Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources (BWSR) staff, in partnership with Minnesota Management and Budget; Management Analysis and Development (MMB;MAD), have been working to streamline BWSR’s delivery and structure of grant program requirements.
The need for this work arose due to the growth in the amount of funding for various grant programs coupled with increased opportunities to work with new types of grantees beyond our local government clientele and increased oversight responsibilities over state grants from the Minnesota Office of Grants Management (OGM).
Results of this work will:
- Eliminate the use of program policies.
- Where possible, reduce discrepancies in program requirements from one program to the next.
- Define requirements for grantees in Board Orders, the Request for Proposals (for competitive grants) and in the Grant Agreement itself.
- Better organize and communicate grant program requirements, the procedures in place to meet those requirements, and helpful guidance.
Reformatting of the Grants Administration Manual (GAM) will move requirements to grant agreements and board orders, while procedures and guidance/recommended practices would stay within the GAM. This is to ensure necessary requirements are part of the agreement and to better clarify procedure from guidance within the GAM.
The work of eliminating program policies has already begun with recent and upcoming grant programs (ex. Pollinator Pathways, Soil Health Programming, Clean Water Fund Competitive). Additional work will be needed to incorporate current program policies into board orders and grant agreements for formula programs such as Conservation Contracts and Watershed Based Implementation Funding (WBIF).
We anticipate a full transition away from program policies to be made for all our grant programs as well as the completion of the GAM reformatting by the beginning of fiscal year 2026 (July 1, 2025).
BWSR recognizes these are significant changes to our current mode of granting operations. Please review the information and examples below to learn more about the changes BWSR will be making to streamline our delivery and structure of grant program requirements.
Grants Streamlining Presentation (Video)
Presentation slides only (PDF)