Experience
Assisting clients from major metropolitans to rural townships
At Northey Government Services, we've helped groups from small, volunteer-based housing non-profits to metropolitan cities, rural counties to state departments. While we frequently are hired by larger technical assistance firms to provide assistance, local cities and states also hire us directly.
Clients
Technical Assistance Providers:
Ask Development Solutions
Capital Access
Corporate Facts
Econometrica
Enterprise
Horne
ICF
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP)
MDG
TDA
Grantees:
State of MA
State of FL
State of NH
State of ME
City of Minneapolis MN
City of San Diego CA
City of Indio CA
City of Clearwater FL
City of West Palm Beach FL
City of Sterling Heights MI
City of Lansing MI
North Country Cooperative Foundation
Example Projects
CDBG-DR Transition:
A state was transitioning the management of its CDBG-DR awards from one division, to a new organization set up specifically to manage the grants. Capital Access had an assignment to provide guidance to the grantee during this transition process and help them get their program stood up for some new CDBG-DR Grants since there was not much desire to port over many of the division practices.
Josh Northey worked directly with the head of the new organization on the financial management certifications, creating and admin budget and plan, general business practice rules, activity types and eligible uses, miscellaneous program requirements and cross-cutting regulations, and especially DRGR reporting and the flow of information between the State and its partners.
Assistance included on-site trainings, 1-on-1 and small group capacity building, Remote TA, document review, draft and sample documents.
State NSP Closeout:
Large Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) with serious problems in DRGR data stemming from serious internal issues with grant management. Josh received a pair of contracts from them to work on helping them untangle this mess. This involved working through a couple different staffing regimes and with some low capacity staffing elements to basically reconstruct the entirety of the grants financial and performance data, as well as renewed collection of missing data from long dormant subgrantees. Additionally, there were some financial issues and missteps that took some quite complicated problem solving to identify and correct due to the state’s financial system not handling program income almost at all, and years of neglect and non-reconciliation of DRGR information, with program information, with internal information.
Eventually through a few on-site visits, and many, many remote TA sessions and capacity building sessions we were able to get most of this squared away and the financial issues down to a manageable level where existing staff could move forward with the administration of the grant.
City CDBG-DR Timeliness Issues:
A city government (grantee) had serious CDBG-DR timeless issues with its grants, as well as DRGR reporting issues, and many program questions. A technical assistance (TA) provider, Minnesota Housing Partnership, had multiple TA assignments to assist them, as within a year or 18 months the staff managing the program changed 3 times. TA focused on duplication of benefits rules and best practices, capacity building on CDBG regulation and cross-cutting requirements, financial management and DRGR TA. Grantee received much remote TA, and on-site small group sessions and 1-on 1 capacity building on a variety of program topics. Twice new staff needed to be stood up from basically scratch.
Federal Funding Experience
HUD Programs
HUD Materials Development for NSP, DRGR, and CDBG-DR
Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP)
Closeout Assessments: Conducted over 100 grant assessments
Closeout TA: Dozens of successful assignments, mostly remote, some in person
Grantee Closeout: Financial Reconciliation/Reporting/Compliance
Direct On-Site TA: Dozens of successful assignments
On-Call TA: Hundreds of successful assignments
Disaster Recovery Grants Reporting (DRGR)
Ask-A-Question: Well over 1000 questions answered over 8 years of work.
Office Hours: Dozens of successful assignments
Trainings/Workshops: Dozens of official HUD trainings/workshops
Community Development Block Grants - Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR)
HUD TA: Grant Setup-Financial Management/Business Processes/DRGR/Duplication of Benefits/Income Verification
Grantee CDBG-DR: Grant Setup-Financial Management/Business Processes/DRGR
CDBG
On-Call Technical Assistance: (Economic Development Focused) Program Design/Setup, Eligible Activities, Income Verification
Grantee CDBG: State CDBG sub-agreements and small cities programs
CDBG-Coronavirus Ask-A-Question: Dozens of questions answered
HOME/ESV/MV/HOPWA CDTA: Financial Reconciliation/Income Verification/Business Processes
Section 108 - Training materials prep and IDIS integration
Community Income Data Collection
Canvased communities for HUD to reassess income when some congressperson was unhappy with census results
Office of Public Housing
Energy Efficiency/Environmental Reporting and Recordkeeping Reviews in ~25 states at ~50 PHAs over ~9 months.
USDA Programs
RCDI/RCDG Reporting
RCDI Grant Applications
RCDI Project Delivery (Trainings, and Small Grant Underwriting)
Internal Financial Management/Business Process Assistance (Non-Profits and TA Providers)
Commercial District Revitalization and Neighborhood Engagement
Volunteer-based commercial district revitalization training, technical assistance, and program start-up
Managing a small nonprofit
Managing commercial districts
Neighborhood-level community engagement