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The Fire Safe Council’s Recommendations

Through the clearinghouse, organizations working in California and parts of Nevada can apply online for some fire prevention grants for eligible projects by writing one grant proposal that is then routed to the appropriate grant program(s). The grant proposal form can be found on the Fire Safe California Grants Clearinghouse website.

The deadline to submit grant proposals ONLINE and for letters of commitment/fiscal sponsor letters to be POSTMARKED to the California Fire Safe Council is April 1, 2011, at midnight.

Ready to get started? Please visit www.grants.firesafecouncil.org and download a copy of the Request for Applications (RFA) and Planning Tool today. The RFA will provide information about grant writing programs, guidelines, scoring criteria and background and the Planning Tool can be used as a offline planning document as you prepare your grant project.

A note about Letters of Commitment:

• Letters of Commitment (LOC), and Fiscal Sponsor Agreement Letters if applicable, must be postmarked by the application deadline and sent via US Mail or UPS/FedEx to the appropriate Grant Manager. Letters submitted by e-mail or fax will not be accepted.
• All organizations providing match/cost-share to a projec t must submit a Letter of Commitment detailing their matching contribution (i.e., a description of the service(s) provided and the dollar value of the service(s) or donation).
• If the applicant organization proposes to contribute match, the applicant must submit its own Letter of Commitment.
• All Letters of Commitment must be preceded by a signed cover letter from the applicant organization listing all of the partner organizations, including the applicant, providing match and the dollar value of their proposed match. (See www.grants.firesafecouncil.org for a sample LOC cover letter.)
• Organizational names, and proposed match amounts, in the Letters of Commitment must match the organizations, and match amounts, listed in the LOC cover letter and in your online application.
• Letters of Commitment must be submitted on company or organizational letterhead and signed by an authorized representative with spending authority.
• The California Fire Safe Coun cil is not responsible for Letters of Commitment that are sent to an incorrect address by applicants.

If you have submitted grant proposals in the past and they weren’t funded, you will be able to access those grant proposals on your home page and resubmit them for consideration in the new grant proposal format. You need to resubmit them for funding consideration by the deadline noted above because, on the clearinghouse end, some grant proposal questions have changed. In addition, on your end, you may find that your budget needs updating or you’d like to update the scope of your project.

To resubmit in the new format, transfer the information from your old grant proposal into the new grant proposal format by clicking in the status box where it says, “Click here to copy this grant proposal to the current cycle.” Since questions have changed, you will likely have to do some editing of the information in the new format.

Again, deadline to submit grant proposals ONLINE and for letters of commitment/fiscal sponsor letters to be POSTMARKED to the California Fire Safe Council is April 1, 2011, at midnight.

Questions? E-mail a grant manager, or call us at 800/FS CALIF (372-2543).

2012 Grant Cycle Timeline
Call for Grant Applications January 5, 2011
Application deadline April 1, 2011 MIDNIGHT
Letters of Commitment and Fiscal Sponsor Agreement deadline must be postmarked by is also April 1, 2011
Notification of funding decisions To Be Determined