Video 9: Objective Work Plan

Objective Work Plan (OWP)

This section will provide you with an overview of the Objective Work Plan (OWP)

The OWP is a standalone document that mirrors the project’s implementation plan and identifies all the key elements of the project description including the project goal, objectives, milestone activities, outputs and outcomes, staff responsible, and time-frame for the completion of each activity. Key project elements in the OWP should reflect those stated in the project narrative and support consistency throughout the application. The OWP identifies how (through key activities), when (by established timeframes for key activities), and by whom (staff responsible for activity completion) the project will be implemented.

This is video nine of the 2021 pre-application training videos, developed by the Administration for Native Americans Regional Training and Technical Assistance Centers. I'm Drena MacIntyre, and I'm your trainer today. I'm with the Alaska Region Training and Technical Assistance Center. The Alaska Region Training and Technical Assistance Center provides free training and technical assistance to the 227 tribes and native nonprofits in the state of Alaska. You can reach us at www.anaalaska.org, or call at 948-3158. This video series introduces you to the basic concepts for preparing a 2021 ANA grant application to support your community-based project. There are 16 videos and we urge you to view them in sequence. This is video nine of pre-application training, the objective work plan, or OWP. The objective work plan serves as a standalone document for project implementation. It consistently states elements from the project narrative and provides details about the how, when, and by whom activities will be completed for your project. The milestone activities in your OWP are relevant and lead to the achievement of each objective. Outputs in your OWP demonstrate progression and are logical results of the successful completion of milestone activities within the proposed timeframe. You can get up to 15 points on your OWP. Build your objective work plan before writing the approach narrative for your project. The OWP is a blueprint for project implementation. Your OWP will outline what you will want to describe in your project narrative. You will need to submit one objective work plan for each budget year of an objective. You can list a maximum of 25 key activities. Use the OMB approved form for the objective work plan. Make sure that you use the form that expires September 30th, 2023 as that is the latest version of this form. There are three ways to obtain your objective work plan form. The MS Word version, which we recommend, can be downloaded from ANA's website, and the link is listed here. You can also go to grants.gov for a PDF and fillable version of the OWP form, and it can be downloaded from grants.gov at this link. Workspace. Once you're filling out or downloading your application online, also has an embedded online version of the objective work plan in your online grants.gov workspace application package. We urge you though to go ahead and try using the MS Word version so that you can correct it, add to it, edit to it easily. When you're done with it and finalize it, you can then turn it into a PDF form. You can read more about your objective work plan form on page 70 of the pre-app manual. This is what the online fillable PDF version of the OWP looks like. So when you're addressing the elements in your objective work plan, you fill in the project title, fill in the project year. And again, use one objective work plan form for each budget year for each objective in that year. You can have up to three objectives per year, so it would look something like this. For year one you would have three objectives. For year two you'd have three objectives. And for year three, you would have three objectives. For each of your budget years. You can read more about this again on page 70 of the pre-app manual. And remember to keep your life easier, you can copy and paste your project goal, your T T.I.P. objectives and your outcome, because you've already drafted those pieces of your application, and you just need to cut and paste into each of those OWPs. List each milestone activity in chronological order. You have them divided up by start-up activities, project specific activities and administrative activities. Your start-up activities can include office setup, recruiting and hiring staff, solidifying your partnerships by drafting and agreeing to memorandums of understanding or agreements, letters of commitment, et cetera, from your partners. You can initiate outreach plan if you have project participants or recruiting volunteers. These would all be considered start-up activities. Here's how you would list out your start-up activities. You can see this example also on page 73 of your pre-app manual. And this again is the Pinecreek tribes' food sovereignty project, so they're going to hire their agricultural coordinator first. That output would be a signed job offer, a staff file would be created. The project staff responsible for it is the director and possibly a HR admin. The start date would be the 30th of September, 2020, and date 12/30, 2020, so they're trying to get this done in the first three month period of the project. They're going to finalize MOUs with the four local farmers. And so their output would be four signed MOUs. The project staff and the agricultural coordinator would work on making that happen. Their start date would be the end of October and have it done by the end of November in the first year. For project specific activities, they're going to begin their farming innovations trainings. They're going to start implementing their farming innovations, and they're going to recruit greenhouse volunteers. Those are all very specific project activities. They're going to. The outputs for the innovation trainings would be sign-in sheets and meeting minutes to see who was involved. That your project director, your agricultural coordinator and your admin assistant would all work on that. And they would start it the end of November in the first year, and end it the end of July of the following year. The implementation of those farming innovations. The outputs would be the greenhouses, the hydroponic systems, the raised bed systems and the organic and non GMO practices are established would be outputs. The project director, the agricultural coordinator and the four farmers would be responsible for those activities. And starting the end of December and ending the end of August. And then recruiting your greenhouse volunteers. Your outputs would be ads for recruiting those volunteers in social media, newsletters, websites, and the project director and the communications team would be responsible for that. They would start in August of the second year and end in September of the second year to get volunteers lined up. So, administrative activities are required by ANA and placed at the end of one objective for each project year. These include your project staff orientation, and this is always in your first year of your project. You need to establish your federal system account and official grant file, that's always in the first year. First quarter of your project. The post-award training is the first year of the project only as discussed earlier in the budget. And your annual grantee meeting is each year of the project in February. Data collection and evaluation is each year of the project ongoing year round, and reporting requirements. The OPR, ADR, SF-425, DPM, are required each year of your project. These are all considered mandated administrative activities as required by ANA. So you can see one of the things that you can do to kind of help make sure that your administrative activities are included and stand out in your OWP, is to put in front of the descriptor administrative in all caps, so they know that you haven't forgotten those required administrative activities. Also, remember, you don't have to count these administrative activities towards your total of 25 activities under each objectives. So, these are in addition to the 25 that you may have for your project. You see here they're implementing outcome tracking strategy. They're designing spreadsheets, databases, purchase software, collect data at regular scheduled intervals, analyze data quarterly. So the outputs would be data collection protocols, data collection tools, data analysis and quarterly reports. The project director is responsible with input from all staff. It starts the first day of the project and ends the last day of the project year. Any requires biannual and annual reports to the payment management system. And quarterly and biannual. Your outputs are those reports, the OPR, the FSR, et cetera. Reports are submitted. Your project director and your financial manager are responsible for those. And you need to monitor those and make sure they're submitted on time, whether it's quarterly or biannually. It starts the first day of the project and the last day of the project year. Again, administrative requirement to attend your ANA post-award training. The output is staff development and travel expense documentation. Your project director and financial manager attend that post-award training. It's usually between November and January that that occurs. And just in year one of your project. You have to attend the ANA grantee meeting. The output is staff development. Your project director and project coordinator will attend, and it's always in February each year. For each milestone activity, input the following: your resulting output, the persons responsible for implementing the milestone activity, and the timeframe. So the start and end date for completion. You can read more about milestone activities on page 69 through 74 of the pre-app manual. And you can see that you always have to circle back to those outputs. It's reflected in your OWP, and it's reflected in your outcome tracker. So make sure that everything is written verbatim. You can go to pages 73 to 74 in your pre-app manual. We again urge you to first use the MS Word version of the objective work plan. List the start-up and programmatic activities for one objective, include output staff and start and end dates for each activity. And do this for each objective for each year of your proposed project. The Alaska Region Training and Technical Assistance Center is here to assist you and answer any questions you may have. We offer 16 hours of pre application review for your project application that is at least 75% completed. We provide tips and resources to help you complete your application. If you want to request technical assistance, please go to www.anaalaska.org. Go up to the top of the page, click on technical assistance, and then click on request TA. Someone will get back to you quickly. Or you can call us at 948-3158.

Up next

Video 10: Budget

Budget: Line-Item Budget and Budget Justification

Training episodes

Video 1: Brief Introduction to ANA and New Funding Opportunities

Video 2: How to Build your ANA Application

Video 3: Long-Term Community Goal

Video 4: Current Community Condition

Video 5: Project Goals

Video 6: TTIP Objectives

Video 7: Outcomes, Indicators, and Outputs

Video 8: Outcome Tracker & Outcome Tracking Strategy

Video 9: Objective Work Plan

Video 10: Budget

Video 11: Community-Based Strategy

Video 12: Readiness and Implementation Strategy

Video 13: Contingency Plans

Video 14: Sustainability Plans

Video 15: Organizational Capacity

Video 16: Submitting the Application to ANA

Video 9: Objective Work Plan

Objective Work Plan (OWP)

Up next

Video 10: Budget

Training episodes

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