Proposed Risk Management Education Grants Program

Washington State University Cooperative Extension has received a grant from
USDA to establish the Western Center for Risk Management Education. The
Western Center is being graciously hosted by the Spokane County Washington
State University Cooperative Extension office, 222 N Havana, Spokane.

A major function of the Western Center is to manage a competitive grants
program for the 13 Western States. Risk management for agricultural producers
and their families covers a wide range of activities. As a result, the grant
monies the Western Center will be awarding this coming spring are available for
a very broad range of educational issues so long as the target audience is
agricultural producers and/or their family members and the educational program
results in farmers and ranchers and their families improving their skills that
are necessary for them to succeed. Individuals involved in the very small to
the very large farms and ranches are acceptable target audiences.

The Western Center is preparing a Request for Proposals (RFP) to be released on
or just after December 18, 2001 to award $313,000 for Risk Management Education
projects. The Western Center for Risk Management Education's Advisory Council
met in mid November and decided the broad outlines for the Competitive Grants
Program. Proposals that will be successful will strongly focus on risk
management "results" for customers who are agricultural producers or their
family members. The "results" process we are adopting is most widely used in
the not-for-profit / foundation sector but is reasonably new to the public
sector although the EPA and the USDA NE SARE program are also using the
"results" based process.

Since this will be a new grant process for many of the applicants, there is an
opportunity to comment on the approach we are planning to take before we
finalize the RFP.

Contact: Jon Newkirk, jnewkirk@wsu.edu, and request a one page overview
of the proposed grant making / investment process if you would like to get more
details and hopefully submit comments on the proposed results based investment
process we are planning to use.