Our Mississippi Early team has extensive experience providing hands-on technical assistance to organizations nationwide. We specialize in helping grantees succeed and improve the quality of their programs. In addition to the technical assistance services listed below, MSE is available to work with you to design a customized technical assistance plan.
Audit Preparation
Our team has extensive experience in audit preparation to assist organizations with quality pre-audit support. We can tailor our services specifically to fit your needs providing support in areas such as compilation of audit work papers, financial statements, account reconciliations, preparation of schedules, and technical research and guidance. Depending on your need, our expert consultants can assist you throughout the audit process, serve as a liaison between management and the auditors, and provide assistance with your internal control framework.
Indirect Cost Rate Proposals
With over twenty years of experience in indirect cost rates, our team has worked with many non-profits, educational institutions, and governmental entities. Indirect cost rate agreements can be complex and our experts will assist you with the analysis and preparation of your indirect cost rate to ensure compliance with federal regulations. We will help you determine accurate indirect cost pools and the appropriate distribution base for an indirect cost rate proposal that successfully reflects your organizations’ operations.
Interim CFO
MSE provides full service interim CFO support to organizations throughout the country. Many of our consultants have been CFO’s and understand what it takes to successfully perform a fiscal management role. We provide assistance that includes the management of finance and accounting functions, working with CEO’s and board of directors, assisting in the oversight of cash management and banking relationships, budget preparation, strategic planning, and successfully maintaining the fiscal responsibilities of multiple funding streams.
Cost Allocation Plans
Our team provides support with the analysis and development of written Cost Allocation Plans that accurately reflect an organization’s allocation of shared costs to multiple programs and funding sources. We will help you determine cost allocation methods based on your program operations, funding streams, and cost categories. The completed Cost Allocation Plan will ensure costs are fairly assigned and recorded, and that your plan is in accordance with the requirements set forth in Uniform Guidance fiscal regulations.
Inventory Management System
MSE’s team of inventory system experts will develop a process for conducting physical inventory that works best for your organization. We can customize the TA session to work side-by-side with your staff or bring in our own team to conduct the physical inventory without disruption of your existing room arrangement. Our inventory team are knowledgeable and very familiar with early childhood classrooms, equipment and furniture. We will design a holistic approach that is data-driven, manageable, and cost effective. We can use your existing system or create a new manageable inventory system.
Family and Community Engagement
Our team of program management consultants will review and assess your family engagement system, forms, and data management system’s reports; particularly goal setting and provide recommendations and strategies to enhance your systems. We will support your management team responsible for PFCE to effectively use and share data to track family outcomes. Our consultants will leave your PFCE managers with resources to support their staff’s professional development throughout the program year.
1303 Facilities Application Guidance & Preparation
Our consultant has over 20 years of experience in overseeing facility projects for public housing community buildings and Head Start/Early Head Start centers. We will provide individualized technical assistance (TA) as you navigate from preliminary eligibility through submitting the 1303 application to your Regional Office using proven techniques to achieve approval. Our consultant can help you develop a facilities budget and plan, prepare progress reports for Policy Council and governing body, and assist you through the application approval process through project completion date. We will customize TA based on your level of need and budget by offering a combination of onsite and remote support.
Eligibility, Recruitment, Selection, Enrollment, Attendance
Our Program Management consultants are highly experienced program administrators, regional/TA specialists, and Federal reviewers. We will custom design the TA session by integrating your program’s existing policies & procedures, community assessment data, and forms. Our TA session will take a deep dive into real-life scenarios to explore how to approach each of the ERSEA systems, examine system-service integration opportunities, and address any questions or challenges the ERSEA team is facing using effective problem-solving techniques to identify the best solution. We will review and offer feedback as we work with your team to streamline your processes, make it user-friendly, and ensure the HSPPS and state regulations are met.
Written Financial and Program Policies & Procedures
Mississippi Early provides support in the development of written financial policies and procedures to ensure organizations are in alignment with federal regulations. Our team consists of content area experts who specialize in federal requirements set forth in Uniform Guidance, Head Start Program Performance Standards, and the Head Start Act. We will assist you in developing policies and procedures that document best practices for your organization in areas such as internal controls, financial management and accounting, procurement, personnel, and grant administration.
Mentoring For New Program Directors & CFOs
A mentoring program to fill in the gaps for new directors when succession plans are not in place. The MSE mentoring program provides outstanding support to give staff the confidence to carry our day to day operations and ensure required timelines are met for planning and reporting, such as filing the SF 425 cash reporting in PMS due quarterly and the SF 425 expenditure reporting due semiannually, and ninety days after year end. Mentoring programs are developed based on the needs of the program including number of phone conversations per week, webinars, review of federal and start reports, designing financial reports for staff and for governing bodies.
Risk Management & Quality Improvement Planning
MSE’s dynamic team works with agencies to identify areas in their management systems that need to be strengthened to minimize risk in protecting agency assets and grant funding. When findings or deficiencies are identified, MSE will provide the support to develop a quality improvement plan with all the task required, individuals responsible along with timelines for task to be completed. The MSE team has had 25 plus successful years assisting programs with developing and implementing task for corrective action plans to ensure programs can build a sustainable program.
CLASS
Mississippi Early provides an interactive process of observation, discussion, and reflection in which the coach promotes the other person’s ability to grow toward identified goals. CLASS consultants specialize in providing self-assessments that include individualized reports focusing on strengths of the educator and ways weaknesses can be improved to put into practice a competent learner focused environment. An environment which includes functional and meaningful activities to support a collaborative approach to a positive atmosphere. MSE consultants set attainable goals and work with educators to improve not only CLASS scores, but also, the experiences that the educators and children share with each other.