Technical Assistance Toolkit Step 5: Selecting a TA Provider and TA Recipients
Selecting a TA Provider
If you decide to work with a third-party technical assistance (TA) provider, it is critical to find a consultant team that is qualified to carry out the specific scope of work your TA recipients will need. See Step 3: Determining the TA Structure section for more information on deciding whether to offer third-party or in-house TA. The Contracting Best Practices section offers guidance on developing a strong selection process during a competitive contracting process, such as a Request for Proposals. This section offers some considerations for selecting your TA providers.
Experience Working with Under-Resourced Communities
TA providers are the face of your TA program and in many cases will be working more closely with TA recipients than program staff. Therefore, it is critical to ensure that your TA providers reflect the values of your agency, exhibiting cultural competency and an ability to work with diverse TA recipients and project partners. Experience working with under-resourced communities is a demonstrable qualification that can be included in the minimum qualifications you seek when selecting a TA provider team. In addition to reviewing the experience a prospective TA provider includes in their bid, performing reference checks can help provide a more holistic picture of their past success working with under-resourced communities.
If your TA program will focus on specific types of applicants, such as tribes, it will be even more important to ensure that the TA team has experience working with those entities. Because tribes are sovereign governments, there are many legal and cultural differences to consider between working with tribes and other types of government entities. For any TA programs that will be offering TA to tribes, some, if not all of the TA providers should have experience working with tribes.
Subject Matter Expertise
Ensuring that TA providers have the right subject matter expertise is central to the success of any TA program. Thoughtfully considering the expertise that TA providers should have is important when developing the minimum qualifications and desired qualifications for your solicitation. Ideally, a TA team should bring together relevant but varied expertise, so that they can be adaptable to TA recipient needs. For example, a TA team that includes TA providers from around the state will be able to better understand local conditions across the regions they work in than a TA team that is all specialized in one area of the state. Similarly, depending on the expertise needed for your TA program, the TA provider team may bring together TA providers with expertise in project management, community engagement, land use planning, communications, engineering, facilitation, evaluation, and other useful skills. The more diverse expertise on your TA team, the more flexible your TA providers can be to respond to specific community needs.
Language Competencies
It is important to consider whether it will be necessary for assistance to be offered in multiple languages for your TA program, and if so, which ones. If your TA program will be offering assistance in multiple languages, the TA team should be able to demonstrate fluency in the specified languages or plan for live interpretation and translation of documents into the appropriate languages as needed. Ensuring that assistance is offered in the appropriate language, and that the translation is of high quality, is critical to ensuring that your TA program is truly accessible andachieving equitable program outcomes.
Selecting TA Recipients for a Competitive Grant Program
There are many ways to design the selection process for TA recipients depending on the budget, scope, and goals of your TA program. Some programs may prefer to offer TA to all applicants who apply to a grant program, while others may prioritize specific communities or types of applicants to receive technical assistance. For some programs, it may make sense to create a simple application process to select a certain number of TA recipients based on specific criteria.
Limited or Universal TA for Applicants
Depending on the way that your program is designed, it may make sense to either offer application TA to all applicants or to restrict TA to those with the highest need or to those who demonstrate readiness to apply in the upcoming funding round. If only under-resourced communities are eligible to apply to your program (whether the criteria are based on disadvantaged communities, low-income communities, or another priority population definition) it may be difficult to narrow in on who should receive TA. However, if your TA budget is limited, agencies may consider focusing TA on applicants in regions that have not previously received awards, or on specific applicant types that may have lower capacity due to organizational size or other factors that may contribute to lower capacity and readiness.
If your grant program does not determine eligibility based on priority population status and is open to all communities across the state, it is advisable to create a selection process for TA recipients to ensure that TA is offered to those with the most capacity needs. Otherwise, the number of eligible TA recipients can be very large, making it unwieldy for TA providers to offer meaningful assistance to all of them. Additionally, offering the same level of TA to under-resourced and resource-rich communities does not help meet the goal of advancing equitable outcomes through TA. See the Core Values section for more information about the principles that should serve as a foundation for TA efforts.
Light Touch versus More Comprehensive TA
The level of support needed by your TA recipients is one of the most important factors to consider when deciding whether to offer universal TA to all applicants or prioritize TA for certain applicants. If your needs and gaps analysis (See Step 1: Analyzing Needs and Gaps) revealed a low level of program success for a certain type of applicant, such as those located in under-resourced communities, rural communities, or tribes, it may be necessary to offer more comprehensive TA to those applicants to help level the playing field. Engagement with those communities or types of applicants can also help determine the scope of services needed and how intensive they need to be. Offering only light touch TA to applicants that need more assistance can lead to frustration if applicants find that the services are not sufficient to offer meaningful support.
Selection Process Guidance
If you decide to create a selection process or simply prioritize certain types of applicants for TA, taking into account the findings from your gap analysis (see Step 1: Analyzing Needs and Gaps) can help determine what the selection criteria should be. For example, if there are specific types of applicants or regions of the state that often struggle to develop successful grant applications, you may consider prioritizing them for TA (See the Sustainable Agricultural Lands Conservation TA Case Study for an example). Alternatively, you may decide to create a selection process for TA recipients that takes into account multiple factors. In this case, it is important to ensure that the application process is simple and is not overly burdensome for applicants. The criteria you use to select your TA recipients will depend greatly on your agency’s goals, the audience for your TA program, and the needs of your grant applicants. Whichever way you determine the selection criteria, lower-resourced communities should be prioritized according to the definition that makes the most sense for your program.
When selecting TA recipients, particularly for application assistance on a specific funding program, it is necessary to be honest with TA recipients about the level of effort required to put together an application, as well as the likely competitiveness of their project, making it clear that receiving TA does not necessarily mean they will be awarded funding. If a project is not ready for the current funding round or is not suitable for the program at all, that information should be communicated clearly. If a project is not ready, TA providers should provide guidance on what steps the grant-seeker should take to prepare for the program’s next round; and the applicant should be re-considered for TA at that point if it is still offered. If a project is not well-suited for the program, TA providers and agency staff should seek to connect the applicant with other funding programs that may be more suitable.
Selecting TA Recipients for Capacity Building Support
When selecting TA recipients for a capacity building program that is not tied to any specific competitive grant program (such as the BOOST program), it may be beneficial to create a slightly more robust selection process, while still keeping the application very short and simple. It is important to remember that applicants are applying for TA and capacity building services because they lack staff capacity, so it is counter-intuitive to burden them with a complex application process simply to receive assistance.
The selection criteria for these more holistic capacity building programs can focus on the applicant’s need for capacity building support, status as an under-resourced community (however that is defined for your program), and a demonstrated ability and commitment to participate in the program. While it makes sense to provide capacity building support to those applicants with the most need, it is also important to ensure that the selected applicants will have the capacity to meaningfully participate in the program. If not, the TA recipient may waste precious time engaging in the early stages of a program they do not have capacity to complete. Asking a direct question in the application or interview process about who the program contact will be and their capacity to engage in the program can help you select TA recipients who are eager and able to fully take advantage of the program. See the Project Management section for more information on setting expectations and communicating effectively with TA recipients.