Are food security non-profits eligible to apply for the FY25 MA FRESH Grant?
No. Eligible MA FRESH applicants include licensed early childhood programs that offer meals through the Child and Adult Care Feeding Program (CACFP) and schools or school districts serving students Kindergarten through 12th grade that offer meals through the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Food security non-profits may serve as external collaborators and contractors to eligible MA FRESH applicants if outlined in the application and project workplan.
We have a Farm to School Coordinator. Can we leverage this funding to pay for their salary?
Grant awards may not be used to fund existing activities, projects or staff positions. Funds can only be used to fund new staff time or salaries as a result of new or expanded initiatives.
My organization is not a K–12 school but, in the summer, we partner with the state to offer free summer meals to children. Is our organization eligible to apply for FY24 MA FRESH?
Unfortunately, Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) sponsors who are not also a National School Lunch Program (NSLP) sponsor or Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) sponsor are not eligible to apply for the MA FRESH grant.
Is an eligible NSLP sponsor able to apply twice, once for its early education program and once for its public charter school?
Sponsors are eligible to submit one application. If there are multiple sites under your NSLP or CACFP agreement, then your project proposal and funding request should be inclusive of all programming you hope to accomplish across all sites you are applying for. You are not able to submit two grant applications under the same sponsorship entity.
Can MA FRESH funds be used to procure local fruits and vegetables from a local farm share?
MA FRESH funds may not be used to procure local fruits and vegetables if they will be served as part of reimbursable meal service (breakfast, lunch, snack, supper) as part of the National School Lunch Program or Child and Adult Care Food Program. MA FRESH funds may be used to procure local fruits and vegetables from a local farm share if this food will be used for supplementary programming purposes such as a cooking class, food literacy curriculum, or a taste test program.
I would love to apply for my school district — do I need to create a GEM login?
To date, most schools and school districts in Massachusetts already have a primary GEM$ log in. Check with your school or district's administrative/grants office to confirm that the district has GEM$ access as well as a "LEA User Access Administrator." To gain direct access to the FY25 MA FRESH application in GEM$, request that your district's LEA User Access Administrator creates user access for you and assigns you to the GEM$ role of "LEA Grantwriter."
For more guidance on GEM$ access and user roles, please visit GEM$ and navigate to "DESE Resources" on the left side navigation bar > GEM$ LEA User Roles - Guidance and Forms.
My business office has set me up with a log in for GEM$, but I am still having trouble accessing the grant application. How do I navigate GEM$ for access?
If your district's GEM$ User Access Administrator (UAA) has created a GEM$ log in for you and assigned you as an "LEA Grantwriter" for FC 0710 (fiscal year 2025), you will take the following steps to access the application:
On the GEM$ Funding Application Main Page on the left column navigation bar, you will select Search > Funding Applications.
In the search function on this page, be sure to select "2025" as the fiscal year, "FC 0710" as the Funding Application and Application Status as "All"
I was wondering if there is a PDF of the 2025 MA FRESH grant application that you can share. It is helpful for our team to be able to review the questions/fields outside of the GEM$ application site, to better prepare our responses.
For a GEM$ user with access to FC 0710 MA FRESH, the application can be printed through the GEM$ platform by selecting the "Print" hyperlink (in the right column) on the grant application landing page for any relevant section you would like printed.
Do you have criteria or a rubric available for the application submission components?
Every section of the "Required Grant Questions" of the application that will be scored has a corresponding point value stated in the header. Applications will be reviewed and scored toward this maximum point value. Applications are scored out of 100 points total (the grant budget is scored out of 10 points). The section headers provide applicants the weight associated with each application question in final scoring.
How many schools were awarded last year? What was the average award?
In FY2023, 23 applications were awarded funding across both schools/districts and early education programs with an average award of approximately $17,400.
When is the grant implementation period for FY25 MA FRESH?
FY25 MA FRESH project workplans should begin no earlier than January 2025. Based on the award timeline, the grant implementation period is subject to change, however, applicants may budget for project activities to start as early as January and end as last as June 2025.
Our district does a lot of scratch cooking but only approximately 30% of students are eligible for free or reduced priced lunch. Is it worth applying to MA FRESH?
As stated in the RFP, competitive priority will be given to schools and early education providers with high percentages of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch and grant awards shall aim to promote geographic equity. That said, the FY25 MA FRESH grant is scored based on a number of criteria in which Child Nutrition Program information, including (but not limited to) free and reduced price lunch eligibility, comprises 15 of 100 available points.
I filled out the budge narrative table as well as the budget in the budget section line by line. Is the same budget supposed to appear in both sections? Additionally, in the budget section, the total budget request appears in an "Indirect Cost" box. Is this correct?
The budget provided in the "Budget" section of the application should match the budget narrative table found in the "Required Grant Questions" section of the application. The difference between the budget and the budget narrative table is that the budget narrative table should connect each budget item with activities in the project workplan (Question 13 in the "Required Grant Questions" section).
Within the Budget section, your budget total will appear at the bottom right of the page as well as in a call out box at the top of the page labeled "Indirect Costs." The Indirect Cost box is a tool applicants can use to understand the maximum dollar value an applicant can request in their budget for Indirect Costs. It is up to the applicant to decide whether or not they would like to integrate the maximum allowed for indirect costs into their budget — it is not required.
Our school would like to develop a Parent Academy with workshops for parents on all sorts of things including offering a gardening workshop through the support of a community partner. Is this an allowable cost for MA FRESH?
Funding that supports "before/after school programming that supports food literacy, and exposure to local foods for children and families" is an allowable cost, as outlined in the RFP.
An early education site doesn't have space to install a garden on their property but has the opportunity to collaborate with a community center that hosts after school programing. Can a garden be installed at the community center that is not the early education (licensed CACFP) site using MA FRESH funds?
Unfortunately, no. As stated in the RFP, the impact of grant activities must be associated with the physical location where NSLP/CACFP meals are served.
What is the word/character count for Question #12 in the Required Grant Application: "Introduce your project. If you are expanding on a current initiative, please describe how the proposed project introduces new activities. Strong project descriptions will integrate educational activities with the exposure of children to local food served as part of a Child Nutrition Program meal service."?
Question #12's character limit is set to 2,000 characters.
We are contracting a community partner to build and maintain garden beds, and also to deliver educational programming to our students. Should those be included in the same budget detail under Contracted Services, or separated out so that the garden bed building materials are classified as materials?
If your community partner will be directly purchasing building materials as part of their project contract on behalf of the applicant, the materials may be listed under Contracted Services. If the building materials will be purchased by the applicant and utilized by the community partner as part of the project contract to build garden beds, the building materials may be listed under Supplies and Materials.
Our Budget Detail and Budget Narrative in Grant Questions are sometimes different. For example, I separated out materials to build the gardens and the programming from our contracted services in the Budget Narrative because they match different goals and activities in our work plan. Is that alright? Or should the Budget and the budget narrative match exactly? (our numbers are the same but we would ideally separate them out differently in the budget narrative to match our goals and activities).
The budget provided in the "Budget" section of the application should match the budget narrative table found in the "Required Grant Questions" section of the application. If modifications have been made to better support the description of your goals and activities in the Budget Narrative, it should be clear to a reviewer how items outlined in the Budget Narrative align with budget categories and total requested funds per category in the Budget.
Average Meal Participation: how should we calculate this number? Is it what percentage of our children that are in attendance and are eating? I can't find something that matches this in CACFP and want to make sure we are calculating the correct number.
Daily Meal Participation is the number of children participating in a given Child Nutrition Program Meal Program divided by the total number of enrolled children. Average Daily Meal Participation is generally calculated by averaging the Daily Meal Participation of a given meal across all service days in School Year/Fiscal Year. The data points needed to calculate average daily meal participation can be found on your monthly claims in the DESE Security Portal. For CACFP applicants, "average daily attendance" may be used synonymously with average daily participation.
Indicators: should the indictors in the workplan mostly be using to describe students impacted or attended? For our goal of growing and serving fresh produce, I have calculated how many pounds of food we could grow and how many servings that would be, but I am not sure exactly how to communicate that through the indicator in a clear way.
Indicators are up to the discretion of the applicant. The indicators should be sound and communicate an applicant's impacts — but there is no scoring advantage specifically for use of one type of indicator over another. In the example provided, there is an indicator available for "Lbs of Local Food" — which food grown in a program garden would constitute. If this produce is just enjoyed by students, an applicant has the choice of "students" as target audience, however if the produce is enjoyed more widely, "families" and "nutrition professionals" is also available.
What is the best way to distinguish between a "new" or "expanding" applicant? We have a school garden that has been used by students for recreational use only for years. The students use it during recess as a an alternative social/emotional activity for kids who otherwise do not participate in sports, and the school hires a community partner periodically to keep the garden healthy and meet with kids who come of their own accord to plant, maintain or harvest the vegetables. Teachers do not teach garden lessons in the classroom, the food does not go to the cafeteria, nor are there field trips to farms or school garden produce donated to community partners. Would our application be "new"?
Unfortunately, DESE is not able to advise regarding an applicant's "New" versus "Existing" status for the submission of their grant application other than directing them back to the language provided in the RFP:
"New" farm to school/early education initiatives engage in none or only one of the farm to school three "C's": Classroom (such as curriculum and school garden engagement), Cafeteria (such as local menu offerings) and Community (such as farm field trips or non-profit food system partnerships). Applicants that have been dormant in all farm to school activities for the last three years also qualify as "new."
It is ultimately up to the discretion of the applicant to select a categorization of an application. If members of the grant review team feel the rational for this categorization is unreasonable, the application will be shifted to a more appropriate categorization. There is no penalty to the applicant for this shift and the applicant will be notified of the change during the review process.
How often is the MA FRESH grant application open to organizations? When will the next opportunity be to apply?
Pending budgetary approval, the MA FRESH grant opportunity is available annually. However, at this time, future funding has not yet been secured to continue the grant program in FY26. No date or timeframe is available regarding the next opportunity to apply.
Does the programming have to be just early education (up to age 5) for an applicant that is a CACFP sponsor, or are afterschool programs (5-14 yrs) and/or Youth & Teen Centers (9 to 18yrs) eligible as well?
MA FRESH is eligible to licensed early education programs that are CACFP sponsors. These applications should serve children in early education (up to the age of 5). Unfortunately, only schools or school districts that are NSLP sponsors may apply for programming to serve children 5 to 18 years old.
Is there a document or guidance on how the fiscal agent and CEO need to approve the grant?
First, please ensure both your Fiscal Representative and CEO have individual access to GEM$. Next, once the grant content has been completed, the individual with the role of "Grantwriter" will change the "Application Status" at the top of the grant application to "LEA Grantwriter Submitted." This will send the application along to the Fiscal Representative who should receive an automatic email notification and see the grant in GEM$ under Funding > Funding Application. After verifying that the budgetary request is sound based on your organization's fiscal policies and procedures, the Fiscal Representative will similarly change the "Application Status" at the top of the grant application to "LEA Fiscal Representative Approval." Finally, the CEO will move through the same process, changing the "Application Status" to "LEA Superintendent/Chief Executive Approved." At this time, the application is officially submitted. All three of these steps MUST be completed prior to the grant deadline of Friday, October 11 at 5:00 PM EST.
Last Updated: October 10, 2024