The goal of this grant competition is to provide funds to improve the quality of civic and government education in the United States, to foster competence and responsibility, and to improve the quality of civic education through programs with emerging democracies. The funds will be used to create and implement programs and interventions in civic and government education for teachers and students in elementary and secondary classrooms.

This grant competition is open to organizations in the United States experienced in the development of curricula and programs in civic and government education for students and teachers in elementary and secondary schools in countries other than the United States, to carry out civic education activities.

January 15, 2009

Waivers for individual applications failing to meet the deadline will not be granted, regardless of the circumstances. Under very extraordinary circumstances the Department may change the closing date for a grant competition. When this occurs, the Department announces such a change in a notice published in the Federal Register.

If you experience problems submitting your application through Grants.gov please contact the Grants.gov Support Desk at 1-800-518-4726. You must obtain a Grants.gov Support Desk Case Number and keep a record of it.

If you are prevented from electronically submitting your application on the application deadline date because of technical problems with the Grants.gov system, we will grant you an extension until 4:30:00 p.m. (Washington, DC time) the following business day to enable you to transmit your application electronically or by hand delivery. You also may submit your application by following the mailing instructions described elsewhere in this application package.

If you submit an application after 4:30:00 p.m. (Washington, DC time) on the application deadline date, please contact Rita Foy Moss at rita.foy.moss@ed.gov or 202/245-7866 and provide an explanation of the technical problem you experience with Grants.gov, along with the Grants.gov Support Desk Case Number. We will accept your application if we can confirm that a technical problem occurred with the Grants.gov system and that the problem affected your ability to submit your application by 4:30:00 p.m. (Washington, DC time) on the application deadline date. ED will contact you after a determination is made on whether your application will be accepted.

Note: The extensions to which we refer in this section apply only to the unavailability of, or technical problems with, the Grants.gov system. We will not grant you an extension if you failed to fully register to submit your application to Grants.gov before the application deadline date and time or if the technical problem you experienced is unrelated to the Grants.gov system.

Yes, you should direct them to send comments to the following address: The Secretary, EO 12372-CFDA #84.304A, U.S. Department of Education, room 7W301, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, Washington, DC, 20202.

You should include a copy of such a response from the State Single Point of Contact in the application package submitted to the U.S. Department of Education and check the appropriate line on the SF 424 form.

You must submit your application to the State Single Point of Contact on or before the deadline date for transmitting the application to the Department.

No. Applications may be submitted electronically or in paper format by mail or hand delivery. The electronic submission of applications is voluntary. However, if you choose to submit your application electronically you must use the Grants.gov site.

Note: You may not submit your application by e-mail or facsimile.

You are required to register on Grants.gov prior to submitting your application, as well as with the Central Contractor Registry (CCR). Both of these systems require that you have a valid D-U-N-S number. Registration may take several days or weeks so please begin the process early.

The new version of Microsoft Word saves documents with the extension .DOCX. The Grants.gov system does not process Microsoft Word documents with the extension .DOCX. When submitting Microsoft Word attachments to Grants.gov, please use the version of Microsoft Word that ends in .DOC. If any of the documents included in the application are saved with the .DOCX extension, the entire application will be rejected by Grants.gov. If you have any questions regarding this matter, please e-mail the Grants.gov Contact Center at Support@grants.gov or call 1-800-518-4726.

No, do not assume that you are finished. If you submit your application via Grants.gov, there is a two-step validation process. Within two days of submitting your grant application, you will receive two e-mail messages. The first e-mail will confirm receipt of your application by the Grants.gov system. The second e-mail will indicate whether your application was successfully validated by the system or if it was rejected due to errors. You should track your application via the Grants.gov system to determine the progress of your application until the system shows a validated or rejected status or until you have received the e-mail indicating that it has been successfully validated or rejected.

If you submit your application within two days prior to the application transmittal deadline, you may not receive your validation or rejection notification until after the closing date. We recommend that if you have not received the two e-mail notifications indicating receipt and validation by 4:30:00 p.m. (Washington, DC time) on the application deadline date, print your application and mail a hard copy of it, adhering to the hard copy application submission procedures and requirements written in this application.

• You submitted your application after the application deadline date and time.
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• The E-Business Point of Contact at your organization did not respond to the registration e-mail from Grants.gov and authorize you as an Authorized Organization Representative (AOR).
• You did not provide the D-U-N-S number on your application (SF 424 form) that was used when you registered as an AOR.
• You uploaded a file type that is not compatible with Grants.gov.
• You did not fill out all the mandatory fields in the application package.

Additional reasons Grants.gov may reject an application can be found on the Grants.gov Web site: http://www.grants.gov/applicants/applicant_faqs.jsp#54. We also suggest reading all the FAQs on Grants.gov (http://www.grants.gov/help/submit_application_faqs.jsp#10) to provide you with additional information to assist with your submission.

If you are submitting an electronic application, you may either upload signed versions of the forms, in a .PDF format, to Grants.gov or you may fax the signed forms to the Department of Education. These documents may be faxed to (202) 245-7166 to the attention of Rita Foy Moss and must be received within three days of your application submission.

Grants.gov uses two viewer products - Adobe Acrobat Reader and PureEdge - that predate the release of Windows Vista. Adobe Reader 7.0.9 may work with Vista, but Adobe does not fully support this configuration. PureEdge Viewer v.6.0.2 is only compatible with Vista when using a Citrix server connection. Grants.gov is anticipating the release of Adobe Reader 8.1.1 shortly, which will be compatible with Microsoft Vista. Until Adobe Reader 8.1.1 is released, you have two choices: Use an operating system other than Vista or use Citrix, which has been identified as an option for any applicant that is using Vista. The Grants.gov Web site www.grants.gov/help/general_faqs.jsp#18 has been updated to provide applicants with instructions on how to utilize the Citrix solution.

If you are submitting your application electronically via Grants.gov, then you will need to provide these numbers. They can be located on Grants.gov Web site on the application download page and also on the application package page once the package has been downloaded. If you are submitting a hard copy of your application, then you do not need to provide these numbers as they are used strictly for an electronic application package submitted via Grants.gov.

The project period is 36 months. Projects will be funded for one year with an option for each additional year, contingent upon substantial progress by the grantee and the availability of funds. A budget should be submitted for each year. We intend the project and budget periods for projects funded under this grant competition to be June 1, 2009-May 31, 2012.

The Administration's budget request for 2009 does not include funds for this program. However, we are inviting applications to allow enough time to complete the grant process before the end of the current fiscal year, if Congress appropriates funds for this program.

It is estimated that 1-2 new awards will be made.

Projects will be funded for approximately $500,000-$1,000,000 per year depending on the scope of work. The figures are only an estimate and do not bind the Department of Education to any specific number of grants or amount of funding for any grant.

This program does not involve cost sharing or matching.

No. For this grant competition, you may charge indirect costs using the rate negotiated with your cognizant federal agency (e.g., Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Interior). Individuals who apply for any grant competition through the Department of Education are not allowed to budget for an indirect cost rate.

You are encouraged to give priority to direct services to students by limiting the indirect costs charged to the project. You will not be penalized for failure to reduce indirect costs nor will you gain a competitive advantage if you do.

If you claim indirect costs in the budget for your proposed project and do not have a negotiated rate with the federal government, you have 90 days from the time you transmit your application to submit the necessary paperwork to the Department to receive a negotiated indirect cost rate. For more information about indirect cost rates, please visit http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocfo/intro.html.

Yes, as long as the activities directly support the purposes of the grant.

There is no daily limit or cap for consultant fees. However, all costs charged to a grant, including consultant fees, should be, as provided for in the OMB Cost Circulars, reasonable. Information related to these fees should be included on ED Form 524 under the Contractual budget category. Also, applicants should be sure to fully substantiate all expenditures in the budget narrative.

This competition includes one absolute priority and one invitational priority. To be considered for funding, each applicant must address the absolute priority and the activities specified under that priority. We do not give an application that meets the invitational priority a competitive or absolute preference over other applications. The Secretary is particularly interested in projects that use pre- and post-intervention testing, or more rigorous methods to measure the effects of this program on the knowledge and skills of students and the classroom practice (s) of participating teachers.

A list of eligible countries is included in the General Application Instructions and Information section of this application package.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provides that any person has the right to request access to federal agency records or information. All U.S. Government agencies are required to disclose records upon receiving a written request for them, except for those records that are protected from disclosure by the nine exemptions listed in the FOIA. All applications submitted for funding consideration under this grant competition are subject to the FOIA. To read the text of the Freedom of Information Act, visit www.usdoj.gov/04foia/foiastat.htm.

You may contact Rita Foy Moss, Education Program Specialist, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue, SW, PCP, Room 10006, Washington, DC 20202, Telephone: 202/245-7866, Fax: 202/245-7166, E-mail: rita.foy.moss@ed.gov.