, but we always
try to find a venue that is convenient for the agency and numbers, as
well as the public.

Just very quickly -- just a few things about the advisory committee or
ACVFA, as we like to call it for short. It started by USAID, it's got a
really interesting history: Its roots go back to World War II and the
war relief board that was started by President Franklin Roosevelt. It
was dealing with war refugee issues coming out of Europe at that time.
It was then officially established as the Advisory Committee on
Voluntary Foreign Aid in 1947 by President Truman, and it was chartered
originally with three members. We just created a link on the ACVFA Web
page where there's a little more information about its founding.

As I mentioned, it is chartered by USAID; the charter is put forth by
the administrator every two years, so it will be coming up for renewal
early next year. The members are appointed by the administrator, and
they serve at his or her pleasure. Their terms are usually for up to two
years under the current charter terms. We do have a Web page; I
encourage you to check it out. There's a fact sheet on the research
table on the other side of this divider with some materials on the
committee that you may already have picked up, including the fact sheet,
which has more information on how you can join our listserv and just
some overview of our overall, you know, work.

In the big picture what I usually tell people is we have three purposes.
We're a sounding board between USAID and its partners; traditionally
that's been the PV -- private voluntary organizations community. That
has broadened, though, in the last several years to reflect the changing
nature of partnerships, so that it includes members representing the
foundation world, for profit; think tank; people who do contracting,
work with USAID; et cetera. Its roots, I think, will always reflect, you
know, the strong relationship with PDOs and NGOs, but we are trying to
make sure we have a membership that is diverse and reflects the variety
of partnerships that USAID engages with.

Some of the key recommendations that we've been focusing on the last two
years under administrator foreign leadership have related to the foreign
assistance framework -- we originally had a pile of reports on the table
and then most of them have picked up -- but they reflect those
recommendations on foreign assistance framework related to democratic
governance, investing in people, humanitarian assistance. We took part
of the exercise a step further, and this year put together a dozen -- I
think 14 case studies showing democratic governance and economic growth
integration on the ground.

Our next big project or product will be released probably as early as
next week. It's a report that we put together on public outreach, and
we've used our public meetings -- the one we had in June in Atlanta as
well as the one we had more recently, last month at the press club -- to
talk to the public about how USAID can do a better job of telling its
story, both domestically and overseas, and then use those conversations
and discussions to put together a draft report, which as I mentioned
will be finalized next week. And that will be posted on the Web page.
All of our reports and recommendations are on the Web page and you can
download them if you weren't able to pick up a particular set that you'd
like.

Our other final project for this year will be a kind of big-picture
foreign assistance way forward and then the two administrator for
looking back on our work as a committee, specifically as it relates to
U.S. foreign assistance and how it may be more effective and start
discussing qualities of leadership, as well as, you know, key elements
to consider as U.S. foreign assistance goes forward. And I guess in
closing, you know, our next meeting will be March 11^th^. I had the
privilege of working with the committee for about four years, and --
actually more than four years -- and it's -- the public meetings are
unique; there are probably a thousand advisory committees in Washington,
but our meetings usually have 200 people to 400 in the room.

We obviously use the meetings for feedback on our recommendations as
we're going through drafting, but we also try to make sure we have
timely topics of interest, whether its tsunami reconstruction, or
Arab-Muslim outreach or private-public partnerships related to global
development alliance, which Karen oversees. So I encourage you all to
consider joining the listserv as a way to hear more about the meeting
next spring. They are public meetings, there's no charge, and it's a
great way to develop your own networks and then develop future
partnerships and possibly become more engaged through the committee,
subcommittee, committee membership, et cetera. But you don't have to be
a member to come to the meeting, just to make sure we understand that.

So, anyway, I look forward to questions when we come to that part of the
section and thank you.

(Applause.)

MS. MACLEAN: Yes, thank you very much, Jocelyn. Our next speaker is Mark
Walther, who is division chief in USAID's Office of Acquisition and
Assistance.

MARK WALTHER: Well, it's a pleasure to be here today. Part of my job on
an everyday basis is that I often get calls from the public and -- on
asking, you know, well how can do business with AID? You know, what are
the different possibilities, how do I approach the agency, what are the
pros and cons of different aspects, are there certain concerns I need to
be aware of? So what I'll do briefly this afternoon is just go through
some of the basics that I typically go through on any type of call or
enquiry I get from the public on someone wanting to do business with the
agency.

As some of you may know, there's two government-wide portals: grants.gov
and fbo.gov. Grants.gov is for assistance, grants, cooperative
agreements; fbo.gov is for contracts. Those are government-wide,
competitive portals; all our competitive activities are advertised
through those two portals. Unless a program in AID is specifically
curtailed to a particular type of organization, like it's only eligible
for PVO programs, the overwhelming majority of aid programs are open to
any type of organization: for profit, nonprofit, PDO. You can apply for
programs in the -- for grants, you can also apply to programs in
contracts.

So there's no prohibition or inhibition undertaking one type of approach
to the organization versus another type. Traditionally nonprofits
utilize, more often than not, grant programs and the for-profits utilize
contract programs, but again, we have a number of organizations that
work on both sides and it's not an uncommon occurrence. There's two
different bodies of regulations obviously for grants and assistance
versus contracts, there's -- so obviously you'd want to be familiar
somewhat with those particular regulations, depending on which area
you're interested in pursuing.

We also have a guide to unsolicited proposal process. At any time, any
organization can approach any mission or any operating unit within the
agency and submit an unsolicited concept paper or proposal. It's a
difficult process. And the difficult with the process is that we do not
have a lot of discretionary funding outside our typical multi-year
budget appropriation process. AID traditionally undertakes programs over
a multi-year period with annual appropriations that incrementally fund
those.

However, there are organizations from time to time that find out about
specific areas in a particular country and they're already in that
country and they'd like to submit something to the mission for them to
consider. There's no required format. The guide piece in the ADS is
there to assist the organization, but you don't have to be concerned,
you know, do I have to file these particular forms or does it have to be
in this particular format. It's very open-ended on how you can submit a
concept paper. The only form referenced in that guide is the standard
form 424, which is the budget-type form. Some people who are not used to
that form are very perplexed when they see it for the first time. They
may have a lot of questions. My recommendation on that form itself is
just do the best you can based on the information in the form. The form
is never going to be a show stop from an organization being further
considered for a particular program, especially in an unsolicited arena.

The most important part to focus on is the technical part of your
concept paper or application. As mentioned previously by some of our
speakers, you know, another approach to the agency is finding out what
programs are already out there, who are the implementing league, who are
the other partner organizations that are implementing our current
programs? And how do you try to market yourself to them for
subcontracting or sub-grant activities? A number of different bureaus
had user guides for implementing partner information on our public Web
site. The unfortunate thing is, there's no requirement that a particular
bureau has it, and the bureau has put them in a variety of different
places and different styles and formats.

But one of the ones, global health has a very robust user's guide. So
you can find out everything. They're using a page per description of
each program they have and who's implementing it, who's subbing, the
begin date, end dates, how much the program encompasses, a robust
description of the program and the activity. So it is a source of
information, there is a lot of information out there already. The
democracy and governance program has another implementing partner user
guide. So when you go to our public Web site, you look under the bureaus
and look for user guide or implementing partners as a source of
information, and again, that'll help you on what we're funding currently
and the areas that we're focusing on.

Remember also, when you're trying to market yourself to existing
partners, not to be bashful in your discussions with them. The knock
that most partners have is that they'll put an organization on their
proposal to obtain an award and then during the implementation they
never sue their sub-partners. So you need to do your homework as well.
If you're, you know, approving an existing partner, you should be asking
them, you know, what's their track record on using their partner base?
And be forthright about it and explore that, because it's only in your
best interest to do that. Getting your name on a proposal and never
having been an opportunity during implementation isn't really doing you
any good at all down the stretch. So make sure to have those candid
conversations.

Technical evaluation criteria. You know, again, that's where your
primary focus should always be, especially in the grant assistance
arena. That's what's going to make or break your further consideration
of a particular program. There are a number of common criterias,
technical merit or capability, technical approach, past performance, key
personnel or personnel. There's also, you know, there will also be a
budget section, cost-reasonableness, cost-effectiveness type area. You
really have to guard against a cookie-cutter approach even if you're in,
doing something in the same sector, you know. One education program
isn't like another educational program.

When you're proposing, you really have to take the time and the effort
to connect the dots throughout the process. What are you going to do to
achieve your goals? How are you going to measure them? How are you going
to -- what evidence do you have that you have the capability to make
that program a success? Each solicitation is unique. They'll all have
their own criteria and sub-criteria, and while there are common ones
that I've mentioned, you really have to look at each of them, you really
have to go through the process in a detailed fashion and connect
everything for the evaluator and the reader, because that's going to
make a significant difference in the possible success in that program.

I'm sure you've heard a lot, results-oriented, impact-oriented,
performance-based type adjectives that government, that's where we want
to be, that's where we strive to be. There is a result-oriented source
book. Again, it's accessible through out public Web site. It has to do
with function. It's both for internal USAID practitioners and how to
help us prepare solicitations that are more performance-based, and it's
also for the developing partners and how to address issues in a
performance and an impact-type scenario. So you'll see that there's
different questions and thoughts that it runs through. There's also link
to a variety of different examples and programs that we consider more
performance-based or results-oriented. You should definitely take a look
at them just to see and understand, you know, how to connect impact and
results and your approach, because that's something the agency will
always be focusing on.

I guess the last thing I have to say is really, try not to get
frustrated by the process. I mean, applying for a government grant is
just like applying for a job in a highly-competitive marketplace. You
know, if you ever apply for a government job, you know it's not just a
résumé. You know, there could be 20 questions; there could be 100
questions you have to answer. And again, you have to again answer them
in a detailed fashion. Always focus on the technical side -- not that
saying that cost is not important, but in the assistance arena, we're
revealing cost for reasonableness, and we will have further exchanges
with organizations that make it past a technical hurdle and have
additional cost discussions. Next, you know, that one further breakdown
of cost and understanding of a cost proposal. Our goal in assistance is
really realism, reasonableness. It isn't our goal to negotiate from one
mark to another mark in the assistance arena. It's really just to make
sure that the costs you're proposing reflect different indicators that
would be on a sound and reasonable basis.

So again, I as well as the others look forward to any questions you guys
might have at the end of the presentations.

(Applause.)

MS. MACLEAN: Thank you very much, Mark. I think especially what you said
about not getting frustrated with the process is important, because I
heard someone say it's the hardest money you'll ever get. But our next
panelist is Mary Newton, who is the USAID registrar for USAID
International Private and Military Organizations. And actually, I've
been at USAID for about a year and a half now, and Mary was one of the
very first people I met. And she took me through the whole PVO process
and that was just so useful to me, just even coming in not knowing as
much about it, so I think you'll really appreciate hearing from her.

MARY NEWTON: Thank you, Heather. Good afternoon! You guys look a little
sleepy. Can we put our hands up and go like this? Yeah, okay.
(Chuckles.) I know how hard it is coming in after lunch. (Inaudible) --
hope to give you some useful information for you. Again, I'm so glad to
have the opportunity to talk with each of you this afternoon. Our annual
organizations that are already registered with USAID as private
voluntary organizations, okay, hands up high, guys. Okay, see? They
survived it.

We wanted to stave off, right off the bat, any rumors that you've heard
that we're going to ask you for, maybe, your children's inheritance or
anything to get registered, that it's a long and onerous task. Over the
years, we've tried to make it as easy and streamlined as much as
possible. Beth, the process itself dates back to World War II, where the
United States was using community-based organizations to deliver
commodities to warring countries. And it was actually housed in the
Department of State. After they established USAID, this particular
process was then moved over to USAID and we've been managing that
particular process since that time.

Lots of times, we get the question as to why organizations asked to
register with USAID. Name me some -- (inaudible) -- organizations to
register and we've continued that particular process so that we're able
to identify organizations that are private and voluntary in nature that
have received 501(c)(3) status from taxes and from IRS. We'll look at
those organizations that have been structured so and that are continuing
to deliver -- oversees commodities and do a little end development
assistance.

It's also a format that we can use to certify that these organizations
also have structures in place, that they're able to, say, keep
government funds. So the process begins with my office. As a matter of
fact, I think I'm probably maybe the first contact many of you will have
with the agency. And part of my job is to make sure that that particular
contact, that your first entrance into the agency is easy as possible.
And we will also help you to navigate around the agency, directing you,
hopefully, with great and fine assistance.

But, getting back to the PVO process, what we have you to do is we look
at your organizations, have you to submit to us documentation in the
format of your articles, your dialogues, financial statements, and your
tax exemption status, again, to determine whether or not your
organization is private and voluntary in nature. We're only looking at
organizations that have been tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization. The
agency works with a variety -- the agency works with a variety of
organizations such as universities, hospitals, churches, religious
organizations. Those are not the organizations that we're required to
register. You're eligible to receive funding from the agency, but you're
not having to apply or comply with the registration requirement.

Again, we're only looking at those kind of 501(c)(3) in that they're
private and voluntary in nature. Once we have you registered with the
agency, you become eligible to receive funding in the form of grants and
corporate agreements from anywhere within the agency that you'd like to
get hired for solicitations. The requirement does not apply to -- if
you're going to do contracting with the agency or if you're going after
disaster assistance funding. There are eight conditions of registration
that we look at, which is eligibility criteria. We look at your boards,
see if you have a board of directors set in place. We look at, also, the
structure of the organizations, your articles, your bylaws. Is your
organization structured and its focus on overseas -- the development of
your doing some type of functions in overseas development programs, what
this organization's all about.

We look at your tax exemption letter that you actually receive from the
IRS to make sure that your organization has been tax exempt. We also
look at your financial statements to see if your organization has
financial systems in place. Is it an organization that's viable, that it
is positive in nature. So we look at those particular documents. We
register your organization -- we look at it before our committee. It's
registered with the agency. Once you're registered, you are eligible to
receive funding. Each year, to maintain your registration status with
us, we look at your format, your documents, six months after the end of
the fiscal year. So if your fiscal year ends December 31^st^, then the
following June, we're going to look at your annual documentation. And
that -- (inaudible) -- require that you submit to us, again, copies of
your financial statement and there's two USAID forms that you'll have to
submit.

Starting next week, though, probably the latter part of next year, next
week, I'm sorry, we will be launching what we call our online
registration system. So you won't have to submit any type of
documentation to us in hardcopy format. You'll be able to do it all
online. Once we have your information, we'll be able to probably respond
to you within two to three weeks to let you know whether or not you have
been approved for the registration status with the USAID. So everything
will be done online. I think you'll find that it's even easier. There's
not forms to submit anymore.

A couple of other things with that -- we have also available on the
USAID Web site, a great resource in the PVO registry. This is a registry
that you can do -- many searches on. As my friend, Martin, talked about,
maybe partnering with other organizations at some point. If you want to
find partners, you can do that. We have searches where you can find
who's working in Zambia. If they're working in education, if they're
working with HIV/AIDS, private sector they're working in. If you want to
find organizations that are working in the state that your organization
is headquartered in and working in the sectors, you can do that. We can
also -- to see what the support is of each of those organizations, what
type of boards they have. It's a wealth of information so I invite you
to please look at that particular resource.

Also, once you're registered with us, we will list your name in that
particular database and that particular database is used throughout
USAID as well as Congress as well as many other types of establishments
across the country. We oftentimes get requests from organizations,
believe it or not, foundations that are looking for nonprofit
organizations to make contributions to and so we refer them to the Web
site, if you're looking for something in one area that they are focused
in. The registration is there to help you, not to hinder you. We have
staff that are willing to answer any of the questions that you may have
and to guide you along the way. I think our reputation's pretty good. I
think we approve more applications than we deny.

Usually, the ones that we deny are applications with information that's
been omitted. Maybe you didn't include financial statements, or maybe
you didn't include the articles or the bylaws. So if you usually submit
a complete package and everything is in order, you can normally --
you're in a financially viable position when we look at your financial
information. Most organizations are recommended to register with the
agency. Currently, we have about 600 organizations that are recognized
-- that's U.S. and international -- from international, it's around
about 70. That's constantly changing because the system is on board.
We're constantly removing and adding organizations to our database at
all times. But it is there. We invite you, again, to make sure that you
take advantage of it, to look at it.

I can go in more details with you later on about the structure or the
type of documentations that you would have to submit, but it's a
documentation that you would normally already have in your files. So we
won't be asking you for anything that you would actually have to go out
and get that you wouldn't already have as part of your organization's
structure. I think that's about it in a nutshell. I'll be glad to
entertain questions later on from --

(Applause.)

MS. MACLEAN: Thank you very much, Mary. Our next panelist is Mike Burkly
and Mike is a Foreign Service Officer here with USAID. His last posting
was in Moldova, which is where he first became connected with our
office. So he's going to speak to you a little bit, kind of, from the
perspective of USAID missions out in the field and you know, suggestions
for interacting with them and just thoughts on that, kind of that
perspective.

MIKE BURKLY: Okay, I'm going to take this one out so I don't have to be
like this the whole time. Anyways, thanks everyone for coming and I'll
try to keep this to five minutes. Can you mark -- could you please be
the timekeeper? When it gets to five minutes, just tell me and I will
stop, even if I'm in the middle a sentence, I promise I will stop --
stop to have a conversation.

First of all, I just want to thanks Terri Hasdorff for her leadership in
convening this and I'll talk a little bit about some of the ways that
we've worked with faith-based organizations and in missions that I've
worked in. I was in Peru and then Brazil and then Moldova and it was fir
nine years, I stepped back this summer. So the main thing I want to sort
of convey to you is that faith-based and community organizations really
have a special role to play. And they can do things and reach places
that AID usually can't reach. Let me give you two examples.

The first one is when I was in Peru; I was commissioned disaster relief
officer. And unfortunately, I had to be the disaster relief officer when
an earthquake hit the southern part of Peru. So we had to sort of kind
of respond very quickly with assistance. And to me, it wasn't any
surprise that the groups that really stepped up to plate at that instant
best were faith-based and community organizations. ADRO, the Adventist
Development Relief Organization was able mobilize an incredible amount
of volunteers to distribute the relief equipment we had sent. We had
sent tents and water bladders and things like that, which really don't
do much good if they just sit in a warehouse. But ADRO had a huge cadre
of volunteers that they could mobilize very fast and were able to do a
very good job in getting the assistance out to the communities.

Same thing, Caritas -- Caritas and CRS were very helpful in the
earthquake, and not just them, but the local Catholic NGOs that were
affiliated with them also responded very quickly. So I think that's one
example of how faith-based community organizations can really help and
expand the reach much further for AID. Just an example, when I was in
Moldova, we had four Americans and about 18 Moldavians. We had 22 people
trying to cover the whole country. It's not a lot. So we really rely on
community organizations, some of which were faith-based, some not, just
sort of inform our activities and help us.

And when you're visiting a country, if you're going to look at your
projects; say you're in country X. You really should make a point to try
and call the state office while you're there and just stop in and talk
with them. If someone doesn't want to talk with you, I think that's a
bad reflection on them. I mean, I really -- I've always tried to make
time to meet with people who are coming in from organizations, even if
they weren't really working in an area that AID was working in. And
maybe the answer would be that, you know, no, we're not working in water
sanitation, so we can't really help you there but we could at least --
we could refer them to other organizations.

I remember one time, I referred a group that was working water and
sanitation in Moldova. I referred them to a Turkish development
organization and they were able to get some assistance from them. So
there's a lot of ways that AID can help you in the field. If you're --
say you're in Moldova, for example, that's like I was last. If you talk
to the AID people there, they can sort of steer you towards what other
donors are doing because there's, you know, there's 20, 30, 40, 50
donors in some countries and AID is usually pretty well aware of who's
doing what in what areas. So I think they can be helpful in sort of
steering you towards potential partners, including potential partners
from the private sector.

So just -- I've got about one minute left, I think. Just to let you know
what we did in Moldova with faith-based organizations. We convened a
workshop with the office of faith-based community initiative. World ORT,
which is a Jewish NGO, sent out a trainer and Catholic Relief Services,
which Mike McKennett gave a presentation today, also helped with setting
up the event. We got the event space for free from the OSCE, which is
the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe. So really, this
didn't cost AID anything. It really didn't cost AID anything at all.

We were able to bring together a group of Jewish groups, Catholic
groups, the Romanian and the Russian Orthodox Church, which usually
weren't talking with each other. We had Baptists, Lutherans, a few other
steps and it was really encouraging, for me, to see all them come
together and work on a common project. In this case, they were talking
mostly about human trafficking. And all of these groups, just like all
of you, have great contacts at the community level. I mean, I can't go
talk to someone in a small village in every village in Moldova, but the
Orthodox Church really can. So it was very good to engage with them.

We also worked with ILO on that, the -- I forgot what they're called --
International Labor Organization, right, the -- so we were able to bring
a lot of different partners. So I guess the take-home message that I'm
stating is we're in a country where AID works. Please make sure to stop
in and talk to the people there. And I think it's a great way for us to
get information from you and also for us to maybe help guide you a
little bit on what possibilities there are for working together. And I
just want to really salute all of you for the work you do. I think, you
know, faith-based and community organizations work in some of the
toughest places in the world's most challenging environments. And a lot
of times, they don't get as much publicity as they should, but I just
want to let you all know that AID really appreciates working with you
and we want to try and build that cooperation and work together more. So
thanks very much.

(Applause.)

MS. MACLEAN: Thank you, thank you, Mike. As Terri mentioned, I'm going
to touch on a few of the do's and don'ts when it comes specifically to
faith-based organizations. But I have a few comments first and I will
make this pretty brief so we have plenty of time for questions on the
role of our office. But just to follow up one thing Mike said, USAID
staff are happy to meet with you, but it also helps us if you can do
your homework first. I know Mary talked about the Web site they had for
PVO registration. There's tons of information on there. Karen's office
has a great Web site on the development branch program. Again, lots of
information there.

So take the time to go find the Web sites, look them up, read the
information, read all the things that are there because then when we
come in to meet with you as AID staff, you can make the most effective
use of your time, but also their time as well. So I just encourage you
to do that and I think that really -- that's -- you know, one of our
roles as our office is just to help you, as organizations, assess your
desired capacity to handle -- to work with the U.S. government to handle
government funds. And I think that's -- that's one of the things we look
for is, or our organization's really ready to do the hard work and to do
the research that's needed in order to work with the U.S. government
because it only gets harden from there on out.

Again, just on the role of our office, the Center for Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives at USAID. We do not distribute any funds. There is
no faith-based funds, there's no FBCI funds. What we do is that we can
help direct you as sort of a liaison and direct you to the various
offices and missions within USAID, where your programming might fit best
and so -- that's one of our key roles. We also look within the agency to
see if there are areas where unintentional barriers might be in place
that would keep faith-based or community organizations from
participating and address -- work to address those internally.

We work to encourage partnerships and collaboration. Again, like Terri
said, that's what this -- what's a lot of what today is all about to
encourage you all to talk with one another and see how you better -- how
you can fit in, how your work can partner up together so you would come
with a joint proposal to USAID and say look, here, we've brought
together, you know, these 10 organizations. Here's one plan of how we
are going to -- you know, and one makes an example in thinking of how
we're going to educate about malaria in Mozambique. Well, that was a
great -- the mission appreciated that and they, you know, ended up
getting funding for that.

Again, Terri mentioned our newsletter. I do encourage you to go on our
Web site and sign up for our newsletter. It comes out once a week. I
think it's a very useful source of information. While many of you found
out about the conference through this -- through that newsletter so you
know about that.

Just to speak briefly to faith-based organizations in particular, I
think Kent Hill, when he spoke earlier today, Dr. Hill pointed out --
you know, if you're a faith-based organization, really, you want to take
the time to assess, is working with the U.S. government or any
government going to take away from who you are as core organization? And
that is something we, you know, we take seriously as an office and we
encourage you to take that seriously because we want you to be the best
organization you can be. Maybe that means working with the U.S.
government, maybe it doesn't. But we want you to think -- think through
that.

Now, in each of the folders you got, you received this -- entitled USAID
Rule for Participation by Religious Organizations. This was in the
Federal Register several years ago, 2004. And it plays out specifically
-- and I'm not going to read through it; I'll briefly summarize it --
but it lays out specifically the kind of the regulations that are on you
organizations that are specifically faith-based organizations. And I
encourage you to read that carefully, very important. And again, we'll
help you think through whether or not you want to partner with the
government.

In general, when it comes to faith-based organizations, the general rule
is that faith-based organizations cannot worship, witness or proselytize
during a government, federally funded program. So what does that mean?
Well, that means in this case, you can't use federally dollars for
printing or publication of overtly religious materials. Federal dollars
can't be used for worship, religious instruction, or proselytizing and a
lot of this makes sense when you think about it. Any religious
activities, which can take place, but they must take place in a separate
time or place from U.S. government funded activities and they must be
voluntary on part of the beneficiary. The beneficiary shouldn't feel any
pressure to participate. They should know that they can -- whatever
service is being provided, they can come and get that service without
feeling pressured to go to a meeting, to convert, or to participate in
any religious activity at all.

Faith-based organizations have to report on how they're using their
federal funds, just like any other grant recipient of USAID or the U.S.
government; they have to be able to clearly account for how funds are
being used. Religious leaders can, if they're serving a joint role --
say they're a minister several days a week but they're running this
program on the other days of the week -- that's fine, but you just need
to make sure that the accounting reflects that, that it's clear that the
U.S. government money is going strictly to when that minister is
providing services or working on the federally funded program and that
the U.S. government is not paying to, you know, preach a sermon on some
days or do something with their church.

And then, finally, the faith-based organizations cannot discriminate
against any current or prospective beneficiary on the basis of religion
or religious belief. And I think most -- 99.9 percent of religious
organizations and faith-based organizations would completely agree;
they're not out to discriminate against beneficiaries, but it's just
important to remember that that's part of the federal regulations --
part of the rules -- and it's the right thing to do as well. Now, what
can faith-based organizations do? They can maintain their religious
identity, because the rule that I talked about earlier, it wasn't just
about what they can't do, but it's also about what can they do.

Well, they can include religious references in their mission statements
or in their other governing documents. You don't have to try to hide the
fact that you are a Muslim organization or Jewish organization or
Christian organization or Hindu, or any other thing; you don't have to
hide that fact; you can keep that in your governing documents. You can
also, as faith-based organizations, select board members on a religious
basis; you can maintain your identity in that way. And you can use your
facilities without removing religious art, icons, scriptures or other
religious symbols. And you can offer religious activities to people that
are participating in your programs, again, as long as they're
voluntarily attended, privately funded and separate in time and location
-- separated in time or location -- from federally supported activities.
So that's just a few things to keep in mind.

If you happen to be in a place where you've received U.S. government
funding or you're receiving and you have any questions, it's always best
to run your question by either USAID's general counsel's office or the
regional legal advisor that's out there in the field, because you want
to be on the safe side to make sure you're not violating any rules,
which could cause you problems later on. But, again, and I see that
Terri's back, which is great -- just in time for questions, but thank
you all for coming and we look forward to hearing your questions.

(Applause.)

And I think we have a mike somewhere, so if you have any questions, if
you can just --

MS. HASDORFF: Thanks, Heather. Okay, come on, now, don't be shy. I know
you've got questions out there; you call my office with them a lot.
(Laughter.) Come on!

Q: My question, I guess, is directed to Mary. You mentioned financial
viability; I'm wondering if you can provide some definition of that. Is
that in terms of amount of income generated from public sources? Is that
in terms of expenditures or a threshold?

MS. NEWTON: No, when we're looking at your financial viability, we're
just looking at the sources to make sure that you are financially at a
positive position when you're coming in to register. You don't have to
have X amount of dollars in the bank or anything at all; we're just
looking to see that you're self-supporting.

Q: I have one for you. Thank you, Jocelyn -- she's been doing a
wonderful job. If you hadn't heard -- (inaudible) -- it's great. I have
one question for you; I know you used to ask for -- (inaudible) -- think
tanks, which drives a lot of small groups like us, because --
(inaudible) -- the government is -- you have to have made \$500,000
before you are questioned to give your auditor statement. But USAID has
something different. Have you changed the rule to be in line with the
federal government, or do you still have -- (inaudible) --

MS. NEWTON: Mark is here, but I believe the \$500,000 refers to if
you're -- have received that much funding from the agency, then you are
privy to what we call an A133 audit. You have to provide that. When
we're looking at your organization, we're just looking at the initial
audit that you would have probably performed on your organization,
agency-wide, anyway. We need a structure to be able to see what type of
systems that you have in place. We also recommend that organizations
have it done pro bono. There's lots of financial institutions that will
do it for you and financial schools. Lots of them come in and they do
get it done that way.

The other thing that we do is that we will look at -- if you prepare
unaudited financial statements, if it is in a review -- what we call an
audit review -- we will look at that also. But at the time that you come
in for your next annual submission, we're going to need an audit so that
we will have a baseline to govern it by. But we will work with you in
that particular case.

Q: Okay, I just have one recommendation. He was recommending that you
work with your USAID officer in the countries, and the one in Sierra
Leone was so much time, and I had four or five different groups who had
gone to her, and she is not ready to talk. And our participators were so
disappointed, so that's where the education comes in and the training
comes in. We really need to improve our image; that's how we are losing
space out there. So, please, let's have a professional representation of
the country, because USA -- this is a great country and we need to
reflect this out there. Thank you.

(Applause.)

MR. BURKLY: Just, I feel compelled to sort of defend my colleagues in
that country. One thing that I want to sort of talk about a little bit
is, I said, you know, it's very important when you're in a country to
try to reach out to AID and talk with them because it might not be that
they have a possibility to work directly as far as a funding
relationship, but I always, for example, if I went to the person in
Sierra Leone and I wasn't able to fund your program, I might suggest
that you talk to the JICA representative -- the Japanese development
assistance representative. They have this thing called the small-scale
grant assistance program, which is very simple to apply for, up to about
\$200,000. Just, you know, just as a little tip, whenever you're in a
country, if there's a Japanese embassy there, ask them about the
small-scale grant assistance fund because I know many people who have
been funded for infrastructure projects and like, kind of tangible
things, so that's good for you.

But I think what might have happened -- I don't know about that
particular setting -- but sometimes, like Heather was saying, you have
to think a little bit about -- from the perspective of the AID officer
in the field. They might be, like, very, very swamped and understaffed.
That said, I really do think it's important to try and make that
contact, and if you don't have success with one person, you can call
another person; there's more than one person in AID in the country. But
I think, as a policy, you know, Foreign Service officers in the field
always want to hear from people who are working at the grassroots level.

I mean, in Moldova, the way that we first heard about the drought that
was coming was from community-based organizations that came up and said,
you know, gee, it's kind of tough on the farms this year, you know,
nothing's really going. And that's the type of lifeblood of knowledge
that we need to be able to provide effective assistance so I'm sorry it
didn't work out in that case, but I wouldn't give up and I'd still try
and always talk to AID people when you're there. And also, I was a
volunteer in Liberia and spent some time in Sierra Leone so I appreciate
the work you do there. It's a -- like I said before -- it's a tough,
tough setting and that's the type of place where faith-based groups can
do an excellent job.

MS. TURNER: Yeah, I just wanted to also take the opportunity to respond
to that because I think one of the things that we grapple with is that
-- and, as a result of understaffing and the like -- as I mentioned when
I was talking about the development grants program, we really have
gotten away from really working directly with NGOs and everyone may not
be as receptive as they should be in terms of entertaining and meeting
with outside representatives. And one of the things that we're trying to
do is that, as we work to what I would call reinvigorate USAID's
relationship with the NGO community, is to send out messages from
Washington which basically indicates that, one, this is an interest and
a priority of the agency.

But, yet, what we also know from this end. And I was a mission director
in Jamaica, so I know the challenges that our staff face on this -- is
that we also recognize that if we are serious -- if the agency's serious
-- about our ability to reengage with the NGO community, then we really
have to, one, make sure we have sufficient human resources to do that;
we have to make sure that our staff are trained in terms of engaging
with the NGO community. So one of the things that we're -- as a part of
my office's effort -- is really -- is trying to send out those messages
of interest to also, in a sense, for how can we work with the missions
and how can we work with you all to make that relationship more
effective and to provide some of the information that you may need or in
other ways to try to facilitate that dimension and to make us more
receptive, because we do know that, particularly if you're in countries
and you're trying to do a lot of the work there -- whether it's in
education or health or community work that we try to do -- it really is
through your organizations that we can do it most effectively and also,
that we can get the kind of information.

But, you know, we're working at getting the human resources in the
field; I don't know if the administrator talked about that this morning,
but one of the things that she initiated is the effort to simply, first
of all, double the size of the foreign services to get more people out
in the field so people are not so stretched and they don't feel that
they can talk to partners that just want to come in and find out about
what's going on in the country. So, we apologize you had that
experience, but we're working to try to make that a little bit better.

MS. HASDORFF: Let me just also say that's part of what our office is
there for; if you are having difficulty getting in touch with someone at
USAID mission office, or if, you know, you get in touch with someone and
you don't feel like they're giving you as much information as you need
-- whoa, okay, and I'm going to put that back -- (laughter) -- then
please, call us at the faith-based office. That's part of what we're
their for, is to help connect you to folks and sometimes if we call on
behalf of an organization and set up a meeting, you're more inclined to
get a meeting than if you just try and do it on your own, or, you know,
the embassy or the mission office is not familiar with your
organization, so -- this mike.

Q: I really want to thank you; it's quite great because it's very
difficult to say what you just said, and I understand the pressure you
might feel, having dealt with a number of mission directors. But there's
a huge power differential that I think AID always has to recognize.
People's funding is pretty much dependent on how the home office looks
at it, and they can like or dislike you based on mood. And I think that
power differential, if it is a fact that you want to open up and bring
more people in, I think that -- and maybe you're already thinking of
different kinds of steps to take.

I know, for instance, that an agency, in some cases, uses a 360-degree
evaluation, which is good for individual people. And maybe that needs to
be opened up a little so you get feedback from civil society that has to
deal with it, whether they're technical assistance projects or local
NGOs, where you would actually require much more of a 360 than a whole
series of feedbacks about how is it to work with this local office, and
in a safe environment, so they're not going to feel there's a potential
retaliation.

Not just -- I would add, and probably your experience is -- not just
from the expats working for aid, but it's often the locals who are there
for years and years and years, and that institutional memory, so when
you get blackballed, that doesn't go away, and even well-intentioned --
and Terri's been great for us, I must add, as a intermediary, and I'd
also like to say Mike has been great to work with -- but these are
rarities and when they're gone, we're going to go deal with national
staff again, and it puts you in a position of being political, if you're
serious about wanting to work with the government. If you don't care,
that's a different source. But I think that you want serious engagement.

MS. HASDORFF: Yeah, and I think that's really the important thing is
that, I mean, we are serious and, you know, my -- I view that my office,
and personally, that our job is to provide leadership to the agency as
well as to facilitate. And so with a variety of partners, we know it's
not the easiest thing to deal with AID, and not everyone sort of shares
the same view, but in the interest of getting some of the frank
feedback, that you can make sure that we understand some of the
challenges and that we can help intercede and to kind of create the more
welcoming environment, because we do need to work with organizations
such as yourselves; we need to grapple with and understand what are the
challenges that you face? What are the challenges that our staff see as
well?

So that they -- when they get a call from an NGO, they don't groan, but
in fact, they view you as a resource. Unquestionably, you know, we've
got a ways to go, but I think we want to encourage the frankness that
you've had, and also, again, getting in contact with us, because our
role is not to slap people's hands or anything like that, but to
recognize that there are challenges, but our job, and we're measured on
how effectively do we facilitate the ability of external organizations
to partner with USAID.

Q: My question is, we are a faith-based organization, but we are moving
away from the church, because we have a 501(c)(3) umbrella under the
church -- and we're now moving to have a separate foundation --
charitable organization. Under the church, we don't have to register, is
my understanding --

MS. TURNER: Register as a PVO?

Q: Yeah, but will we have to register once we become a separate
501(c)(3)?

MS. TURNER: Let me just say this while Mary's coming; I strongly
encourage any church that is considering doing any kind of work where
they would apply for a government grant to set up a separate 501(c)(3).
So you don't have to; it's not mandatory; there are some churches that
we fund through the federal government. But it makes it clean for any
type of auditing, and a lot of faith-based organizations are afraid, a
lot of times, that, oh my gosh, if I take government money, is this
going to mean that the government's coming in and auditing my church
books? No, if you set up a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit, you're keeping
a completely separate organization and a separate set of books; there's
no concern with that.

Now, if you're commingling government funding money with your tithe
money, you know, your tax money and your tithe money and you're putting
them in the same place, then that can be a definite situation where yes,
if there's an issue the government could be coming in and auditing your
church. So that -- it's not mandatory, but I highly recommend it.

MS. NEWTON: I think Terri probably answered it: Yes, if you're going to
create a separate entity apart from your church that's taxed within the
501(c)(3) and if you want to come in and do business with USAID, you
know, to get grants for corporate agreements, then I would advise you to
register.

Q: I was wondering if the agency had any priority areas for funding for
next year that are different than this year, kind of like focusing on
health care over education, something like that?

(Laughter.)

MS. HASDORFF: Karen?

MS. TURNER: We're all sort of chuckling up here because, as most -- all
of you I'm sure know, we had an election and, you know, obviously AID
will continue to do development, but the budget for FY '09 hasn't really
been set and -- nor -- and we're currently in it, in fiscal year '09.
And the budget for FY '10 hasn't either, even though they're notional
planning budgets out there. So the long and the short is -- the short
answer is: Well, we're not sure. The reality is that one can expect that
certain areas will continue to be an emphasis. We know that, you know,
for example HIV/AIDS is still going to be an issue; we know that there
is interest in education and the like, but in terms of what
specifically, there may be sort of different emphasis areas or different
rankings and priorities. We really don't know, so I would just say stay
tuned.

MR. BURKLY: Okay, and this -- the question about what areas we're going
to fund -- I'm not really going to talk about that so much because it's
kind of above my level, but one thing I can talk about is if you put
yourself in the place of AID, okay? What would make a proposal
attractive to the AID? One thing that would really help, and that's what
this whole conference is about, is if you can show that you're
leveraging USAID's funds because the one challenge we all face in the
field is that we just don't have enough money. There are people who come
in with great ideas and we always feel bad but we don't have enough
money, you know, if we had \$10 jillion in Moldova it still wouldn't be
enough, I mean there's lots of stuff you can do, the same thing in other
countries.

However, if you can demonstrate that you can leverage the funding with a
donor -- it doesn't have to be the normal donors like, you know, the
Europeans or the Germans or the French or whoever, I mean there's all
these new donors. There's, I mean, in Eastern Europe there's the
Lithuanians, the Polish, the Latvians, there's the Turkish, there's --
in Asia there's Australian dollars, there's -- Singapore is starting to
be a donor, Korea, which used to, you know, fund, and now it's funding
their own projects; Kuikas (ph) as a new emerging donor. And there's
also all sorts of foundations: There's the Argidius Foundation, this new
foundation in Europe which is funding a lot of things; there's tons of
foundations.

So any way that you can sort of demonstrate that you're bringing in
other players -- not just other donors, but, you know, people from the
private sector. There's been a lot of work with, you know, for example
hand-washing campaigns. Hand washing is this incredibly effective
intervention to prevent disease and in some countries they brought in
soap companies, you know, who obviously want to expand their market. And
if you can demonstrate that it's not just one dollar you save in
funding, but that's leverage, with like \$1 from the private sector, \$1
from maybe your church, another dollar from another donor, then you're
much more competitive. And that's really a way to make your proposal
stand out.

MS. HASDORFF: Okay, we're a few minutes over so we're going to have to
wrap up here. I think there's time for one more real quick question.
I've seen your hand up in the back.

Q: I think this should be a pretty quick one. First I should -- thanks
for organizing a great conference, this has been very helpful for me. I
believe this would -- this is addressed to Mary, but anyone can answer
it, you know, just time: Do you have to register as a faith-based
organization or PVO in order to be eligible for USAID funding? Just to
say an example, if I were to submit an unsolicited proposal to one of
the mission officers, would I have to register first or would that
non-requirement, would that be helpful for chances of receiving funding?

MS. NEWTON: That's a great question. The answer is no: We do not require
anyone to register as a faith-based organization. Anyone can apply for
the funding that we have available, and the thing around faith-based
organization definition, I've had a lot of people ask that question too:
How do you define an organization? We allow organizations to
self-define. And the only place where you would be asked that question
is, you know, in some of the grant applications there are questions, you
know, do you consider your organization a faith-based organization, but
in order to get PVO status or any of the rest you don't have to be
faith-based, no.

Q: (Inaudible) -- register them at all.

MS. NEWTON: I'm sorry?

Q: (Inaudible) -- with PVO status.

Q: Because you have to register to be a PVO.

MS. NEWTON: But they don't have to be faith-based to be -- (inaudible).

MS. HASDORFF: Mary, why don't you -- (chuckles). I think I misunderstood
the question, I'm sorry.

MS. NEWTON: If your organization is faith based in nature and it meets
the definition of how say defines it PVO, then you would have to
register.

Q: Okay, gotcha.

MS. NEWTON: Yeah, because we have faith-based organizations that we're
working with that are registered with the agency; they've been
registered throughout the years. So only if it meets the definition of a
PVO.

Q: Okay, thank you.

MS. HASDORFF: I misunderstood the question, sorry. But you don't have to
be faith-based to be a PVO?

MS. NEWTON: No, no.

MS. HASDORFF: (Chuckles.) Got it. Okay, all right thank you so much for
your time, we had another set of workshops that will be starting at
3:00. One of them will be in this room; the other will be in the
player's room. The information fair is still going and there's plenty of
information for you out there and we have some refreshments for you, so
thank you so much for being here.

(Applause.)

(END)