Application Guide: Scoring, Funding, and Reporting
Introduction
Eligibility
Funding
Apply
What happens after submission?
If your application indicates that you are eligible for the Initiative, your written business plan responses will be scored. After scoring, you will be contacted to schedule a brief interview to discuss your business plan. Your application and business plan will be scored. Then, based on your score, you will either be accepted for an award or given an opportunity to refine your business plan with up to three sessions with an expansion business coach. After your sessions, you will have an opportunity to have your plan rescored. In some cases, providers may not be ready to expand and will be routed to other resources, if applicable.
Providers who have well-developed business plans and meet the scoring threshold for funding will receive an award agreement based on their proposed expansion.
Providers with well-developed business plans who did not meet the scoring threshold will be invited to meet with CSES to review and/or refine their submitted business plan.
Licensed and registered providers who do not appear ready to expand or open new locations will have the opportunity to participate in free business coaching to assist with stabilizing and strengthening their child care business for future growth.
Note – The application review period will be unique to each provider. The length of the period of your application review to a funding decision will depend on the components of your business plan, and if any additional information or coaching is needed.
Business Plan Scoring
Your application will be scored based on the completeness and feasibility of your business plan.
Eligible providers whose business plans score 95/100 points or higher will have their plan approved and move forward to full application packet review.
Eligible providers scoring less than 95/100 points will have an opportunity to participate in up to three (3) one-on-one coaching sessions to refine their plan. After refinement coaching, participants will have the opportunity to resubmit their plans and have them reviewed again for alignment with the Initiative.
Each business plan section will be scored as follows:
- Experience and Services (10/100 points)
- Market & Location (25/100 points)
- Operations & Personnel (10/100 points)
- Financials (30/100 points)
- Timeline (15/100 points)
- Interview (10/100 points plus up to an additional 10 bonus points)
More about the interview scoring - After your eligibility has been confirmed and your plan has been reviewed and scored, you will participate in an interview with a business plan coach as part of the application process. Articulating your plan details during this interview will count toward 10 out of 100 points. The interview is designed to help the Civitas Strategies Early Start team better understand your business plan and identify key areas where expansion coaching support may be of value to you. During this process, you may provide additional information or explanations that strengthen the answers you provided in the written portion of your plan.
The interview will also give you an opportunity to clarify your written responses. Because of that, providers are also able to receive up to 10 bonus points during the interview process when providing additional information or explanations that satisfy areas during their written application where points were previously lost. The bonus points only serve as a replacement for lost points for those plans that only need minimal clarification during the interview. Therefore, applicants who have lost points during the scoring of their business plans and were able to sufficiently clarify those areas during their interview, can potentially receive up to 20 total points for their interview responses. For these applicants, however, their total application score will not exceed 100 points.
For more detailed information on scoring, you can review the Child Care Provider Expansion Initiative Scoring Protocol which show the actual scoring process that will be used to score each application. For questions, please email expansion@civstrat.com. Additional scoring guidance can be found in the Developing your Business Plan guide on childcare.texas.gov.
Step 3: Funding and Reporting
How funding is received
Awarded applicants will sign an award agreement and will receive their funding via direct deposit. Award agreements will be sent via DocuSign and once completed, funding recipients will receive onboarding information from Gusto, the Child Care Provider Expansion Initiative payment system. Funding recipients will be able to enter their own payment details into the system directly, after which payments will be sent by direct deposit.
Monitoring and reporting process
All award recipients will be required to complete Interim and Final reporting and comply with any monitoring requests as a condition of receiving funding through the Initiative. Some applicants will be selected for monitoring. If selected, providers will be asked to submit documentation of award spending. Monitoring will consist of submitting valid proof of allowable expenses within each of the allowable expense categories, totaling the award amount, upon request.
Recipients will be required to submit, using a provided template, an interim and final report. This report will include the number of slots created per age group, usage of funds, and plans to sustain the slots created. For applicants receiving both startup and initial operating funding, the interim report must be completed prior to receiving initial operating funding.
These are requirements of receiving funding. Failure to comply may result in the recoupment of funds or may jeopardize the ability to receive funding in the future. There will be a detailed monitoring guide to help providers prepare for the monitoring and reporting process available on https://www.childcare.texas.gov/childcare-expansion.