FY 2022 SNAP E&T National Partnerships Grants
Summary
On Sept. 30, 2022, USDA provided approximately $3 million in SNAP E&T National Partnership Grants to help two national non-profit organizations with large networks of community colleges or consortia of community colleges with experience providing workforce development services to low-income and low-skilled individuals, including SNAP participants. Grant funds will be used to support new organizational capacity to provide network or consortia members training and other technical assistance so that network or consortia members may become third-party SNAP E&T providers.
Purpose
The purpose of this grant competition is to support grants to non-profit national organizations with broad member or affiliate networks that provide direct workforce development services to low-income and low-skilled individuals, including SNAP participants. Grant funds will be used to support new organizational capacity to provide to network members or affiliates training and other technical assistance so that network members or affiliates may become third-party SNAP E&T providers.
Grant Awardees
Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) will partner with the American Public Human Service Association (APHSA) and Seattle Jobs Initiative (SJI) to increase the number of community colleges that are SNAP E&T third-party providers using three key approaches: building the capacity of state systems, targeting rural institutions, and disseminating SNAP E&T resources to a broad network. ACCT will work with two cohorts over the life of the grant, with each cohort consisting of two state systems and up to five rural community colleges. This project will take a phased approach repeated for each of the two cohorts.
- Phase 1 will focus on the recruitment and selection of the institutions and systems for the first cohort followed by the creation and delivery of customized technical assistance plans.
- In Phase 2, each institution or system will identify an internal team and other stakeholders based on their self-assessment to participate in the technical assistance, develop the institutional work plan, and participate in the on-site visit.
- Phase 3 for the cohorts will include ongoing technical assistance through “office hour” type sessions that will troubleshoot issues that have arisen during the application process or the first year of being a provider.
Throughout the entire project, a third strand of work beyond the cohorts will aim for broad dissemination of knowledge and resources about SNAP E&T, including sharing lessons learned from the cohorts. Dissemination will include technical assistance tools and other resources through a dedicated website, national conference presentations, and white papers.
STRADA will partner with the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) to increase the number of community college SNAP E&T providers by working through of CAEL's networks of community colleges: 1) its Latino Adult Student Success (LASS) Academy, a network of Latino enrolling institutions, and 2) its network of more than 75 community colleges. STRADA will develop two cohorts: a cohort of colleges that are already E&T providers and a cohort of colleges that aren’t yet E&T providers but want to become so.
- The first cohort will focus on issues such as improving student access to E&T, leveraging additional non-federal funds for E&T, connecting colleges to other community services to improve supports for students, and exploring consortia or intermediary models to bring on additional E&T providers. They will also serve as peer subject matter experts for the latent cohort.
- The second cohort will focus on building interest in becoming a SNAP E&T provider, learning the basics about SNAP E&T, working strategically to determine what they need to do to become third-party E&T providers, and building capacity to administer and operate a SNAP E&T program. STRADA will use site visits to provide hands-on technical assistance to members of the latent cohort working to become new E&T providers.