Online Event Archive Recorded: March 18, 2026
In the third webinar of our 5-part SNAP E&T series, NCRC’s Economic Mobility team explored how organizations can effectively fund and sustain their SNAP E&T programs through the 50/50 federal reimbursement model.
During this session, we broke down allowable costs, match requirements and financial reporting obligations, and walked through practical examples of budget development and revenue projections. Gain insight into how to maximize reimbursement while maintaining program quality and compliance.
Speakers
Jonathan Osei, Principal, Adage Ventures LLC, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Simon Wang, Economic Mobility Specialist, NCRC
Kathi Medcalf, Managing Senior Consultant, Seattle Jobs Initiative
Transcript:
NCRC video transcripts are produced by a third-party transcription service and may contain errors. They are lightly edited for style and clarity.
Osei 0:01
Today is the Funding For SNAP E&T program, 50/50 Reimbursement and Budget Strategy webinar, and we’re doing this in like a sort of meeting style, so hopefully it’s a little more engaging. So there’s going to be a little bit of content delivery, and then space for intentional discussion, conversation and questions, as well. I know folks are coming at this with a variety of different levels, as well. So, I see Gwen, oversees SNAP E&T programs at a regional level in Wisconsin, but if folks are coming in earlier on in their SNAP E& T journey from an organizational perspective, or even from a state perspective, we’re excited to have you here, regardless. So, our agenda for today is just a quick welcome and introduction, then a overview of the funding and alignment for SNAP E&T, and then assessing potential reimbursement, and then a budget strategy and case making example, and then we’ll share a bit of best practices and tips at the end, and leave some space for questions and answer, and obviously, as you know, this is a meeting, so feel free to chime in in the chat, feel free to put your hand up, come off mute, love to hear from you, what may be the most relevant in terms of discussing SNAP E&T, so excited to have you on. So I’m Jonathan Osei – he, him, his pronouns. I’m a workforce element consultant working alongside Simon Wang, and have been engaged with some of the SNAP E&T work that NCRC has been leading, and excited to be here. Simon, who is the Economist Mobility Specialist at NCRC and I’ll pass the mic.
Wang 1:49
Yep, thanks, Jonathan. Thanks, everyone, for being here. This is the third webinar in our five-part series. You can find the other recordings to Webinar One, which kind of reviews some of the main basics, and a broad overview of E&T. If you’re just getting started, and then the second one as well, which kind of digs a little bit further into one of the other components. And today we’re just going to talk about budget. Stay tuned, and like Jonathan said, stay engaged in the chat and come off mute. We want this to be as engaging as possible, and as relevant to the questions and the experiences that you’re currently having with E&T. So, yeah, thanks everyone for being here.
Osei 2:30
And today we also have a special guest, managing senior consultant at Seattle Jobs Initiative, Kathy Medcalf. Kathy is a veteran consultant with over three decades of experience in the education sector, with a recent emphasis on SNAP employment and training programs and operations. For the past three years at SJI, Seattle Jobs Initiative, she has delivered expert technical assistance to states and colleges by managing and implementing national partnership grants. Her prior role as a program manager for basic food employment and training (BFET) program at Washington State Board for Community and Technical College involved overseeing operations for Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges. She’s a passionate advocate for developing multiple career pathways to help clients acquire the skills and resources needed for sustainable employment. We’re excited to have Kathy here today. Feel free to chime in, Kathy, but Kathy will be chiming in throughout this. So excited to have her
Medcalf 3:35
I’m a down-and-dirty practice-oriented person, so please ask any questions as we go through this. Budget and finances are kind of my specialty on our team, so any practical questions you have I’m the person to help answer those.
Wang 3:56
I’ll hop in here before we get started. I think most of you are probably familiar with NCRC, but in case there’s anybody that needs an introduction to our organization and some of the broader portfolio of work that we, that we work towards, we’re an organization really focused on economic justice and supporting a broad membership base for around 700 organizations around the country that are all focused on, you know, building a more just economy, SNAP E&T and workforce development are one of many things that we do, both to train our members, but also we do a variety of other supports, including research and advocacy around public policy. We do a lot of work around ensuring that private capital and investment from financial institutions flows equitably into underserved areas of the country, so if you’re interested in our broader body of work, definitely encourage you to visit our website, and let me know if you have additional questions, but excited to learn more about the budget process here for E&T today. I’ll pass it back over to you, Jonathan, for the objectives.
Osei 5:07
Awesome, awesome, awesome. So the objectives today, we have four objectives for today. First and foremost, understand the SNAP E&T 50/50 reimbursement model and identify allowable cost categories and match requirements. Number two is to develop a preliminary SNAP E&T program budget that aligns with program activities and service delivery. We may not be able to do it all an hour, but, like, hopefully, you’ve got some ideas about how it might look, or for folks who are popping in, like, can really, like, relate to some of the process that we’re talking through. And then three, project potential program revenue using the 50/50 reimbursement structure to estimate funding opportunities, and number four is communicate the financial case to leadership, demonstrating how SNAP E&T can expand service capacity while generating sustainable funding. So, before we get deeper into this, just have a quick poll question for you all. What SNAP E&T funding or budget topic is of the most interest to you and your organization right now? And this, this actually will help us help to guide the conversation to like what we like sort of lean in on and what we may spend less time in one, so please chime in. So I see, obviously, there’s only eight of us total on this right now, but this is helpful, at least, to get us going, though. So I see 50/50 reimbursement model being a key port for folks, and then non-federal funding sources. Okay, so we’ll talk, we’ll talk some about this, we’ll talk some about this, and please chime in with the questions as well. So, here’s a quick overview of the funding and alignment from SNAP E&T program. So, SNAP employment and training, E&T for short, is a federal program helping SNAP participants gain skills, training, and work experience, connects folks to training, education, and training job readiness and support services that reduce the barriers to work, and so also promotes longer-term economic stability, and then helps community-based organizations expand their reach and strengthen their existing workforce programs, and then the key keyword as an existing, we’ll talk a little bit more. So what makes a SNAP E&T third-party provider? So a third party provider, first and foremost, is an organization that delivers SNAP E&T, SNAP employment and training services on behalf of the state. So this is using the existing workforce or training programs to serve participants. So the there’s five key components that really make a strong provider, but for four, and then the fifth one is like this, the larger, broader context. So it’s mission alignment, so having an aligned mission with the SNAP E&T program, the capacity to actually track the services and costs, and then the ability to offer the trainings and support service. So, like, are you built for this essentially? And then stable non-federal funds for that 50/50 and we’re going to correct this – match is probably not the correct word we’ll use, but the 50/50 reimbursement, and then understanding of the state context, so really understanding where you are. So, I, I know somebody here was New York, somebody here in Wisconsin, so really understanding what that looks like from your state perspective. So, there’s a couple key considerations for the SNAP E&T alignment. Number one, does your organization have non-federal funding? Two, does your non-federal funding pay for training and work readiness programs for SNAP participants? Honestly, I would love to hear from folks if they, if they’re willing to chime in in the chat or even come off mute, like, do your organizations have, like, non-federal funding? Do your organizations pay for your training or workforce readiness for SNAP participants with that non-federal funding? There’s plenty of time to get engaged. Also, we’ll keep moving, we’ll keep moving. So I see, I see a response below. Our local matches include city funding, United Way, private foundation fundraising, etc. Awesome, awesome, that’s a good capital stack. Variety of different funding sources that are non-federal. Thank you so much, Gwen, for chiming in. So, here are a couple of key concepts for the SNAP E&T 50/50 model, so that 50/50 reimbursement structure, so the federal government reimburses states for 50% of the allowable SNAP employment and training program costs incurred by approved providers, so those third-party providers.
Number two, this 100% upfront funding, so organizations must provide eligible non-federal funding, so is that so that they can be reimbursed, so the funding has to exist prior, like there’s no way to get the 50/50 match, per se, and Kathy will speak a lot more about this, because I think the match language, even to me, was a little bit confusing until we had a brief conversation earlier. And then number three, allowable cost categories, so understanding which participant services case management training activities and administrative supports are tied directly to SNAP employment and training programming. And then the fourth, and like this is like the more ambitious one, is like the opportunity to potentially expand your programming that you currently offer through the 50/50 model, which really allows folks to leverage the federal reimbursement to sustain programming, and like Kathy and I spoke about this, is like this idea that be able to reinvest your reimbursed funds. She’ll talk a little bit more, probably about that in the later slides. And then here’s a quick visual to really help you all to see visually what it might look like, and I know that this may not be the most inclusive way to like showcase what this means, so definitely make sure that this goes out in the slide deck afterwards. So when folks are wondering, so your organization has the non-frontable funds to provide ENT services that initial investment of $1,000 so then you invoice to that SNAP E&T agency, you receive the 50% reimbursement, which is that 500 then reinvest that reimbursement, so you see the 500 being reinvested, it’s 250 so like this continuous idea of like reinvesting, so the SNAP E&T reimbursement funds can be reinvested to leverage additional reimbursement, so not necessarily having to put in additional funds, and like there’s knowledge that this reimbursed funds are like not something that you hold in your hand or hold in your, like they’re not physically existing until you actually leverage the $1,000 of the first place. So, having that upfront funding,
Wedcalf 12:32
Can I jump in here, Jonathan?
Osei 12:33
Absolutely.
Wedcalf 12:34
Because this is something I think, since this is a high priority, I want to make sure. So, the key here is that if you just take the funds you get back and replace them into the funds that you spent them out of, you are not taking advantage of the 50/50 program. You need to set your system up so that you can re-utilize that reimbursement, they came back to get reimbursed a second, third, fourth time. Okay, and so if you’re thinking about it as a match, and when the money comes back and you just replace it into the funds that you spent it out of, you are not going to have a sustainable model, because all you’re doing is replacing the money you originally spent. The idea is to reutilize the funds that come back, spend them again in the E&T program, get them reimbursed a second time, and eventually you’re building up essentially a stash of money that can be used for reimbursement and support the program independently of other expenses, but you still have to keep investing in the program every year. You can’t reduce the amount you’re investing at the beginning, because you need to build up that pot of funds in your reimbursement fund to be able to use it to expand your program, okay? And there’s a couple of tricks here, because people say, well, I’m getting reimbursed with federal funds, so how can I use that as a leveraged fund next time around, so because it’s a reimbursement program and you’ve spent 100% of your money up front, and you’ve spent it as non federal dollars, you’re getting reimbursed, and it becomes non federal, it loses its federal designation because they’re replacing the non federal dollars that you originally spent, okay? So you’re not even though it is technically coming from the feds, because it’s a reimbursement based on your actual expenditures, and you covered the expenses 100% upfront, the money comes back to you as replacement money. And it’s money that replaces the money you spent, and you spent non-federal dollars, so therefore they’re non-federal dollars when they’re returned to you. So it’s not money laundering, which is somewhat some people say, okay? So it’s really critical that you set up your system to be able to reinvest your reimbursement back into the E&T program. What that does is eventually, when you build up your reimbursement fund, you do have, you will have money outside of E&T to spend on other parts of your program, that money that you were using for E&T takes time, but it really can be a huge return on your investment.
Osei 15:49
Thanks, thanks for that breakdown, Kathy. Like that, like really shows the value of like this reimbursement model, honestly. And then this, this is just to reiterate a point that Kathy has made, even so, SNAP E&T funding is not a traditional grant. So, to receive the reimbursement or draw down reimbursement, you must be funding your employment program with services with non-federal funds first, and like we’re reiterating this intentionally, because there is no upfront funding for or from the E&T program, so your organization is reimbursed on eligible costs incurred. So this is like to keep thinking about that. And Kathy, feel free to chime in.
Wedcalf 16:32
I was just going to say, just know that you don’t have to 100% fund everything non-federally. You can braid your funding, okay? You’ll only get reimbursed for your non-federal funds, so if 50% of your program is funded non-federally or non-federally, and 50% is funded federally, you will get reimbursed for 50% of the cost of the program, because 50% is being funded, you’ll get 50% of 50% you know, basically, you don’t have to fund everything completely non-federally in order to be a part of the program.
Osei 17:09
So, thanks for that context, Kathy. So, now to assessing potential reimbursement, and some of the things that Kathy mentioned, we’ll reiterate again, because, like, they’re really key and important concepts too, so please chime in with any questions or even comments. Pop in the chat, raise a hand, come off mute. Yeah, so this visual is really a helpful way of seeing like that overall that up top organizational budget, which includes all those revenue, all the revenue and expenses that you’ll have, then your specific training program budget, so all of the associated revenue and expenses that go along with serving all your participants, then this like potential SNAP E&T budget, which includes the allowable SNAP E&T cost, and then at the bottom of this, like inverted pyramid, is all the expenses based on the projected share of SNAP E&T participants. Feel free to chime in as well, Kathy, to just get more in-depth on this piece as well.
Medcalf 18:19
No, you did great.
Osei 18:20
So the assessing your prudential reimbursement, so just another, another visual, honestly, to like, like we’re trying to just make sure it’s like it makes sense from like a visual from just the words we’re saying, but essentially that non-federal and the not federally matched funds are in and just recognizing that word matched as well, come through as revenue, it’s tied to the SNAP E&T the expenses and services that are tied to SNAP E&T activities, and then the participants who are SNAP E&T eligible, so really thinking along these four parameters, and then just the revenue, expenses, services, and participants as a key way of understanding what your potential universal might look like.
Medcalf 19:10
So their match is the proper word, because if you have other federal grants that you have to show that you’re matching your local funds to, you can’t use the funds, you can’t double dip the funds, so if you’re using your non-federal, some non-federal local funds to match a federal grant, you can’t also use those for reimbursement on E&T, because you’d be double dipping, because you’re using the non-federal money twice, so that’s what that means.
Osei 19:43
Thanks, Kathy.
Medcalf 19:45
Yep.
Osei 19:54
So we’re jumping back into this concept of the upfront funding, so it’s. I appreciate Gwen for chiming in earlier about the matches, city funding, United Way, private foundations, fundraising, etc. So it’s really important for folks to know the upfront funding sources that are available to fuel the program, so the program administration and operation costs the support staff salaries in the fringe as well, and then the supportive services for participants slash students, whether it be the books, fees, tuition, child care costs, and it’s really important to keep assessing this on a regular basis to ensure that your program is sustainable and has the ability to grow and expand. Okay, so just, just a bit of mention about some of the common non-federal funding sources, as well, state, county, city, and other local funds. Private donations were mentioned, foundation grants, and then the community development block grant. So the CDBG is like the only federal funding source that is eligible for reimbursement, so CDBG funds obviously coming down through outside, outside of, like, the USDA or Department of Labor funds as well, so potential to leverage those CDBG funds.
Medcalf 21:33
And it’s actually written in the statute for CDBG that it is eligible for ENT reimbursement. The other thing you want to be careful of is sometimes city, county, city, state, county, and city funds are federal pass-through dollars, so you need to make sure that the money that you’re getting from state counties and cities are not pass-through dollars, because pass-through dollars are not reimbursable.
Osei 22:05
Thanks for that context, Kathy. Okay, so okay, so here’s here’s one of like the practical examples of what Kathy had spoke of earlier. Would love Kathy if you could run through this and like help folks understand like how it functionally works in this like programmatic budget.
Medcalf 22:22
So this is a sample of how you might look at what your SNP E&T reimbursement potential is. So, if you have a program that’s receiving some federal donations and or some federal money that’s helping to fund your program, and then a bunch of other funds that come in, you would want to look at all the funding sources at your organization that are funding your workforce program, and so in this example we owe a dollars are funding it. Then you have private donations, foundation grants, and some CDBG funding. The total is $397,000 for your workforce programs budget, but in reality that top $200,000 is federal funds, so you have to take that out of your potential for reimbursement, and we always say potential, because everything’s based on actual expenses and getting reimbursed. You can’t look at that 197,000 and say, oh, I’m going to get half of that back, so about 200,000 about $100,000 back, you only get back what you actually spend of those non-federal dollars. So this is how you kind of narrow down what the potential is at your organization for reimbursement.
Osei 23:35
And then we have a couple examples of some of the upfront funding sources too. So these examples come from, like, Kathy’s experience leading this work, so let Kathy chime in to share a little more context on these as well.
Medcalf 23:48
Yeah, these are a lot of colleges, and I think most of you are community-based organizations, but you want to think about any non-federal funding you get to cover supportive services for your clients, any non-federal funding you get to, and it could be from anyone, it could be from the city to support returning citizens or recovering addicts, you know, there might be certain funds for homeless people that are coming into your programs to help support low-income people that need a leg up in their workforce development training, so any of those kind of funds are the funds you want to be looking for to support you in this ENT programming, and oftentimes for community-based organizations it is the foundation grants or local funds that you’re getting from the United Way from Goodwill. All other community organizations, some of the smaller organizations. When I worked in the state of Maine and ran an E&T program, we got donations from the smaller organizations in our community, like the Rotary Club and the Kiwanis Club and other service organizations that would cover the cost of transportation for our clients coming to and from our adult education program, or the cost of books, or something that they could specifically tie to knowing they were helping the community directly, the low-income people in the community, so you know, and then you can take a story back that’s so critical when you can go back and say, you know, you gave us $1,000 last year, that $1,000 provided, you know, 20 people transportation to get to their training, and of those 20 people, 10 of them now have jobs. You know, and then it’ll probably be a recurring donation every year. You know, those, those are the things you want to look at. So, in the colleges, a lot of it is scholarship funds that are used for lower income students, so like Washington has a specific state grant for low income students and dislocated workers that can be used for reimbursement, Iowa and Nebraska have funds for non Pell eligible training for the colleges, when we were working with Delgado Community College in Pennsylvania, or excuse me, in Louisiana, the person I was working with went to their business office and said, Can you tell me what non-federal funding sources we have to see what I can tap into for this, and the person was like, well, we get this $80,000 fund from PepsiCo, which is in Louisiana, and they never did anything with it, because they didn’t know what to do with it, so they gave the $80,000 to the E&T program for reimbursement for supportive services. Many Minnesota and Illinois specifically have training funds that can be used by CBOs for supportive services for low-income people. So there’s oftentimes sources out there that you don’t think about when you’re thinking about what you can use for SNAP E&T. Questions, thoughts? And the thing to think about is it doesn’t have to be a huge amount of money, since you can use the money over and over again, if a program like a smaller program, like a Rotary or a Kiwanis, gives you $500 That $500 if they do it every year, the first year it’s $500 The second year, that $500 plus the 250 reimbursement you got the first year, now you have $750 to spend on SNAP E&T supportive services, and the next year that 750 becomes 500 plus half of 750 so 375 plus 500 Do you see how that’s the whole point of the program? Because you can leverage if that $500 keeps coming in, you’re not asking for any more, but that $500 keeps building every year for your amount of reimbursement that you get to put back into your program.
Osei 28:53
Thanks for the breakdown, Kathy. Awesome. And then the next piece will be, we’ll talk about this, is I think this is most fun for Kathy. This, we could think about, we did a little example with the table, and I think this is like a more practical understanding of like what braiding funding could do for your SNAP E&T-funded programming.
Medcalf 29:16
Right. So part of making this program work is looking at your funding sources and see what things you might be able to reorganize to maximize your reimbursement, so if you have federal funding and right now you have maybe a case manager that is 100% funded with a federal grant and you have a way to maybe cover 20% of their staff of their salaries and fringe benefits with non federal funding, then you could at least get reimbursement for 20% of their salary and benefits if they’re spending 20% of their time with ENT clients. So they can still have 80% of their salary and benefits paid for with federal funds, but you’ve just upped amount of reimbursement you can get for the time they’re spending with ENT clients, so you can use the example, the best example, I was an adult education director, I mentioned that before, and we got Title Two funds, which are funds to fund the adult education program from WIOA, and my organization was a nonprofit, said, you know, you have to spend all your grant money first, we have to make sure we use all of our grant money? Right, well, we always ran out of our grant money before the end of the year, so I could only get reimbursed in the last quarter for the percent of my ENT percent of my students in adult education that were ENT, and they said to my budget director, I said, “Look, if we can spread the grant funding out over the whole year and have a 20% non-federal funding through the whole year, we can maximize the reimbursement we get, rather than one quarter of 20% reimbursement, we can have 20% reimbursement all year and generate more funds for the program. I had the data to show, I mean, for years we always run out. There was never any question that the last quarter was always locally funded, so you know, why not? If we can get reimbursement all year, generate more funding for my program. Why not allow us to spread that out? Because we have the data to prove it, right? So that’s one way, because you don’t have to fund any position 100% non-federal or 100% federal. The other thing is that if you are using positions that are federally funded, that’s fine. You just don’t get reimbursed for them. It’s okay to use them in the ENT programs. It’s no big deal. It’s just you don’t get reimbursed. So, looking at ways that you can rearrange some of your funding to maybe increase your reimbursement is what you’re looking for in your breeding funding kind of thoughts. It’s a process. Terry, do you have a question? I get done. It’s okay, unmute if you want to ask it.
Jackson (attendee) 32:31
Yeah, Kathy, that’s that’s huge. And I’m sorry I joined late, but that’s a huge thing for us to consider when we’re doing this, so we’re, we’re just now getting ready to apply for our first EBT, but that is with you explaining that, that was just for me, and I don’t understand, I think I understand how to do it, but I’m definitely going to be in touch with you to make sure as we’re doing this that that I fully understand that, because I think that’s really important in terms of those reimbursements, and we’re doing 100% yeah.
Medcalf 33:17
It is, it absolutely is, and it really is critical to maximizing your reimbursement and running the program in a way that will really help you bring those reimbursement dollars back in. The other thing is to look at your overall programs, that kind of maximizing students or clients. Sorry, I’m an educator at heart, maximizing your participants that might be, they can be dual enrolled, you can have them enrolled in your federal programs and enrolled in SNAP E&T, and so, like, if you have a WIOA program, the WIOA always runs out of supportive service money, they have plenty of training money, they don’t have supportive service money, so they can cover the cost of the training, you can do your supportive services through your program, and then WIOA doesn’t have to support the supportive services, you can get reimbursed for all the supportive services you provide, and then they can use, they can, then WIOA can use their supportive service money for people who aren’t on SNAP.
Jackson (attendee) 34:19
Okay.
Medcalf 34:20
So if you have clients in your program that aren’t on that don’t qualify for SNAP, they can get their supportive services through WIOA, but you can provide the supportive services for your SNAP E&T student clients, people, and get reimbursed for those, so you bring more money in, because we owe is not getting reimbursed for anything, let them use the money on the students that you can’t, or clients that you can’t get reimbursed for, and you get reimbursed for the ones that you can support through SNAP E&T with non-federal funding. Is this helping Terry? That’s a positive nod?
Jackson (attendee) 35:02
Let me ask you this, Kathy, is there how many people do, as we’re getting ready to get into this, like in a staffing perspective, to be able to administer and to, to understand that, how many people, how many people should we be thinking about in terms of administering this program?
Medcalf 35:31
Okay, well, that’s a loaded question, without knowing how big. Excuse my cat, he wanders through these things all the time, How big is your program?
Jackson 35:46
Talking maybe a couple of 100, a couple of 100 participants a year.
Medcalf 35:54
What percentage of those are E&T? Will you think with be a SNAP employment and training?
Jackson 35:59
We’re gonna say I’ll say, let’s call it 50%.
Medcalf 36:06
Okay, so you’re gonna have 100. Let’s just say you’re gonna plan to serve 100 people.
Jackson 36:12
Yep.
Medcalf 36:12
Okay, so you have case managers, career navigators, something like that. What’s their normal case load?
Jackson 36:22
Yes, they’re taking care of the whole 100, so we only have one each, like case manager and navigator.
Medcalf 36:30
Okay, so they would – would one person be doing with their full-time job be serving the E&T students? Or, I mean, this is what you have to do. So, what I’m saying, like
Jackson 36:42
This is…
Medcalf 36:42
If you have 200 clients and you have two one navigator and one case manager, then 50% of their time would be spent with E&T students.
Jackson 36:50
Yep.
Medcalf 36:50
and 50% would be spent with non-ENT, so 50% of their salary essentially would be reimbursable salary and fringe for the time they’re spending with ENT students for both the career navigator and the case manager,
Jackson 37:04
Gotcha.
Medcalf 37:04
So those two would definitely be on. You need to know, you need to make decisions like who’s going to be doing all the data intake, the intake orientation, who’s going to be doing all the data entry, what state are you in?
Jackson 37:18
We have that, we have the program administrators, who’s doing all of the data in
Medcalf 37:23
What state?
Jackson 37:25
Oh, I’m sorry, Colorado. We’re in Colorado. Okay.
Medcalf 37:30
All right. Lucky you. Colorado is a complicated state. The reason I said that they, they have some idiosyncrasies with the way you invoice, so just one, but you want to look at who’s going to touch the ENT clients, alright, so you’ve got business office people who will be doing invoicing and stuff.
Jackson 38:04
Yep.
Medcalf 38:04
They’re going to be touching the clients, so they can directly track their staff time, how much time they’re spending on ENT over the course of the year.
Jackson 38:14
Yep.
Medcalf 38:15
Okay, so go through, kind of take a client from the minute they walk in your door to when they exit, and think about how many people touch them.
Jackson 38:29
Okay.
Medcalf 38:30
If the amount of time over the course of a week is more than you know, 10% then it’s probably worth figuring out if it’s worth the time and effort to put them in the budget.
Jackson 38:46
Got it.
Medcalf 38:47
Or the other option is this first year you focus on the main positions, your program manager, your case manager, your navigator, maybe some supportive services in your business office, and then you track data the first year to see who else touched the ent clients, because then you can add those people in the next year.
Jackson 39:09
Okay, okay, I like that.
Medcalf 39:13
Okay and I will share my email in the…
Jackson 39:20
In the chat?
Medcalf 39:20
…and I’d be happy to talk to you.
Osei 39:26
So, appreciate, appreciate the live workshop. In this, this is what we’re out for, y’all. So, thanks so much, Terry, for asking the great questions too. And also, excited, excited for you as you start to develop and get ready to apply to have a SNAP E&T program. This is exciting. Okay, so one piece, so one last piece before we get into, I guess, more of that workshopping led by Kathy is just this allowable cost piece. So, and then we’re going to talk about budget and invoice, and we’re gonna get into it, but so this is an example. Of Kentucky’s allowable costs, so every state defines what allowable costs will look like for their program, so please understand that you must look at the context for your state, so in Kentucky, so the administrative cost side, salaries, fringe benefits, administrative services, building space, such lease and utilities, the non-capital equipment, you know, travel, indirect costs to the NYCRA, and then the contract training, and the participant costs, training fees, books, supplies, childcare, uniforms, transportation. So this is going to be heavily contextual based on whichever state that you work in, and then when it comes to the relationship of budget and invoicing, so this invoicing is tied directly to your SNAP E&T budget, so your organization’s SNAP E&T budget is projection of the reimbursement you intend to request based on the estimated number, and Kathy kind of, Kathy kind of just broke this down, like the estimated number of 72 participants, the service intended to be provided with the non-federal funds, and then so directly related administrative expenses. So, what that person touches, that business person who is doing the invoicing, you know, so it, so you can invoice for service services, staff administration expenses, and can write those into your budget, so you can only invoice up to your budget reimbursement total. So, you will effectively have two budgets, one for reducing services and one for administrative citizens.
Medcalf 41:33
And the reason it’s said that way is because, based on federal regulations, you can’t move in a lot of budgets, you can move money around, you cannot move money from participant reimbursements to administrative costs or administrative costs to participant reimbursements in this grant. So, the best thing to do is, and let me tell you, that E&T budget forms from the states are ridiculously complicated, and you really need to set up a plain budget, which I, I can give a sample that we can send out to the participants today, but that sets up a very kind of normal budget and then you can go from there to put it into state budgets that usually require you to separate it out by component costs, so but if you don’t do the original budget first, because that’s actually what you invoice to, it’s very confusing.
Jackson 42:39
Okay, yeah.
Medcalf 42:44
The other thing to know is you do not put an E&T budget in your actual general ledger, because this is a projected budget, you’re only getting a reimbursement at 50% and you’re leveraging the other funds that you’re spending, you are not having a budget, you have a budget outside of your GL, because you have to tie, you have to leverage all of your non-federal sources you’re already spending, so you have to either track time for your staff of what time they’re spending on E&T, or you use a cost ratio method, so for a position for position like your for positions like that are direct service staff, you can use a ratio, so say they’re teaching in class or a career case manager, like we were just talking about, if their case load is 100 people, and each month you check the eligibility, and 40 of those, and this month 40 of those people are E&T. Then 40% of their salary that month can be reimbursed. The next month it might be 60, and so that month 60% of their salary can be reimbursed, because 60% of their case load was that way you use that same ratio for administrative costs. If you have rent for a building for your program, and 60% of your clients are E&T, 60% of your rent that month can be reimbursed. That’s an administrative cost. Your insurance costs, your utility costs, all of those things can be billed at the ratio of your E&T clients to your overall clients in your program. If you need to buy sets of training materials for your program, choose a month that you have a high ratio. if like September is your highest month, because that’s your busiest month, then that’s the month you want to buy training materials, because if you buy it that month and you’re at 60% you get 60% reimbursement of your training materials that month, same thing goes for. Computers or other equipment that you’re investing in for your program, or if you need to buy a computer for your case manager, a new computer, buy it at a month that you have a high ratio.
Jackson 45:13
Okay.
Medcalf 45:17
And I know I’m, you’re asking all the questions, but I’m hoping this is helping other people when they’re listening as well, but so those are the two, you know, so like your budget person would probably be a direct billing where she, he or she would keep track of their time that they’re spending doing invoicing for SNAP E&T, because that would be a separate job than the regular invoicing they’re doing for the rest of your program, so they would track their ent time on like a time and effort sheet, and then you would bill based on how many hours they spent that month, what percentage of their fte that was, so you kind of, so when you’re talking about people, you have to think, am I going to cost ratio this person, am I going to direct bill this person, and how many of them I know it’s complicated once you get it set up the first time, the first year is the hardest, and so for instance, your program manager, whoever that’s going to be, you probably will put more time in for them the first year, because they’re going to be spending a lot of time making sure all the processes get set up, that everybody knows what they’re doing. After the first year, they probably don’t need as much time. Yeah, you’ll get reimbursed, but put more in for the program manager that first year, because they probably are going to spend more time getting the program set up, and you might as well take advantage and get reimbursed for all the time they’re doing.
Jackson 46:52
Gotcha.
Osei 46:55
Awesome, awesome. Thanks so much, Kathy, for the insider breakdown. And then Terry, thanks so much for all the great questions. So, okay, so I want to do like a time check, but also a temp check. So, our next section is a budget strategy in case making. So, if you all have additional questions that you want to ask, we may like leave time for that. If not, we get, we get right into like the example that where we use like either direct billing or this like client participant ratio method that Kathy just mentioned, so I just want to check with y’all, like, what’s the feel, what’s the vibe? I know nine minutes left, either way will be an informative experience. Terry, you’re off mute. You could chime in, like folks could chime in the chat, like, yeah,
Jackson 47:50
yeah, yeah. I’m open to go through the budget strategy. I’m getting ready to switch to my phone. I’m on my way to another meeting, but I’m going to switch to my phone, but I’m here,
Attendee 48:05
And I don’t have a preference either. I think I’m open, I’m very new to this, so whatever knowledge you have to share, I’m, I’m willing to hear.
Osei 48:17
Let’s do it, Kathy.
Medcalf 48:19
All right, um, do okay, so especially, especially when you’re starting out, staff salaries and benefits will probably be your largest reimbursement line, because it takes time to get all this stuff set up, and it’s your, your training costs, so staff time has to be tracked in order to get reimbursed. Okay, I mean, you have, so you either do it by actual time, which is called direct billing, or by allocated time, which is the client ratio method, and so for direct billing it’s usually time sheets with the participant ratio, you just have to calculate the ratio each month, or that of your ENT clients versus your overall clients in the particular program that those staff members are serving, so like the business person, it would be complete all of the clients in your program that you’re serving in the workforce development program versus ENT clients in a training program, if it’s a specific, if a case manager assigned to this particular CDL training course, then it would be the clients in that CDL training course, if that’s only their job, the percentage of time they’re spending on that particular training.
Next slide, so with direct billing, it’s simply, you know, the number of hours spent on the allowable activities each month. Times their wage and fringe hourly rate, which is unique to each staff, right, and then that’s how much you can charge each month to get the reimbursement, so you figure out their hourly rate, which your business office probably does all the time anyway, because they have to do it for everything else, and then, so you have to estimate on your budget what percentage of the FTE you want to put in for reimbursement, and I would strongly suggest that when you’re doing this for the first or second time that you give yourself some wiggle room of 10 to 15% because you don’t know until it actually happens, and this is a projected budget. It’s your best guess. You’ll get better each year when you do your budget, because you have data from the previous year to set up your next year’s budget. One of the great things about ENT is that each year you can add staff, take away staff, add things, take away things, you know, you can really adjust your budget, and the first year you’re going to be way off. There’s no question, which is why we strongly suggest that you don’t put any of your reimbursement money into your actual program revenue for the first year, don’t set yourself up. Okay, the revenue should not, don’t assume that you’re going to get all of the revenue you put in your budget and put that into your revenue for the very first year you’re doing ENT, okay? Because you can’t guarantee that, and if you put that in there and something happens, and you don’t get, because you’re not guaranteed that money, it can really put your organization at a disadvantage. So that’s why you don’t put a full budget for ENT into your GL. You really just need a revenue account and expense account. Don’t put a budget in. Budget is secondary in your GL, okay? Does this make sense? All right, so I will send this out. Why? No, we don’t have time to go over all of this, the client ratio method I kind of went over, but you take the time spent on ENT allowable activities each of their jobs, so if you have a job defined for a case manager, you would go through their job responsibilities and figure out which of their responsibilities are ENT activities. For instance, if they do any mental health or counseling that has that deals with health and mental health, that is an ill and not eligible expense for ENT. So, if 20% of their time is spent working on mental health, then 20% of their time isn’t eligible for ENT, so only 80% of their time is spent on ENT eligible activities, so you can only start their salary or start their percent time at 80% and then you look at the ratio of clients each month, so if 10 out of 20 of your clients are ENT, then 50% of that 80% is reimbursable, and then you multiply by their total wages for the month, and you can figure out what you’re charging, what you can get reimbursed for, so okay.
Next slide. And this is kind of what I just said. Here’s a career coach. If this is what it says in their job description, they’re doing employment coaching, job search, job development, and health and wellness. The health and wellness doesn’t count, so only 75% of their actual job is eligible for ENT, and the ratio is, you know, if to look at all of your, all of your clients, the It’s in this case, you have a total of 60 clients that are served, 35 are ENT participants, 14 are receiving TANF, and 11 are not receiving SNAP at all. So, you’ve got 35 students out of a total of 60, so that’s 58% is what you can bill that month for SNAP E&T client ratio, and that’ll change every month, because people come on and off SNAP, as you know, and we’re at time, just about, okay, let’s. The next slide, so this takes you through the calculations for that job. The person is 75% so 45% of their salary is eligible. 58% of the clients is eligible for, so 58% of that $45,000 is eligible for reimbursement, so 20-6250 is what that person’s salary on average would be eligible over the course of the year for reimbursement, which would bring a little over $13,000 back to your program.
Osei 55:43
Thanks, thanks so much, Kathy, for the in-depth breakdown. And, as Kathy said, we’ll be sharing out these slides afterwards as well. We just want to thank, like, Kathy once again for popping in and really giving, like, the deep dive into budgeting, invoicing. Like, Kathy is really an expert when it comes to SNAP E&T budgeting. So grateful to have her here, and like Kathy put her email in the chat. We’ll also make sure that we send a slide deck and everything afterwards, just let you know that we are a resource, NCRC is a resource when it comes to SNAP E&T and supports in that way. And we do have a best practices and tips slide, so we’ll save that for a little like preview after the fact, so y’all can look through, but just want to, as we get near our time, just want to thank you all. Thank you all for popping through today for a great conversation and a great webinar. Really thankful for both Simon and Kathy for leading this work. And stay tuned for our next one on May 20, 2026. So, understanding your clients, estimating SNAP E&T eligibility and referrals. So, this might be relevant to some of y’all who are newer in your process as well. I don’t know, we may have another guest, a special guest back for this one as well, but thank you all so much, and hope you have a great rest of your, what day is it?, Wednesday, and stay tuned for all of the follow-up materials.
