Purpose:
The purpose of this section is to define the different match categories and to compare and contrast them to provide as much clarity as possible. The Department of Public Safety Granting Plan breaks these into two categories, but this breaks it down further to discuss three types of match: Hard Match (Cash), Soft Match (Cash), and Soft Match (Third Party In-Kind).
Hard Match (Cash):
This category is for match that is provided to complete tasks outlined directly within the scope of work of your agreements. It is defined by a specific task being divided between federal and non-federal funds. If you are using hard match (cash) for EMPG or EMPG-S, the federal share tab in your application workbook should only reflect those specific task hours that will be charged to the federal share, and the other half of the hours should be reflected on the match tab of your application. For example, if planning and facilitating two EMD roundtables will take a total of 50 hours and you will be matching with hard match (cash) from ACCD funds, the federal share application should include the task description of the EMD roundtables, and then 25 hours or 50% of the time it will take to complete that task. On the match tab of your application, the same task description will be used, and 25 hours listed for that match. This way when reviewing your applications, VEM can see that you will be using hard match (cash) for your EMD roundtable activities, and it will take a total of 50 hours to do that work, but 50%, or 25 hours will be billed to EMPG, and 25 hours will be covered by ACCD funds. A different examples of hard match (cash) would be the WIFI Project. Each existing site was allotted $50 including a 50% match, which means that a site was allotted $25 federal with a hard match (cash) of $25.
Soft Match (Cash):
This category is captured by staff salary time (direct and indirect costs) that are spent on allowable activities under the federal program (EMPG/EMPG-S), but not on a specific task outlined in your agreement. An example of this would be using ACCD funds that are used for time spent working on your regional plan as soft match for other planning activities within your EMPG scope of work. The tasks are similar, but the federal and non-federal dollars are not funding the same exact line item/activity within your EMPG scope of work.
Soft Match (Third Party In-Kind):
This category captures volunteer or other third party time to count towards your organizations match. This is most often captured as volunteer Emergency Management Director (EMD) time for attendance at EMD roundtables. This needs to be well documented with an appropriate hourly rate assigned. You can define your volunteer hourly rate based on the current rate posted on https://independentsector.org/value-of-volunteer-time-2021/ (currently $28.54). An alternative to this example of volunteer time could be capturing municipal officials time spent working with you to revise a plan. In this case you can either use the volunteer hourly rate, or use the local officials actual hourly wage if you have access to that information. This type of match activity would be for line items that are within your existing scope of work that federal dollars are paying for. Using the EMD roundtable example, since EMPG funds are used for the EMD roundtable meeting, volunteer attendance at that meeting can be captured as third party in-kind match.