Thank you for your interest in contributing your valuable insights to making grant information available from California State agencies more accessible and a better experience for all Californians! The California State Library has contracted with CivicMakers, which helps government agencies engage their users in designing solutions, to help gather insights from grant seekers on their current experiences in searching for and finding grants from state agencies, and ideas on how to improve that experience.

Under the Grant Information Act of 2018 (AB 2252, Stats. 2018, Ch. 318), the State Library must create one website by July 1, 2020, where all current grant opportunities being offered on a competitive or first-come basis by state agencies can be found. We hope our efforts together will create benefits for both the state departments who administer the grant opportunities and the Californians who are searching for grant opportunities. That's where YOUR input and participation comes in.

Below is the purpose, intended outcomes, participants and high-level agenda for the sessions:

Purpose

• Learn about various phases of the grant application experience from the perspective of multiple user groups.

Outcomes

• Validate input received from survey responses.
• Identify challenges and opportunities in the grant seeking experience from eligible user groups across the State of California.

People

• Nonprofits, Counties, Cities, Academic Institutions, Individuals seeking grants offered by state departments
• Plus anyone missing from the list above who also seeks out or receive grants (from state departments, in particular)

Agenda

• Welcome and Intros
• Share Data Collection and Methodology
• Virtual Journey Map - identify challenges and opportunities
• Reflection
• Share out and Next Steps

Thank you again for your interest in collaborating on this important state legislation to make it easier to find grant opportunities being offered by California State departments. Please note that while we encourage all of your big, wild ideas for how to improve access and information regarding state grants, we are still beholden to the requirements of the legislation and the current scope of this project for this initial phase of developing a grants website.

We will be sure to share and report back to you what we heard, where it can be integrated for this phase, and where we might use it in future developments.