Announcement of eXtension Foundation Pesticide Safety Education Funds Management Program (PSEFMP) Funding Opportunity for 2020

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The eXtension Foundation (eX) is pleased to announce a funding opportunity for Pesticide Safety Education Programs (PSEP) for 2020. This opportunity is made available through a cooperative agreement (X8-83698001) with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish and administer a national sub-award program in support of pesticide applicator education, and training for certified applicators of restricted use pesticides. The National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC) will continue to support as an unfunded collaborator with eX to lead the professional development part of the project and to assist PSEPs in enhancing some of the educational products they develop as part of the expectations attached to the funding.

Requirements of sub-awardees for this program to receive funding are as follows:

    • agree to share one educational deliverable for the purposes of enhancing PSEP programs both regionally and nationally. 
    • submit progress reports every six (6) months using a standard online webform. 
    • attend a minimum of one 1-hour training webinars for the reporting system. Anticipated dates are: January 31, 2020 at 3 pm EST; May 6, 2020 at 1 pm EST; September 30, 2020 at 3 pm EST and December 2, 2020 at 3:00 pm EST.  

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for this funding applicants must be affiliated with a U.S. Land Grant University. Only one application per state or territory will be eligible for funding and preference will go to 1862 Land Grant Universities. Please contact psefmp-helpdesk@extension.org if you have any questions regarding eligibility.

Funding Period

The funding period for this sub award will be January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020.

Funding Available

Each PSEP will be eligible to apply for a base amount of $17,200.00 USD plus an additional 5% of the funds divided proportionally based on the percentage of the number of certified applicators in each state or territory. The number of certified applicators in a state or territory will be based on the most recent figures of certified applicators as supplied by the EPA. Additional amounts available to the state or territory will be listed in the budget section of the application. Payments to successful sub-awardees will be made January 3 – 15, 2020.

Key Dates:

Application System Opens: Monday, September 16, 2019 at 8 am EST

First round of reviews: September 27, 2019

Second round of reviews: October 28, 2019

Application Deadline: Friday, November 15, 2019 at 8 pm EST

Final round of reviews: November 22, 2019

Sub-award Notification Announcement: December 13, 2019

Funds distributed by: January 15, 2020

Application Review Process: 

eX will use a multi-step approach in the receiving and review of applications for this program. Each application will be reviewed by eX and an advisory committee including representatives from NPSEC, AAPCO, AAPSE, PERC and the PSEP community for eligibility, compliance, completeness and potential collaboration. 

Application Submission

In an effort to make the application process as streamlined and user friendly as possible, applicants will be able to download, sign, scan, and upload the sub-award agreement from the application site. Applications that have not been signed will not be considered for funding. The average time for completion of an application is 45 minutes.

Applications for this funding opportunity can be accessed at the following link on September 16, 2019 at 8:00 am EST: https://applyextension.smapply.io 

Online Application System Training:

PSEPs will receive an invitation for optional training via Zoom for September 16, 2019 at 11 am and 3 pm EST for the online application system. During training, eX will provide a step by step walk through of the application site, application and submission. For those who are unable to attend the training, it will be recorded and sent via email to view at your convenience. Additional training sessions will also be held the same week.

Applicants with any questions please send an email to psefmp-helpdesk@extension.org. 

About eXtension Foundation

The United States Cooperative Extension System, with funding from Cooperative Extension directors and administrators, and USDA-NIFA, shares resources and tools through eXtension that enables the Extension workforce to scale up its local and national impact. eXtension is an integral part of the national Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) and is organized as a 501(c)3 non-profit membership organization. Its Board of Directors represents the five regions of Cooperative Extension, ECOP, and USDA-NIFA.

About National Pesticide Safety Education Center

NPSEC seeks to strengthen the national system of university extension Pesticide Safety Education Programs by improving the quality, consistency, and accessibility of educational offerings, promoting collaboration and leveraging of educational resources and learning assessment tools, and increasing revenue generation. NPSEC does not receive any EPA funding under the EPA eXtension Foundation cooperative agreement.

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Ask Extension: Applying Artificial Intelligence to Extension Results of an initial landscape overview

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Read the full report here.

Summary

U.S. Cooperative Extension provides useful, relevant, local, research-based, information to citizens throughout the country. Modern affordances like web searches, email, and instant messaging have built the expectation that information and services are available in real time and via the Internet–today’s primary source of information.

The local, nuanced, time-sensitive information that Extension and the Land Grant Universities provide exists, but can be difficult to find. Even more, the best resources are currently distributed across many data sources: e.g. Land Grant University information pages, Cooperative Extension websites and databases, Regional Integrated Pest Management Centers, Regional Rural Development Centers, and even eXtension’s massive “Ask an Expert” database of questions and answers. 

This investigation looks at one solution to the problem of information fragmentation and “findability” of research-based answers with local relevance: the creation of a distributed Ask Extension data registry and search interfaces. This solution would pull together data sources from throughout the Extension ecosystem to answer questions directly and accurately and connect local citizens with their local Extension professionals, products, and services.

Advances in technology such as machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and related data tools present the possibility of capitalizing upon this opportunity, by offering smart and localized access to the addressable research-based information. In addition, they offer long-term scalability that will answer common questions immediately, providing 24/7/365 availability of Extension resources. 

Read the full report here.

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What is Customer Relationship Management and why would Extension care?

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Stephen Judd is serving as the eXtension Foundation Customer Relationship Management Fellow. This post is an update on progress on this funded Fellowship from the USDA-NIFA New Technologies for Agricultural Extension (NTAE) Cooperative Agreement.

CRM

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is used to keep a record of an organization or company’s interactions with a person or business, record information about the person or business, such as, contact information, and share that information with other users. The overall goal of CRM is to increase an organization’s knowledge and understanding of the people they deal with.

In a recent survey (June & July 2019), people (188 responses) from approximately 63 different Extension organizations responded to questions about CRM usage at their organization. When asked about current usage of CRM at their Extension organization, respondents reported 30 currently use CRM, 36 are evaluating using it, and 35 have no plans at this time. The numbers don’t add up to the 63 total organizations, likely because the usage is not uniform across each organization.

I’ll delve into the details of the survey in a later post, but consider that over 45% of the Extension organizations responding report currently using CRM and another 30% are currently evaluating using it. Approximately 20% of the Extension organizations represented indicated they had no plans to use CRM. This would seem to indicate that most Extension organizations perceive some value in the use of CRM.

Where’s the value?

If a company sells widgets, and they implement CRM, and profits or sales increase, then they may be able to attribute the increase to CRM usage. They may track metrics like lead conversion, time to close deals, opportunities won and lost, and more. In Extension, we rarely have similar metrics that we track. The widget company may be able to justify the cost (licenses, support, training) of CRM with the increased sales. Extension may incur similar costs, but since we tend to be less revenue-driven, the benefits may come in less tangible terms.

So if it isn’t, necessarily, about increasing revenue for Extension, what benefit is there? Here are some of the “biggest wins” that survey respondents listed:

  • People / Relationships / Marketing
    • better understand how people are engaging with us
    • streamlined categorization of stakeholders
    • working especially well for our government relations team
    • useful for volunteer management
  • Data
    • allow significant amount of data on individual or company
    • improved security of data
    • collecting info that quickly accessible on our prospects & clients
    • stable and sustainable system for documents, contacts, records
    • merge many lists and platforms into one list
  • Sharing / Consolidation
    • provide access to shared data that once was stored separately
    • consolidation and management of contact data in one place for remote access by multiple admins
    • allows us to track everything in one place
  • Marketing
    • coordinating marketing and public relations with programmatic work
    • data- driven decision making about marketing and ability to use data to describe impact (intro graphics and professional graphics backed up by real-time data)
    • having emails for campaigns to market upcoming programs
    • streamlining our communications, giving a consistent look to all of our email marketing, and quantifying the impact of our communication efforts
  • E-Commerce
    • ability to take payments and no longer need to handle cash/checks at workshops and events
    • leaving behind the “cash” culture in favor of online electronic payments

Given the diversity across Extension organizations and the large number of CRM systems available to choose from, how would one go about the process of evaluating CRM usage for Extension. That will be the thread woven through the subsequent posts in this series. I will forewarn you that there is no cookie-cutter template to pull off the shelf, but there are some guiding principles and processes that can be used.

I welcome feedback and questions at stephen.judd@unh.edu or in the comments section below.

Stephen Judd is serving as a funded eXtension Fellow this year to investigate and report on CRM applications in Cooperative Extension.

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This website is supported in part by New Technologies for Ag Extension (funding opportunity no. USDA-NIFA-OP-010186), grant no. 2023-41595-41325 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Extension Foundation.

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