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>>: Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. Before starting, let's review the 

Zoom features we are using for this event. The audio for this event is broadcasting by 

phone and online. This event is lecture only. Microphones are muted to reduce 

background noise. To adjust audio through your computer, go to the bottom left of the 

screen, click the small arrow next to audio settings and select a speaker. Some viewers 

get better audio when streaming while others get better quality by phone. If you have 

audio difficulties, you may want to try a different connection method.

There are several Zoom features we will use today. At the top of the screen, 

click view options button and select exit full screen to display the chat panel on the right 

side of the sites. If you need Zoom technical assistance for this event, email us at 

AmeriCorps webinar support and the link is in the chat. The chat panel is disabled for 

attendees and will be used by presenters to provide links and resources. You can ask 

questions using the Q&A panel. If you wish to view live closed captioning, you can click 

on the CC at the bottom or the screen. If you wish to view captioning in Spanish, select 

the StreamText to view them in your browser.

We are recording this event so we will start the recording and turn it over to our 

presenters.

>>: Hello and thank you for joining us today. I am the Senior Manager of the 

program impacted training here at AmeriCorps seniors and I appreciate the time on this 

Thursday afternoon. AmeriCorps was formally known as a Corporation for National and 

Community Service is the federal agency responsible for civic engagement. That 

means we lead civic engagement through service and volunteerism, through 

grantmaking efforts and national service in the Nashville United States.

We've helped millions of Americans improve their lives and the lives of their 

fellow citizens through service. We do that mostly by working hand-in-hand with local 

partners to the ingenuity and can-do spirit of the American people to talk of countries 

most pressing challenges. Our mission is to improve lives, strengthen communities, 

and foster civic engagement through service and volunteerism.

National Service is an opportunity to volunteer your time and talent to make a 

difference in people's lives and get things done for America. The AmeriCorps and 

AmeriCorps seniors, individuals of any age can serve our country and their community 
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but putting their valuable skills to use. As we have mentioned during previous trains, 

the senior demonstration program or FDP as we like our acronyms, it allows us to 

expand our programs in a way that's different from our standard three programs.

I will be touching on a little bit about that and discussing national performance 

standards for today's session. This is a series and host of webinars that our team will 

be leading throughout the year and through January. This gives you information to 

assist you and increase knowledge of programs, best practices and how to respond to 

requests for funding.

We will do a couple of things today for our agenda. We will go into national 

performance measures. For those who attended our other webinars in the series, we 

have done so without talking about performance measurements and today we will really 

dive into that. We will look at our work plans and parts of the application and how to 

allocate your own peers.

Here is some information. Applications are due at 5 PM Eastern on February 3 

of next year. Today we will focus on understanding performance measures. Let's get 

into it. Our agency has a set of measurements used across AmeriCorps seniors and 

AmeriCorps. It allows grantees to measure and assess their effectiveness and 

communicate to key stakeholders and allows AmeriCorps to tell the unified story of the 

impact of the programs.

This is a federal program, and we take our role as stewards and taxpayer dollars 

seriously. If you receive an AmeriCorps senior grant, you become a steward of 

taxpayer dollars as well and that comes with certain responsibilities including the 

responsibility to collect relevant data, measure your impact and use the information to 

improve and increase your impact.

Accountability, performance measurement satisfies the funders and stakeholders 

including AmeriCorps participants, board members, community members, staff and 

clients. They see the programmer project is getting results. Performance measurement 

helps you communicate achievements in a way that funders and stakeholders will find 

meaningful and compelling. Another reason to measure performance is to determine if 

the change you thought would happen with your intervention is actually occurring. 
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Performance measurement is a systematic way to collect reliable information about the 

intervention implementation and progress toward outcomes.

You can also use performance measurement data to spot and collect problems. 

You reaching the population you attended, and some people require more or less 

intensive service to show positive outcome? Even when an intervention is implemented 

exactly as planned, performance measurement can help you find ways to strengthen 

intervention to make it more effective. Performance measurement is a way to get 

feedback, so you know if your intervention is making the expected difference and helps 

to decide how to make the most of your limited resources.

What are the benefits? This is going until national areas or national service and 

experience prepared national performance measures provide data for the strong 

agencywide narrative to tell the whole story of National Service. AmeriCorps collects 

high-quality data for interventions to demonstrate the power impact National Service 

has.

Before I dive into performance measures, I want to discuss how we structure 

these measures. There are a couple of different components, and we will walk through 

the different components. This is like a pyramid, and they start off broad and get more 

specific as you move up. 

Let's talk about what each one of these mean. We will start the focus area at the 

base. There are several AmeriCorps focus areas because carbon programs, the 

primary focus areas are education, economic opportunities were healthy futures. Those 

six focus areas across all of the programs. The objective is a general category within 

each focus area. Let's take a look at the education focus area, which is translated into 

two slightly more specific objectives, school readiness and K-12 success. We are 

getting a little bit more concrete in terms of the specific kind of activity that is going on, 

but there are still pretty broad.

We get into the specific measures that are reflected in the outputs and outcomes.

Every national performance measure output must be paired with a single outcome. For 

each performance measure, applicants must select one output and one of the 

associated outcomes. Let's dive into outputs and outcomes.
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Through outputs and outcomes, we can measure performance. Performance 

measurement is the ongoing systematic process of tracking or program of projects 

outputs and outcomes. Outputs are the amount of services provided. They measure 

the completion of activities and document the fact that individuals receive services, 

products were created or programs developed. We can answer the question, how 

much service did we perform or what products did we develop? They do not answer the 

question of what changed as a result of the service provided or product developer

Outcomes reflect the change or benefits that occur. Outcomes reflect changes in 

individuals, organizations, communities or the environment. This may include changes 

in attitude, knowledge, behavior or condition. Changes in an organization may know 

how to better serve community members pick outcomes answer the question, what 

difference does service make for beneficiaries? In general, the most telling outcomes 

address change in behavior or conditions. However, what makes a change compelling 

is not just the type of change, but the magnitude or amount of change.

Of course, the change should reflect the activities intended purpose. You can 

see if it changed because of the intervention and use other approaches such as 

knowledge. Let's talk about the types of outcomes we may see including changes in 

attitude of belief, knowledge or skill, behavior or condition. Outcomes regarding attitude 

or belief involves a change in thought or feeling. For example, a caregiver feels they 

have more social support after receiving respite services.

Outcomes measuring knowledge in scale involve a change in understanding or 

ability. This is what a person learns pickup for example, a student improves reading 

ability after attending tutoring sessions. Outcomes addressing behavior involve 

changes in actions such as conduct or habits, often in a specific context. For example, 

a student improves class participation after dissipating in a school mentoring program. 

Outcomes regarding condition involve a change in situation or circumstance. For 

example, a family’s transition into a safe, affordable housing after receiving referrals and 

counseling or community receives a new afterschool program because a youth 

organization has been able to build capacity to provide services. 

Let's review the measurement requirements in addition to the selected applicable 

focus area. First, you must submit a work plan that results in an alto outcome specified 
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in the national performance measures. All unduplicated volunteers, nonstop and 

programs of volunteer service years must be placed in a work plan. The maximum cost 

per unduplicated volunteer in all performance measures included in the work plan may 

not exceed the allowable cost per volunteer or VSY. I want to touch on key documents 

on the website. The most important document is the notice of funding opportunity. 

There are a couple of tools I would like to point out. The first is a tool used for 

performance measures found in appendix B, national performance measure 

instructions. The second is the work plan development worksheets.

Appendix B, national performance measure instructions summarize performance 

measure requirements, and a work plan development worksheet allows you to plan 

work outside of the grants or management system. Here is a shot of appendix B, the 

national performance measure instructions including all of the performance measures. 

The national performance measures are like a menu, and you select the measure that 

best describes what you do. As you see, they are organized in terms of the focus 

areas. These contain in-depth instructions. This is where you will go to learn more 

about that.

I want to take a minute to highlight our work plan development worksheet. This 

template is designed to help you as you design your performance measures. This 

worksheet can help you organize and will fit your performance measures together with 

the volunteer activities. I do want to note that we recommend that you use the 

worksheet and instructions to map out your work plans, and then use the completed 

worksheet to transfer the information to the egress system, which I have to admit can be 

a bit clunky at times. All of this information is in the performance measure instructions, 

but I would like to walk through them.

The following sections must be completed for all work plans. The first is the 

description of the community need. This must be completed for each output you select. 

This need statement should explain the compelling need that will be addressed by the 

volunteers.

Next is the output. As we mentioned, outfits are the immediate result of the 

volunteer service. These are usually accounts for numbers of children served. The 

output is selected using the pulldown menu found in the AE grants PMM.
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Next is the service activity or activities, which is the task volunteers will perform. 

The service activity description should explain what the AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers 

are doing anyway that shows how they will achieve the outputs and outcomes.

They state who the beneficiaries are and what the volunteers will be doing with 

the beneficiaries. State how often volunteers will provide the service and for how long. 

State where the service will take place. For each output, you may select more than one 

service activity.

Service activities can be selected using the pulldown menu in the grants system.

The X is the number of unduplicated volunteers. For stipend programs, this is the 

number of volunteer service years were the as to why that will be for each service 

activity. For the non-stipend program, this is unduplicated volunteers. Unduplicated 

volunteers can only be counted once for those assigned to a service activity.

Now, you have the total number of volunteers. Here you enter the total number 

of volunteers engaged in the activities if you are to assign them according to each 

activity. In this way, this is the difference between the above is volunteers can be 

counted more than once per couple example, if the same volunteer has two types of 

activities such as tutoring and mentoring, you account for both assignments in this field.

Next are the targets because this is the number you anticipate achieving in the 

third or last year of your performance by. For example, if you think that your serving 

children in the last year of the performance period, you will enter 50 as the target. You 

have outcomes that are the longer permanent change or improvement expected in the 

community due to the volunteers and service. The outcome is selected using the 

pulldown menu in the egress system.

Finally, we ask for tracking outputs and outcomes and this is the tool you will use 

for data collection. We have a list of instruments that can be selected using a pulldown 

menu. Going back to allocating volunteer service years or unduplicated volunteers. 

What does that mean? You will fill out a different workplan for each set of performance 

measures you use and assign a certain number of unduplicated volunteers or VSY to 

that workplan. This funding opportunity requires applicants to demonstrate costeffective practices in achieving performance goals through services described in the 

proposed work plan. Applicants must include work plans that meet the following 
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requirements. For volunteer assignments, those for siphon volunteers for every 7500 

and federal funding, at least one volunteer service year must be posted work plans that 

resulted national performance measure outcomes for the selective focus area.

For volunteer assignments, those for not siphon volunteers for any $1000 in 

federal funding, at least one unduplicated volunteer must be placed in a work plan 

resulting in national performance measure outcome for that selected focus area. It is 

fairly simple to calculate the number of unduplicated volunteers or VSY years you need, 

and arithmetic rule should be used to determine how to round unduplicated volunteers 

for volunteer service years on an outcome-based workplan. Grantee should round to 

the nearest whole number.

For example, say an applicant requesting 300,000 and federal funding would 

require 46.1 volunteer service years and work plans are resolved in national 

performance measure outcome. Since 46.1 is less than 46.5, this would be rounded to 

46 volunteer service years and work plans and resulted national performance measure 

outcomes. I would like to recap a couple of key points. AmeriCorps expects applicants 

use national performance measures as part of the comprehensive performance 

measurement strategy reliant on both performance and evaluation data to learn from 

their work and make tactical and strategic adjustments to achieve their goals.

Applicants are required to use the identified performance measures outlined in 

this noses. More information can be found in appendix B of the performance measure 

instructions.

Finally, they require applicants to demonstrate cost-effective practices in 

achieving performance goals through the services described in the work plan. 

Applicants must include work plans that meet the following minimum requirements for 

soap and volunteers and on-site and volunteers.

We have a brief poll. I ask you, if you should choose your output and outcome 

target, how would you do so? You should choose the output and outcome based on 

what you think is a big enough number four AmeriCorps, an assumption you will reach 

everyone in the community and those intended effects on 100% of its recipients,

realistic estimate of how many people you can expect to reach and the realistic impact 
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of the program on those people found by your own research, your potential partners and 

the input of others or a dartboard?

It warms my heart that no one selected dartboard, and everyone selected the 

correct answer of C, realistic estimate of how many people you can expect to reach, 

and the realistic impact of the program on those individuals informed by your own 

research, your partners and the input of others. With that, I am going to turn it over for 

any questions. My colleague, Colin will be building questions and you can use the Q&A 

function.

>>: It looks like we have one question that just came in and is a good reminder 

for anyone else who has the question. Where can I get a previously recorded session?

>>: The previously recorded sessions can be found on the AmeriCorps seniors 

and the demonstration program funding opportunity. I am going to post the link into the 

chat with that specific page. In addition to the recorded sessions for the previous 

opportunities, you will find all of the relevant information including the application 

deadline, required documents, previously asked questions and notice of funding 

opportunity. National performance measure and instructions as well as grant 

application instructions. It is a one-stop shop for all information regarding the funding 

opportunity.

>>: The work plan worksheet is available as a Word document?

>>: It is. We have the work plan worksheet as an appendix in the grant 

application instructions. You can just download that from the website and the template 

is at the end the code includes instructions as well for each of the required areas.

>>: The next question is can I have multiple sites for volunteers in multiple 

states?

>>: Sure. I would refer to appendix a as that is the list of the areas, which is the 

list of areas where we are focused on. We ask that it does not constrain you to those 

areas. You can list the counties or areas you intend to serve.

>>: Does the grant require a three-year commitment?

>>: A lot of this information can be found in the notice of funding opportunity. I 

will post a link to that opportunity in the chat as well.
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Specifically, to answer that question, the proposed period of performance for the 

funding opportunity is from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2024. That is a two-year period of 

performance.

>>: Can you write for more than one priority area?

>>: Yes, you can

>>: Holiday objectives are appropriate, and can they be drawn from different 

focus areas?

>>: They can be drawn from different focus areas. We do not constrain 

organizations with a number of objectives that are appropriate. You may find you have 

one objective and that is totally fine. You may find you are good with multiple objectives 

and that is equally as fine.

>>: For first-time grantees, does AmeriCorps prefer a collaboration or 

partnership or can a single organization apply?

>>: A single organization can apply.

>>: There is a request for clarification of can we apply for stipend program in 

addition to another?

>>: For that, I would refer to the notice of funding opportunity.

>>: Is there a size limit on the nonprofit? How large does the nonprofit have to 

be?

>>: There is no size limit on the nonprofit. You will see within the notice of 

funding opportunity we have a minimum requirement in terms of the funds that one can 

apply to. We don't have any specific sizes for the organizations that apply. We 

recognize that impact can be through a range of organizations and sizes so we 

encourage all to apply.

>>: We can do a quick provided. Is your number you're looking to fill? Or 

programs are looking to fill?

>>: I don't know if I totally understand the question. Appendix a has the list of 

the areas that we are targeting because these are counties with low vaccine rates and 

high poverty levels. There are those for service and engagement. You can do that 

even if they can find that in Appendix A. No matter where in the country your 

organization is serving, you can still do that.
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>>: There is a question of our financial audits required? 

>>: That is a little bit beyond the scope of this presentation right now. I would 

refer to the notice of funding opportunities, all of the requirements that one needs to 

make.

>>: Is the 1044 hours from the previous slide applicable to the reporting period or 

for the year? 

>>: The 1044 hours would be applicable to one year.

>>: There are a couple of questions about the recording and whether it will be 

uploaded to the website. I know that you heard the audio going in and out, but we will 

post a copy of the presentation to the website. I just want to reiterate that.

>>: I was thrown for a loop as well. It will be on the website, and I will give the 

same presentation on January 18.

>>: Another question is other services other than –.

>>: I don't think I'm able to answer that question.

>>: I think that is it for those questions. We have a couple more minutes if 

anyone has any last-minute questions they want to ask. There are a few people asking 

when the information will be posted, will it be done within a week.

>>: For the recording, yes, we will aim for a quick turnaround.

>>: A couple more have come in. There it is one that you said one year so is this 

a one year, grantee or volunteer year?

>>: So a two year performance. That is for the grant. Each of those are broken 

into two fiscal years. Those years will be July one through June 30.

>>: The performance measures should clearly be stated on Appendix B.

>>: That is correct. This is kind of your main document. It lays out all of the 

requirements and lays out all of the initiatives and all of the specific performance 

measures including with the different measures.

>>: Any other questions, you can drop this into the Q&A box. If a volunteers help 
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within the first project year, they have to achieve all of their hours in the project year? 

>>: Our volunteers have a minimum power requirement with the funding 

opportunity. This means they can get close to 1044 hours that can be for multiple 

volunteers.

>>: Why do they receive the federal funding?

>>: Organizations have the funding, and one grant is awarded.

>>: These are completed in the volunteer years, correct? 

>>: The grantees are by the work. We want to have the unduplicated volunteer 

service years with the program and with the grantees, it is going with the numbers of 

federal funding and so many duplicated volunteers or so many in the service year.

>>: Can you clarify about the stipend volunteers?

>>: There are different requirements, and they can be a little bit nuanced. That 

individual – (inaudible).

>>: If volunteers don't complete the volunteer hours, how does that affect 

funding? 

>>: We encourage all of our recipients – how many volunteers will you recruit, we 

recognize there are many things that have happened over the course of time during this 

pandemic that has affected our ability. These are conversations that you would have.

>>: It may be helpful to clarify where or what we can fit into the budget for the 

audit.

>>: Right. All of that can be found in the notice of funding opportunity and a lot of 

the information can also be found in the grant allocation. This can go with the 

perspective or the grantee as they have the funding opportunity. This can increase in 

instructions and reviews.

>>: Another clarification question – for.

>>: I hate to cut you off, but I want to be clear about applying for funding. They 

have the volunteers of the individuals that served even if they are not able to meet the 
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target measures. I did not mean to cut you off, but I wanted to be clear.

>>: It's okay if I think we're getting a couple of the same question so it's good to 

clarify.

There are a couple of questions about volunteers and the VSY and duplicated 

volunteers. Explain a little bit about how to make the required hours and when talking 

about the unduplicated, can you clarify? 

>>: Yes, how many stipend volunteers will you need per $328,000. With the 

338,000, we know that for every 7000, 500 in the funds, there is at least one VSY 

equivalent 1044 hours associated with the national performance measure. So you have 

320,000 divided by the 7000 and that comes out to 43 and you have about 44 VSY.

>>: Thank you for that quick calculation. Any other questions? We just went 

over the example of the VSY and the number of volunteers.

>>: The 1044 hours of VSY, that can be achieved with the minimum volunteer 

requirement hours for the program.

>>: Another question that came in about VSY and if you can elaborate a little bit 

more of what you mean by that.

>>: Let me try my best. The VSY is for 1044 hours per year. It is not necessarily 

a person and the number of hours. AmeriCorps Seniors have this 1044 hours. That is 

not to say it is one person. The work plan has a worksheet, and we have the number of 

unduplicated volunteers or the number of VSY, which is the number of volunteers that 

are engaged in the service. They can be counted more than once for each service.

>>: Thank you for that clarification. Hopefully that answers a lot of the questions.

>>: I recognize this, and I went to point everyone toward the notice of funding 

opportunity.

>>: There is another question about VSY. You times this by 1044 hours. 

>>: So that is equivalent.

>>: The webinar is recorded and will be posted to the website, and it is dropped 
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into the chat. This will all be posted along with the notice of funding and everything that 

was provided in the presentation earlier.

That looks like it is all of the questions.

>>: Thank you to everyone for joining us on today's call. We really appreciate 

the time, and we appreciate the great work that you are doing across the country. 

There are so many people in a variety of ways. I appreciate all of your efforts and hope 

that we can utilize this opportunity.

Looking forward to seeing you on the next webinar.