A recent National League of Cities (NLC) webinar discussed significant updates to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Uniform Guidance, which was released in April and is effective for awards made on or after October 1, 2024. The webinar provided valuable insights into the updates to the Uniform Grants Guidance 2024 Revision (UGG).
The UGG is a set of federal guidelines that determine how state and local governments can spend federal grant money, including how they award federally funded contracts to private companies. The updated guidance focuses on reforms to streamline and simplify the federal grant process.
Karen Curry, a senior grants council member for the Arkansas Municipal League, shared her experience managing federal, state, and local grants, providing -valuable insights into the updates and their implications for local governments.
Standardization and Simplification
The guidance includes a major revision to the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), standardizing and simplifying the format across federal agencies with plain language writing that summarizes program goals and objectives, target audience, and eligible recipients. Implementation plans span from 2024 to 2026.
Threshold Changes
- Modified Total Direct Cost: The limitation for each sub-award is $50,000.
- Equipment: Starting value revised to $10,000.
- Supplies: The threshold increased to $10,000, with changes to rules on leftover supplies.
- Indirect Costs: The rate for indirect costs is now potentially 15%, encouraging smaller cities and towns to take advantage of this provision.
Single Audit Threshold
The threshold for federal expenditures in a single year is raised to $1 million, applicable for the next full fiscal year after October 1, 2024.
Concluding the webinar, the NLC representatives announced that FEMA would update its document on federal language clauses for contracts and purchase orders later this year.
As Arkansas’ Curry emphasized, these changes may require adjustments to policies and procedures, but they ultimately provide a more straightforward and consistent framework for managing federal grants.
Contact: Ciara Bradley, League Research Associate,CBradley@njlm.org or 609-695-3481 x128.