Sign Minnesota Banking Letter Of Intent Online

Industry sign banking minnesota letter of intent online

all right i'm gonna get started it is noon and we'll just begin this is being recorded uh and i am working to get this translated at least into spanish and hmong though it may not be translated timely for this upcoming deadline i want to welcome you all to the angry value-added ag grant seminar webinar i guess we'll call it this is sponsored by a team of groups that have been doing a fair number of webinars on covid related programs and we will also be doing more webinars on proposed grants uh sponsored by minnesota farmers market association misa which is the minnesota institute for sustainable agriculture north central fair the sustainable agriculture research and education center minnesota farmers union and sustainable farming association i'm theresa kevin the executive director of sfa and i'll be moderating uh jane jewett with misa who isn't quite on the call but will be jumping on will field questions and if you could use either the q a or the chat box and type your questions in as we go along jane will be watching that and i'll check it as well as as i can just to make sure we've answered your questions um i think with that we'll get started and um i just want to make sure we uh extend thank yous to the presenters jordan buchels is going to be walking through the bulk of the agri-value-added egg grant program she works for the minnesota department of ag as a program officer and ann koosh is mda's senior grant specialist and ann used to manage this program jason robinson with ari is going to share with us some do's and don'ts in writing a grant and then we have two grant recipients deanne luffin from cannon bells cheese and dan simmerly with cedar crate farms who will share their experience and offer particular advice and guidance with that i think just to clarify what we'll learn we're going to learn about agree and in particular how to apply the application requirements time frames what makes for a good grant we will hear about good grants uh both content for good grants and pitfalls to avoid as as i mentioned we'll get examples of previous angry grants that have been made and then throughout the program you're going to hear a few other ag related grant resources as well as information on one coming up here on wednesday regarding the farmer rancher and partnership grant so i'm going to turn this over to jordan great um well welcome everyone thanks so much for having me and thanks for your interest in this grant so like theresa said i work for the minnesota department of agriculture i am a grant specialist and i administer the value added grant so the agri program stands for agricultural growth research innovation it was established in 2009 to promote the advancement of the state's agricultural and renewable energy industries and to fulfill the state's commitment to the ethanol industry funds for the value added grant specifically were made available in 2013 and that link you see at the bottom of the screen is the link to our website for the value-added program so the value-added grant is a competitive process and it offers funding for value-added businesses including bioenergy producers to invest in equipment kind of the broad timeline of this grant is applicants will apply for the grant and then a panel of reviewers will evaluate these applications using a scoring rubric and then reviewers will meet and develop recommendations for funding and ultimately the commissioner of agriculture makes the final funding decisions once those decisions are made grantees will sign contracts and then work and complete their projects and be reimbursed for 25 of the costs of their projects and just a disclosure grants are taxable income so grantees will receive and have to fill out an irs for 10.99 so if you are awarded a grant mda will write up the contract detail in your project based on the information you provided in your application so these projects must be completed within three years of the contract start date so while you're completing your project and purchasing your equipment it's important that you collect invoices from your suppliers and keep track of the proof of payment that can be in the form of a bank statement a cleared check loan disbursements etc so it's important that you keep track of the invoices and proof of payment because when you're ready for your reimbursement you will need to submit those proof of payment and invoices to us and we will grant you a reimbursement and sometimes we will come to your site and do a site visit just to kind of track your project and document the purchases that you have made so the intent of the program is to increase the sales and use of minnesota agricultural product products by investing in the production capacity market diversification and market access for value-added products so for the purposes of this grant value added is defined as the addition of value to an agricultural product through processing so costs that would be eligible under this grant include equipment and the respective shipping and installation costs of that equipment also eligible under this grant is costs related to physical improvements and business scale ups so in the past we have done two rounds of applications each year one in the fall and one in the spring but for fiscal year 2021 we are just doing one round of applications so this one application round open now will be the only one for this year and we are expecting to award a total of one million dollars so that means for an individual your maximum award can be a hundred and fifty thousand and a minimum award of one thousand dollars so on our website we do have a lot of information detailing what projects are eligible and what projects are not eligible so i thought i would just kind of cover a couple of the examples of eligible and ineligible expenses but this is not fully encompassing everything that would and would not be covered so please do visit our website to hear more but i'll just kind of go through a couple examples of what is covered so a couple costs that would be covered under this grant would be equipment that's used in the production of value-added products like processing packaging slaughter things like that also the related plumbing wiring and installation cost for that equipment would be covered under this grant things like cooler walls and refrigeration units would be covered as well as equipment that improves process efficiency at biofuels plants and renewable energy production equipment so examples of costs that would not be covered under this a grant would be building installations since we don't really have a way of knowing that this building would be used for value added projects in perpetuity we cannot fund it also any expenditures incurred prior to the start of the contract are not eligible for reimbursement so it's really important that only the costs that are after the start of the contract are included additionally equipment that's used for harvesting or livestock production is not eligible for this grant as well as beginning inventory and startup costs and employee wages and benefits are not covered under this grant so when reviewers are reviewing these applications they first look for eligibility so a project in order for a project to be eligible it must be an investment in equipment that will produce production capacity market diversification and market access for value-added products and after a reviewer has determined this project is eligible bonus points are awarded if the project falls in the four priority areas that we have established for 2021 so these priority areas include projects that create additional meat and poultry processing capacity as well as projects that increase food safety to improve marketability and projects that respond to the changing market conditions as a result of covid so for example projects that would increase capacity for household size packaging rather than wholesale packaging and the final priority area for 2021 is projects that respond to the civil unrest primarily in the twin cities so examples of this would be rebuilding facilities that were damaged or destroyed or increasing processing capacity in affected areas so we do list on our website all of the past grantees so i just pulled a couple examples of these grantees to kind of walk through what some successful projects do fund so auntie anne's fields received funding for a walk-in cooler and egg washer bakersfield flour and bread received funding for donut making equipment in a freezer brand farms received funding for apple washing equipment double take salsa received funding for kitchen equipment and facility improvements so you can kind of see how these are intended to increase the use and sales of minnesota agricultural process or projects so doubting thomas farms they got funding for grain cleaning equipment and storage facilities fresha got funding for facility and equipment to store sort wash and package fresh carrots for the wholesale market there was also funds for storage and processing facilities and winemaking equipment for a vineyard and coolers for storing berries after harvest so those are just a couple of the examples but we do have all of our past grantees on the website so if you're hearing this and you think that you do have a project that would be eligible eligible the first step is for you to submit an application and we submit our applications online so this is a screenshot from our website and i have an arrow pointing to where the link for our application is so we need to receive your application by 4 pm on october 29th and we can expect that our decisions will be made by mid-december so also on this website in the forms and resources box near the yellow arrow there is a link to the request for proposals or rfp and it's really important that you review that document because it lists all the details of the grant and the requirements for your application and just many resources that will help you have a successful application and fill out the required um the required parts of your application so some tips for filling out your application is like i mentioned visit our website because we have a lot of different resources on there for you to review we have a page where we list all of our past projects like i've mentioned and there's a screenshot here to show you where that is on our website um if you see a project that you think is similar to a project you want to propose you can contact personally that grantee and it's possible they might reach out to you and tell you kind of about their experience and maybe give you some tips so that is one option for um a resource to help you when you're writing your application and like i've mentioned a couple times it's really important that you read the rfp because that's where all of the information for your application is located and it will tell you exactly how points are awarded for your application and it will help you understand if your project is eligible and so another big tip i like to tell potential applicants is that it's really important that you have good cost estimates in your application we really want to see the plan and that you've been preparing for this project and you have a really good understanding of what costs are going to be incurred by this project and what costs you're requesting from us for funding yeah so just a couple more tips on filling out your application you really should highlight why the minnesota department of agriculture should fund this project and how your project meets the goals and priorities that are listed in the rfp just a reminder that the primary focus of this grant is to increase the use and sales of minnesota agricultural products so you really want to make the pitch that by us funding your project we will see an increase in the sales of minnesota agricultural products another important tip is to be clear in your application about where your matching funds are coming from we only reimburse 25 of the costs for your project so we want to be able to see that you will be able to fund and complete this project even if you have to pay for 75 of the costs and i've mentioned this a couple times already but it is really important in the rfp on page 11 there's the exact rubric that will be used by our reviewers so before you submit your application you really want to look at this rubric and kind of just score your own application and see whether you have checked all the boxes for eligibility and one more tip is to have someone else review your application i know when you've been looking at it for a while it can kind of all start to make sense to you but with a fresh set of eyes they might notice where you're lacking detail or if something doesn't make sense so it's always good to have someone else review the application as well another tip is to spend a significant portion of your time on the budget table reviewers really want to see that you've put a lot of thought into the costs of this project and that you've researched where you might be getting your estimates from and what costs will be incurred so the budget table is really important to put a lot of work into and the budget narrative should detail and kind of explain the budget table that you fill out so if you're hearing this and you don't think your project would be eligible for the value added grant i thought it might be helpful to just very briefly touch on a couple other grants and programs that we have at mda and full disclosure i do not administer these grants so i'm not as well versed in these grants but i think it will be helpful to just kind of give an overview of each of these programs so the goal of the livestock investment grant is to improve update and modernize livestock operations through equipment purchases physical improvements and acquisition of facilities and this grant is a ten percent reimbursement up to twenty five thousand dollars and a minimum of four hundred dollars so this grant does have a lifetime maximum of fifty thousand dollars meaning you can apply more than once but you will only receive one grant per project so examples of projects that are funded under this grant can include generation transition buildings and infrastructure different technologies and on-farm processing so there's a lot of different opportunities for all stages of farming and all stages of livestock production under this grant so this grant is open right now but it has a due date of 4 pm on november 4th of this year and just just a little note that any expenses that are incurred outside of january 1st 2021 and december 31st of 2022 are not eligible for reimbursement under this grant so the next grant i will talk about is the sustainable agriculture demonstration grants and these grants are intended to explore innovative on-farm research and demonstrations relating to farm profitability energy efficiency and environmental benefits of sustainable agriculture practices or systems so some examples for this grant would include research that is looking at the practices that improve soil health or conservation tillage and weed management methods or novel cover crops and crop rotation or developing refining and improving marketing opportunities including season extension and post-harvest storage and handling and so with these projects they are all published annually in the minnesota department's minnesota department of agriculture's green book so that is something to keep in mind with this grant that all outcomes of your research will be published on our website in what we call the green book also just want you to know that we will be doing a more in-depth webinar that includes discussion of this particular grant on wednesday the 7th of october and we'll touch on the specifics of that towards the end great yes so there's 200 000 available for this grant and applicants can request up to 50 dollars for the grant and the projects last two to three years and like i mentioned previously the grantees must be willing to share their outcomes with others because we do publish those results and so the application period is open for this grant as well and due by 4 pm on thursday december 10th so the next program i will touch on quickly is the good food access program and this is intended to increase the availability of an ccess to affordable nutritious and culturally appropriate food for underserved communities in low and moderate income areas so these grants help grocery stores and small food retailers make physical improvements and purchase equipment to simulate stimulate the sales of such foods this grant has a total of two hundred and eighty thousand dollars available and applicants can request to request between two thousand five hundred and fifty thousand dollars and like the other ones this application period is also open and due by 4 p.m on thursday november 19th the final program i'll touch on briefly is our cost share programs and so these programs are eligible for minnesota farms or for minnesota registered food companies with less than 500 employees and this cost share program is intended to help cover the cost of marketing agricultural products so examples of eligible costs would be e-commerce and merchandising costs e-commerce platform fees and setup excuse me website setup and store fees and other utilities as well as consultants and contracted e-manage e-commerce management photography and videography for marketing as well as point-of-sale work and business-to-business trade shows including virtual events and store demonstrations so this program reimburses up to four thousand dollars for each program the e-commerce and the wholesale program but there is a two thousand dollar limit for products that are made outside of minnesota even if the business itself is in minnesota we really want to incentivize the use of minnesota products so this application is also open but it's a first-come first-served basis so it's important that you apply for reimbursement whenever you have eligible costs that were incurred between july 1st and december 31st and so ariel and brian are the two points of contact for this grant but if you visit our website we have the points of contact for each grant listed there so do reach out to the respective contact for whichever grant you are interested in so i thought i would just reiterate again a couple resources that might help you with your grant writing the rfp the request for proposals on our website is going to be your best friend in your application process because it has all of the details needed for your application so please do review that extensively before you submit your application to make sure that you have everything needed for your application additionally we have a q a page on our website where we post questions that we have received in the past regarding this grant and so if you have questions i advise you to first check out that q a page because it's very likely that your questions already been asked and you have just a really quick response and you can get your question answered but if you do have a question that has not been asked do please don't hesitate to reach out to me i have my contact information on the next slide so you can reach out to me with specific questions and i will get that posted to the q a page another good resource on our website is to look at past projects like i mentioned earlier and reach out to those grantees and see if they'd be willing to help you but there's also the option to reach out to organizations in your community because often they will help with grant writing and so just researching what organizations are available in your area would be really helpful because most regions have small business development centers or local economic development associations or regional initiative foundations that are willing to help with grant writing and another resource that is willing to help out with grant writing sometimes is called score that's a non-profit that stands for service corps of retired executives so those are just a couple options that you might have available to you for grant writing so thank you so much for your interest in this program please reach out to me if you have any questions and i believe we will be answering questions once all the presenters have completed today yes and i do see we have a question in the chat um i just encourage you to type your question in either the chat or the question and answer i appreciate your presentation jordan uh next up we have jason robinson and jason is a grant reviewer he is with ari and he does business develop he's the business development director for food uh i am going to go ahead and call up your slides there go ahead jason thanks teresa uh hi everyone uh like teresa mentioned i'm jason robinson with the agricultural utilization research institute or auri uh we're a 30 year old nonprofit corp with a mission of fostering long-term economic benefit for minnesota through value-added agriculture and one thing i'd like to highlight uh in terms of jordan's last last slide is that we also work with the mda to ensure that uh grant that the mda receives good grant applications so we're also a resource that you can reach out to in order to not necessarily write grants but to at least review and and to provide some feedback and that's in in many events that's what i am here to talk about today for just a couple of minutes but i also wanted to highlight one more piece where we're very active in the local food innovation ecosystem that really when i say local extends throughout the state and even beyond but uh jordan had also mentioned the e-commerce cost sharing program through the uh through the marketing program at the mda and i wanted to highlight that if you're interested there was about a two-hour webinar sponsored by grownorth the mda and auri uh about a month ago that highlighted many resources and really acted as a primer or a 101 level course in e-commerce that i would suggest you check out it's available for free at the grow north minnesota website so with that i wanted to just highlight a few what i'll call best practices so if you really want to make your reviewers smile jordan hit on some of these i'm going to hit on them again because of how important they are uh but first and foremost just show me you read the rfp i want to see as a reviewer that you're following the rules and that you're answering all the questions so show me you read it by doing that there were um at least one or two applications that didn't even make it past the first sentence because it was clear that the application didn't follow the rules and that the project wasn't eligible so be very clear about what's eligible and whether or not your project falls under those eligibility rules and that you answer the questions uh these next three are really about how to most effectively write an application so firstly be concise use as few words as possible and remember because this is a competitive grant program reviewers will typically have 30 to 40 applications to read so they will definitely appreciate being as concise as possible in terms of what you're trying to communicate along with that is being clear so be clear don't beat around the bush make the ask for what you need obvious in terms of how the funds will impact what it is that you're trying to accomplish and as jordan mentioned earlier there are four priority areas so if your project falls into one of those four priority eight priority areas whether it's coven related whether it's food safety related or the others clearly identify that purpose in your application don't make us try to search it out and try to interpret that it's a part of the application and be focused keep the application centered on the ask and try not to provide extraneous information your reason for the application can get lost if you're going to write out a 500 to 700 word background on the on the business within the state of minnesota it's a great story but it it tends to gloss over the purpose of the application itself so stay focused jordan also mentioned quantify the project impact demonstrate how this specific grant application and the reward award that you're asking for will increase utilization of minnesota agricultural products over multiple years how will jobs be impacted and be specific because this is competitive we want to make sure that those funds are going to the highest possible impact projects and then finally from a best practices point of view show me you understand your market show me that you understand the future outlook of your market how competitive is it and ultimately how will this project help you be more competitive you might be needing meaning a need within the community but how will this project help you be competitive within that market and show me you have clear support from a customer base um multiple projects that i've seen in the past uh some of them were around creating capacity for small meat processing facilities and what was very effective were letters of support written to from potential customers that that showcased the need for the facility and the capacity and that they would use it so they had a built-in customer base before the project even got going so that was very effective in terms of some of the best practices that i could recommend now in terms of pitfalls um what i would say is is make sure that that award request is commensurate with the impact that you expect to make so ultimately don't go after the largest award if the impact is small in other words the mda reserves the right to adjust the amount of the award for a number of reasons so if you're asking for the maximum award of 150 000 and the impact to minnesota ag is relatively small it's likely that the size of that award could be reduced if it was awarded so i would ask you wouldn't you rather be in charge of asking for how much you really need maybe you could consider breaking up your project into multiple phases and spread out your need across multiple grant periods defining a clear plan as jordan's already mentioned and as i will continue to highlight if it wasn't already obvious leaves a really good impression with the reviewer so make sure that the award is commensurate with the impact that you're intending to make another pitfall is to clearly show me your plan lay out your financing and your funding sources include a letter of guarantee from your lending or financial institution this is part and parcel with what jordan's mentioned in terms of highlighting where you're going to be getting those matching funds and if you could get a letter of guarantee from your bank or indicate that you are going to get those funds from a personal checking account or banking service it's pretty critical to be able to highlight that and to show us that you're going to be able to afford this and that you have the financial wherewithal to to manage the project effectively because if the grant funds are awarded we want to make sure it's going to be a successful project another pitfall that i've seen is just having too many unknowns reviewers really want to see that you've done your homework to make sure that this project is going to be successful for instance address any potential regulatory or licensing restrictions or highlight that you don't have any make sure that we know that you know that you've done your homework so we don't want to see any unknowns in that application and if there is an unknown be very upfront and clear about it and how that unknown will be addressed remember that it it takes the village proof like jordan's already mentioned prove to us as a reviewer that you've leveraged your local network whether that's an economic development organization one of the initiative foundations from the small business development centers to really ensure that you have a successful project um it's amazing what you can really find whether it's differential thinking about the project or possibly even other sources of funding that can help you with your match if you look around what is close to you and remember the economic development organizations have a vested interest in seeing you succeed since their goal is really to grow the local economy so they want you to succeed so take advantage of that and use those extra resources that are here to make you successful don't make me guess when does the project begin when does it end this all goes back to having a very clearly laid out project plan i want to see that you have progress milestones that there's a clear beginning a clear ending and that you have thought through what are the steps associated with the project and when you expect those steps to happen some of the best projects that i've seen are those with a with a plan that's been laid out almost by an engineering firm for some really big projects i'm not saying you need to go that far but we do want to see that you know when the project is going to begin and the steps in that plan to get you to the end point and have a clearly laid out endpoint and then finally show me that you're serious and what i mean by that is use a proofreader don't let simple things like easily correctable spelling or grammar mistakes torpedo your application those are indicators that you just didn't put the time and effort into the application that you should have and can be easily corrected by having somebody else look it over jordan's already mentioned that so i just want to make sure that i highlight that again because that that can torpedo your application especially given that it's a competitive grant process and i think teresa or jordan can probably highlight how competitive it is but i do recall that um roughly 30 to 40 percent of projects get funded if it's even that high anymore and and to that point you need to make sure that your application sticks out whether it's for impact or whether it's for a clearly delineated project plan or you've clearly identified that your project hits on those priority areas don't make it stand out because it's poorly written because then it'll go into the into the no pile can you share how many projects um are funded versus how many applicants you receive i do not know that number off the top of my head um maybe anne has a better idea from the years past that she has administered this program otherwise i can i can get back to you guys with that number yeah i used to have that number on the q and a and i am remembering in 15 16 and 17 is it was between 30 and 40 percent of the applications were awarded but i don't know in the last few years i think we'll have to look that up great thank you thanks and my last point is just remember that that auri does work with the mda to improve the quality of applications so you can feel free to reach out to me and and i might be able to provide some help or at least look it over or one of the other folks on our team might be able to provide some help so teresa with that i think those are my only two slides so i am happy to turn it back to you great i appreciate that so just to clarify um the people who might want to be submitting an application could contact you to get some help correct feedback and and possibly to proof applications uh absolutely if that was uh what was needed we could we could provide some support there very good okay next up we have deanne excuse me i apologize for that dianne lufkin who is with cannon bell's cheeses she is one of the successful re applicants and she's going to talk to you about her experience how she went about applying and what she is funded for take it away leah dion excuse me that's okay um sg7 deanne lufkin um out of cannon falls um i'm gonna give you a brief overview of who before i talk about our actual grant we are um we are a small cheese company that started out as a hobby nine years ago we started making cheese in the kitchen we then about five years ago created an llc to become a legal company and then started making cheese commercially four years ago at the university of minnesota because you cannot make dairy products out of your home um it has to be in a licensed facility different courses to make sure i had the knowledge to be a cheese maker check the cheeseburger short course um at the university of wisconsin river falls and other different classes um we have become groups group members um we're involved in the canon valley grown group which is a group of local um sfa people and we are part of a peer group of food producers through the southern minnesota yes it's a little um hard to hear you i wonder if it would work if you disabled the video my video yeah sometimes okay there that might be better yeah i'm i'm up yeah up at the cabin right now we uh so we are part of we're also part of our local food peer group um today we are breaking ground on our own cheese plant in cannon palm it's not on a farm it's going to be in the industrial park of cannon falls um we're going to be getting our milk from square deal dairy in randall so just down the street from our cheese plant but the equipment inside will almost have to be completely brand new because it's hard to find used cheese equipment the equipment will cost us over 440 thousand dollars alone um we're we are getting the building built for us uh by a separate investor who will then rent it back to us so we are only on the hook for the equipment which is pretty pricey and we are not independently wealthy women so we needed to apply for this value-added grant we did cheese make a short course i heard about a consultant named jim gage who was i was told was a grant whisperer uh really good at writing value-added grants well we worked with him for a few years on helping us with our business plan and getting things in line for a business um we also met with and he was amazing we talked with various business owners in cannon falls about what they've done and also other food producers in our peer group we um talked with previous grant reviewers our mentor that we had through smith um had been a grant reviewer and so had our city administrator so we were able to talk to them about things that people look for and actually get some help with our application from them and we talked with previous recipients in our field other cheese makers who had gotten it and other food producers in our peer group had gotten it and i downloaded a bunch of winning applications in like fields or some that weren't and i didn't i didn't uh steal from them but i i took a lot of hints from them so we didn't have the money to have our consultant actually write the grant for us because as i said we're not independently wealthy so we um so i wrote it for us the thing i would suggest is make sure you type it up all in word don't do it straight onto the website itself because if the website crashes or your internet goes down you'll lose everything and plus there's a limited word count and so if you do it in word you can check your word count and make sure you're following the rules as jason said um you can also edit uh the document and have it reviewed by others easier if you type it in word first and then you just cut and paste your sections in where they go on the website so what we got covered for our grant we could only get the equipment purchased that would be purchased after we were selected for the grant we applied for this grant a year and a half ago because we thought we would be building last year but now we're building this year we needed to put down uh down payments on equipment so we couldn't guarantee that those down payments wouldn't need to be paid before we found out about the grant so large pieces of equipment weren't included in it so we had to be very aware of what we were putting in that grant and what we weren't because if you pay for it ahead of time before you find out about that grant it doesn't count so we were very aware of that um the things we concentrated on when we did this application were the buzzwords like jason said the four important areas um i'm previous military so buzzwords are very critical to us so making sure that we're talking about the things that really matter to them so that we can stand out food safety was a critical part of it we're getting some software that will ensure that we are recording things as needed and ensuring the highest quality of food safety standards so that's getting covered in the quality of our equipment helped us with food safety and different other food safety items that we're getting we highlighted through that we also made sure we highlighted minnesota grown ingredients and products and how we would use those and how about 99 of what we use is going to be coming from minnesota producers and how our product alone would help minnesota dairy that we are going to be using square deal dairy's milk and how we're going to improve that milk and highlight that farm and help minnesota through that we also were able to show how the plant itself would increase our sales six times what it is now um with a lot of numbers and tables which were inside of our business plan so we talked about it briefly in our application but a lot of that was in our business plan um we also got letters of support not all of them were required but we made sure that we had them because it showed that other people believed in us and we'd done our homework and weren't just three board housewives that thought this was fun um we also spent many we've spent many years on our business plan it is a living document as we kept being told we used live plan which is a website to house it and edit it um our business plan is over 50 pages which is kind of big but it's broken out in separate sections and and it just shows that we've done our homework and it's a lot of the things in that business plan we for the for the application we were able to just say see business plan instead of retyping it um and like i said we wrote this plan uh we wrote the application on our own because it was too expensive but we did have others that we respected uh review it for us and make sure that we were covering the important points and so luckily we got the grant which will be key to us being able to build our plan in the safest way and actually enhance minnesota dairy so if i can do this you can do this and it's long and scary but it's very doable so take your time and do it right and good luck hey thanks dan again a reminder to put your questions in the chat box or q a and next up we have dan simmerley with cedar crate farms dan take it away all right hi everybody uh my name is dan zimmery uh and i am the owner of cedar crate farm i am a produce farmer uh near mankato minnesota um and we are in our sixth season uh this year so uh our farm uh we sell direct to consumers through our csa program and the mankato farmers market and we also do a bit of wholesale mostly to the st peter food co-op um we wrote a grant to fund a pack shed that we were constructing on this year and the process for me took quite a while to kind of get through everything and i'm going to basically be on repeat for a lot of what deann said and we started basically with soliciting bids for what it was actually going to cost to build this thing the way we wanted so that we had a good foundation for knowing how much our project was going to cost how much money we were requesting and we got three different bids so that we knew that we weren't getting uh that we were getting a good deal or that at least we weren't getting uh screwed over so luckily all of our bids were pretty well in line with each other and so we got to choose the vendor that we wanted to build our pack shed you should start early when you're soliciting these bids because even that it the whole thing takes a long time it takes longer than you think it does especially for a project as big as ours um our shed was around a hundred thousand dollars to build um and so it takes a long time to kind of come up with all the parts so that was the first thing i did and i started that about this time of the year last year i got three different bids from three different uh contractors to see what this would cost simultaneous with that i have worked on uh our business plan um through i used uh ag plan and that's a thing that the university of minnesota extension has uh that helps you break apart your business plan into the kind of the individual components so that you can think about it in different ways if you open up a blank word document to start creating a business plan um you if you especially if you've never done it before it's going to be very challenging to do and so ag plan kind of divided it out into different entity or different like pieces of our business plan um that really helped us uh just make a coherent business plan that made sense and i spent um it was multiple weeks uh working on this business plan and i would just take one section and work on it and then that was enough for that day um and take another section and work on it the next day and so on until the whole thing was done um one thing to note about ag plan is there's sections or pieces of this sort of template that they have uh that may not make sense uh for your business and when we came into those scenarios we just skipped that so i would say the business plan is super important and then finally the application itself um i used the website to fill out the application i saved religiously and copied and pasted my answers back and forth from word into the application uh not only to check uh spelling and grammar but also just to make sure that i had my words saved um in case you know technology fails us which it sometimes does part of the business plan and part of their sorry part of the application process was also soliciting those letters of support and identifying our funding resources and i also was taking care of that stuff about this time last year and so i talked to a bank who wrote a letter saying that they would provide the construction loan necessary to fund our project and so i had them write a letter that i could attach to my application that said that they would fund my project i also had money set aside of my own personal money that went towards this project and identified that and then finally we mentioned other grants that we were applying for and i don't know if this is a good thing to do or not but it was i just wanted to be basically completely transparent about what we were doing and how we were trying to fund our project i knew that we could fund our project with with how do i say this the project it was necessary to have the grants to make the project work well but i knew i didn't need to get all of the grants in order to move forward with the project and i indicated that in my financials um finally the last piece of sort of the application thing that uh i did was uh just my financial plan um and we use um holistic financial planning um and the kind of the beauty of that is it gives you all of your uh your finances including your personal finances and if you have a partner or um that kind of thing there their finances are included in there so the person can see yup this person actually can't afford to do this this project will be successful if we fund it i found it very difficult to both demonstrate a a need for a grant but also demonstrate that the project would be successful it's it kind of felt like uh i don't know it kind of felt like if you could prove that your project was going to be successful uh financially that maybe you didn't need the grant so like treading that um line was difficult for me and i guess basically i uh reasoned out that it would sort of speed up things for us we wouldn't be and it would make our farm more financially sustainable basically so that if we went ahead with this pack shed that we would if we received the grant that it would basically give us more financial stability to sort of guarantee that we would be creating and producing more minnesota agricultural products um other things that i did where i got letters of support from the produce manager at the st peter food co-op and then a restaurant in mankato that we do business with as well um they highlighted just how we could grow more produce uh with if this pack shed were to be funded um i also talked about how this uh pack shed would improve food safety on our farm and made sure to highlight that as well in our application um so in total i think my application was i mean it was huge it was like it was like 84 pages so it was like way too long but the the pieces that you could skip out pretty easily where like the the financial um management stuff um that itself was like 30 pages but it was very detailed and you could just look at one page of it and see sort of the overview which was nice and then our business plan it was kind of the same thing that was separated out into segments so if you wanted to see what our marketing focus was you could go there and see that too so um i can't stress enough how how important it is to have a business plan and it's pretty overwhelming so i rec i mean i was super overwhelmed when i started thinking about writing a business plan um but using ag plan really helped make it easier for me so um other things i guess are sort of the actual like nuts and bolts of after if you're a successful recipient you know keep track of your invoices um make sure you have a uh a good banker that you're doing business with if you're financing your project through a bank that way you can get um basically the documentation needed to prove that your your bills for your project are paid because the department of agriculture wants that documentation i found it very easy to work with the department of ag it was basically as simple as emailing over those proof like the invoice and then proof of payment um and then you know like a week later um a reimbursement came in the mail so it was it was pretty seamless everyone there was really friendly um so i wouldn't be too intimidated by that um and then the last thing is i had my wife review uh my business plan i reached out to an nnt entity in mankato it might have been through msu's i can't remember if it was a small business development center or something through the college but they uh didn't provide support for grant writing so that was a little bit of a disappointment but my wife reviewed the application to correct anything and and uh we were successful and received our grant so and i'm actually i am conducting this webinar from inside uh our pack shed that was built uh this year so that's pretty exciting yeah i'm gonna turn it over to jane jewett with minnesota institute for sustainable agriculture to field questions gene do you want to go ahead sure uh hello everybody so i did copy the questions out of the chat and if people want to put more questions in the chat or q a as we go along that's fine i'll keep an eye on that but i'll uh i'm going to do the questions in a little different order than they came in just to try to make this a little more coherent so um one of the questions was whether the application materials for the agri grant are available in other languages such as spanish or hmong and if not is translation available through mda or is there another way to get access to those if english is not your first language [Music] yeah so we do suggest you should reach out to me if you do your application in a form other than how it's presented on the website i guess i don't know for sure if the applications are already translated or if we will get them translated for you and do you have any experience with this no i don't um when i manage the value-added grant we did not have translation services i know we have some some of our grant programs do have um applications in a different language so it's an entirely it's a spanish application or among application so i don't know about the value-added grant [Music] yeah i just suggest reaching out to me if you do need your application in a different form and i will work figure that out but i can't say for sure right now what resources are available okay thank you uh for both dan and deanne it sounded like your application for the value-added grant funds the work on the application was kind of interwoven with work on your business plan and so maybe it's not so easy to separate out one from the other but what's an estimate of the time that it takes to prepare the application and the length of that that really depends on how much you've already done so if you have all the information um it it might take a couple days to write it if you already have a business plan and you have all the numbers and all that and you don't have to wait on that stuff coming in so to actually just physically write it would take a day or two um and it also depends on how fast you write too um but for us it took um a couple weeks totaled it to to go back and forth between all of us partner with the editing and and getting other people to review it for us so it took a couple weeks for us i don't know about you dan um if you have all of the information you need like you said like you need your bids because you need to know how much it costs to do your project and those kinds of things assuming you have all of that done i think it maybe took me a week but i didn't have to bounce everything off of multiple people i mean this was me applying and when it was all done i had my wife uh review it to make sure that that it made sense and i didn't have spelling or grammar errors and all that stuff so i would say like a week um you know probably 40 hours something like that so so pretty significant time commitment just to do the applications so folks should look at the deadline for it and plan accordingly to have the time to do the application okay here are a couple of specific questions about what would qualify um first one we are developing a delivery van to deliver donated csa veggies from southern minnesota farms [Music] would this fall under the agri-value added grant or the good food access fund or perhaps another grant any perspective on that my instinct says that it could be eligible for both value-added and good food i don't believe you could apply for both and i'm not entirely sure which would be a better um chance of success which program would be a better chance of success so i would recommend that you should personally email me and i can reach out to my colleague that does the good food program and i can speak with her and give you some more insight into which program would be a better fit for you unless anne has more to add that's all i have all i have to add is for the value-added grant you would need to um address whether how your project is going to increase on production or the sales the minnesota agricultural products yeah so if the veggies are being donated that's not increasing sales for farmers so that might not qualify for your value added then is that why you're thinking ab yes that's what i'm thinking all right here's another question about co-packers and working with co-packers so this person is looking to potentially purchase equipment with a co-packer that will help us package products for a large national retailer and they're wondering if if they apply for the grant can the co-packer also apply for a grant for the same equipment so they would both be applying on the same equipment or if not then which one of us should apply um i don't believe you could both apply for the same project i'm not sure which person would be the better applicant and do you have any thoughts yeah i think i think for one project you can only receive funding from one grant so um if one applies for one well if you're you're applying for this one grant with the value-added grant so i would choose which would be the the one applicant for the one project but co-packers would be an allowed applicant it wouldn't have to be the the farmer or the producer themselves that applied that's correct let's see eligible applicants individual agricultural cooperatives unit of government businesses so business is an eligible applicant is a business is eligible to rephrase it so it doesn't sound like it's not okay thank you um those were all the questions in the q a in chat i have a couple other questions that i noted down while the presentations were going on so i can ask those but if people listening have other follow-up questions if you put those in the q a or chat right now please go ahead and do that so one of the questions which dan and deanne both provided a little perspective on but i'm i'm wondering if there are other examples as well how do people uh who are applying for value-added grants do their financing because the way it's set up you have to pay a hundred percent of the costs up front and then get the reimbursement from the value-added grant if you're approved so um i guess just you know what are some examples of ways that people maneuver that to be able to pay all their costs up front and then get reimbursement i can tell you because we're in the middle of that right now we are working on a sba 504 loan um and the interest rates are crazy low right now we also had um the eda the economic development authority in cannon falls was going to help us out and then the southern minnesota initiative von smith um was originally going to help us out with her alone too so we were able to so we had three different types of loans working at once for that great application and how do all those timelines work dan because um you've kind of got interlocking timelines here of when the grant has to be applied for when you can start purchasing things when it has to be paid for we had letters from all of them stating that they were stating that they were most likely going to provide us that funding so letters of intent from our lenders yeah it's a similar scenario um i can talk about one different thing i mean we had also had uh we had a loan through um just our local bank bank we do business with um that said they fund our project but also i was simultaneously working with fsa office they have a farm storage facility loan program um with really awesome interest rates that we qualified for that um applying for that was a whole different ball game but we did actually approve good approved for that too so that was noted in our application so we had sort of two um simultaneous um i guess uh letters of intent uh if you will for from both the bank that we do business with but also then this farm storage facility loan program which we were also successful uh in receiving so that's how we funded ours but otherwise i mean if you had the money up front you could do it that way too depending on the size of your project obviously my project was i wish i had that much money just hanging out but i don't so yeah all righty does that wrap up the q a i did not see any more come in so i think um that's where we're at okay just a couple of years i have one thing to add with the last the last question that um you can request reimbursement several times during the link during the um length of the project so after a certain amount of purchases were made and expenditures made you can send in on the invoices and proof of payment to get reimbursed 25 percent of what you paid on the project to that date so that can help with cash yeah thank you thanks ann uh before we wrap up there are a few announcements the first is that this coming wednesday same time noon to 115 uh will be an informational webinar on how to apply for farmer rancher grants the link is right here and we'll put it in the chat box jane did you have anything you want to say about that one uh sure just briefly this is going to cover the farmer rancher grants through um north central region sustainable agriculture research and education program and the partnership grants through ncr sare which are very similar to farmer rancher except with the partnership grants a farm educator farm advisor type person takes the lead on the application and manages the product project rather than a farmer managing the project but both of those are for on-farm research and demonstration projects and then we will also be covering the uh minnesota department of agriculture's sustainable ag demonstration grant program and all three of those grants are fairly similar in that they are for on-farm research and demonstration projects that are intended to be educational so none of them cover [Music] purchase of capital equipment or facilities like the value added or the good food access fund do these are these are different and they're for education and the lead presenter on those will be annie claude who's with u of m extension uh she's a fruit production specialist and has advised a number of farmers on those types of applications in the past so she'll be our presenter and we will also be getting it translated into spanish so there will be a spanish version recorded and available a week or two after the english version of the webinar takes place thank you jane um i also just want to make sure that folks know about where to go to find out more about the farmer rancher the partnership and the sustainable ag demonstration grant and with that i think our webinar is wrapping up i would like to thank all of the presenters in particular i want to thank jordan since she is a newcomer to her role at minnesota department of agriculture i also really want to extend my thanks to diane and to dan for sharing your experiences as well um thanks jane for fielding the questions and also for helping me out just with some of the logistics in ann and jason for your backup um this will be recorded and we will also i honestly don't know given the tight time frames whether we will translate this in that um it i i believe the translation would be available too close to the deadline however we may want to translate as a means to encourage people to develop projects for next year so it is uncertain at this point whether translation will be done anything else in in in making final comments i see there's a couple of questions in the chat jordan is inviting folks to contact her with questions and i know that both dan and deanne have said they would um certainly help chat with people who have projects anything else if not i really appreciate everybody participating thank you so much have a good afternoon