Registering with the Federal Government Aid

registered fed aid , fed aid registration , fed aid registrate
If you have any intention of seeking a grant from a county, state, or federal government agency, you need to register either as an individual or as an organization by following the appropriate path at www.grants.gov/applicants/ get_registered.jsp. If you are already incorporated or part of an educational, medical, or research institution, check first to see if your department or agency is already registered. If so, you may be able to skip to Step 3 of the process and request a username and password.

Registering is not difficult, but it will take from a week to a month or more to process so it’s good to get it done early. The directions online are very straightforward and explain each of the five steps in the process in detail so I will only outline them here. Be warned, however, that the alphabet soup bubbles over from this point on. You may want to start a small glossary to remember what the acronyms mean since they are not always explained in other government documents. (Many are listed in the Glossary at the back of this book.)

  1. Obtain a DUNS number: The federal government uses the Data Universal Number System (DUNS) to identify your organization. You’ll be directed to http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform/displayHomePage.do, where you will get your number almost immediately.
  2. Register with CCR: The Central Contractor Registration (CCR) sets up your user account (E-Biz POC or E-Business Point of Contact) and identifies which staff member(s) are allowed to submit applications electronically. These people then become AORs (Authorized Organizational Representatives). Although you need to renew this registration yearly, it’s wise to register only people who have authority and longevity within the organization for continuity purposes. You will be asked for an Employment Identification Number (EIN) or Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN). If you have one, this part of the process will continue and your E-Biz POC will be ready in about a week. If you don’t have an EIN or TIN, you’ll need to get one from the IRS, which adds another week or two to the process. Don’t despair. These registration numbers will be used repeatedly for many foundations, as well as government grants, so they are worth the time and effort it takes to get them.
  3. Create Username and Password: After you register with the CCR, AORs must wait one business day before they complete a profile and choose a username and password (M-PIN). These will serve as the electronic signature when submitting an online application and should be guarded with your life. The speed of this step depends on how quickly the AORs complete their profiles, but theoretically it can happen in one day.
  4. Authorization: Here’s where you may need your glossary, but I want to give you a taste of bureaucratic language so here is an abbreviated summary of the government’s explanation of this step. “When an AOR registers with Grants.gov the organization’s E-Biz POC will receive an email notification . . . The E-Biz POC must then login to Grants.gov (using the organization’s DUNS number for the username and the ‘M-PIN’ password obtained in Step 3) and approve the AOR . . . When an E-Biz POC approves an AOR, Grants.gov will send the AOR a confirmation email.” Okay, to translate, it’s just like getting a confirmation of a book you ordered from Amazon.com—half a dozen emails will arrive telling you that you just did what you did.
  5. Tracking AOR Status: If you become impatient waiting for the collection of information from Step 4, there is a process to see if you’ve been approved or not as an AOR. I’m not sure there is anything you can do about it if you’re not approved, but knowing they haven’t forgotten you can sometimes be reassuring.
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