General FAQs

All discretionary program grantees except those with Special Initiative grants should submit their progress reports as an attachment in JustGrants. For guidance on how to do that, please see the JustGrants website’s Training: Performance Reporting page.

We recommend that grantees include words like “COVID-19” and “pandemic” when describing COVID-19 related adjustments to programming or when explaining any incomplete or missing data. This will enable your OVW Program Specialist and VAWA MEI analysts to retrieve and review this data.

Discretionary grantees report two times a year.

One report covers the reporting period of January 1st to June 30th and the other report covers July 1st to December 31st. The January-June report is due July 30th (30 days after the end of the reporting period). The July-December report is due January 30th (30 days after the end of the reporting period).

The JustGrants System places an automatic hold on grant funds when a report is overdue. The hold is lifted once the overdue report has been submitted.

Yes, the form is a fillable PDF. We strongly encourage grantees to download and save the form to your desktop. When it is completed and validated, grantees can then upload and submit it in JustGrants. If you have additional questions about the JustGrants reporting system, please contact  OVW.JustGrantsSupport@usdoj.gov or call 866-655-4482.

There are two types of validation errors.

The first is a “soft warning” that indicates there is a potential error on the form. We encourage grantees to look at the issues to double-check the data is accurately entered. You will be able to validate your form without making a data change.

The second is a “hard warning” that means there is an error that must be corrected before you can validate the form. You will need to correct the error in order to validate the form.

Correct, only report on grant-funded activities or activities within the scope of your grant that occurred during the six month reporting period. Do not report data for the entire life of the grant, or aggregated data, in the final report.

Sometimes the validation messages prompt you to complete a section of the form that is not applicable to your grant activities. We recommend the following workaround:

• If the question includes an “other” category, enter “1” and then explain in the other text box that you “had to enter ‘1’ to validate.”
• If there is no “other” category, enter “999” in the required field, if possible, and use the final narrative question to let us know what you have done: “Had to enter ‘999’ in questions 12 and 13 in order to validate. Please delete the data.”

Grantees can also always call us at VAWA MEI and we can help with working out validation errors.

Do your best to divide the activities based on which grant funding supported each activity, but do not double count activities. There are two sections that are particularly tricky when doing this, Staff FTEs and Victim Services.

Staff FTE (Full-time equivalent): Staff FTEs should be reported based on what each grant funded. Therefore, the FTE will need to be prorated based on the time covered. For example, if grant A paid for 3 months of a full time employee (1.0 FTE) you will report this as 0.5 FTE because the grant only covered 3 months of the 6-month reporting period.

Victim Services: Please make sure that the two reports do not double count any victims served during the 6-month reporting period.
For example, if your agency uses grant funds to serve a victim during the first 3 months of the reporting period and again during the last 3 months of the reporting period, do not report this victim in the victim services sections of both forms. The best way to handle this situation is to get an unduplicated count of all victims served for the 6-month reporting period and divide them and the services they received between the two reports. If you report a victim as served in each of the 3 month reports, this will add up to 2 victims served in the 6-month reporting period, which is not accurate.

Important: Once you have determined how you will divide your data between the two reports, OVW and VAWA MEI ask that grantees use the final narrative question to list the project numbers for both awards, indicate the time periods that each cover, and verify that FTEs are prorated and that victim services numbers are divided between the two reports.

Yes! This is normal. Grantees often report changes in funding used for each area because their resources and activities change each period.

The allocation of percentages for each victimization is based on the time and/or resources used to address each area during the 6-month reporting period. Grantees have the discretion to determine those allocations and should consider education, training, victims served, etc., when making those determinations. Whatever method a grantee uses to determine percentages should be employed consistently across reporting periods.

Please copy and paste any data or information related to reporting your funded activities into the appropriate narrative sections. While OVW Program Specialists may ask grantees to attach certain materials and will be able to see what grantees attach, we at VAWA MEI will not receive attached documents. VAWA MEI only has access to data included on the reporting form itself.

Grantees must report only on grant-funded activities, so if you have no grant-funded activities to report in a section, please leave it blank. Blank sections can be explained in the narrative section if you choose.

If a victim/survivor identifies with a demographic category that is not included on the form, please report the victim/survivor in the “unknown category” and use the narrative section to provide further details on demographics. Also note that a survivor can be counted in multiple race/ethnicity categories. OVW is in the process of updating forms to capture more comprehensive and inclusive information about victims/survivors served.

Not at all. By reporting victims as partially served or not served, you are helping OVW and policymakers understand that the scope and burden of violence stretches far beyond what VAWA is able to fund. We encourage grantees to carefully track and report instances of partial service or non-service and to use the narrative questions to provide detail to demonstrate the additional needs that exist in your community. Our aim is to have accurate data, and partial and not served numbers are just as important as served numbers for creating a comprehensive picture of the impact of grant funds.

Yes, OVW requires all grantees to submit a report, even if funds have not yet been released. For example, grantees may receive an award that begins October 1, 2019, but not begin drawing down on these funds until January 1, 2020. Grantees will still need to fill out some sections of the form in order for the form to validate (such as Coordinated Community Response). We ask that grantees fill these sections out and then also provide narrative explaining that “your organization has no grant-funded activities to report” or “budget is still pending OVW approval.” We will see this note and address grantee data accordingly.