The Seven Deadly Sins of Matching and How to Avoid Them

If you’re a recipient or subrecipient of one of the many federal grants that requires matching or cost-sharing, you have a critical responsibility to ensure your organization is able to address the program and financial obligations that relate to matching and cost-sharing in federal grants.

Just one misstep along the way, such as failing to properly calculate your cost-sharing/match or not providing the amount promised, can lead to serious consequences such as disallowances and other corrective actions.

Don’t risk facing audit findings and cost disallowances for noncompliance. Ensure you’re meeting the necessary requirements by attending our new 90-minute webinar featuring Michael Brustein, a founding partner of Brustein & Manasevit, PLLC.  

By attending our webinar, you will:

• Learn how to avoid the “seven deadly sins of matching”:
  • Promising to exceed the statutory minimum in the application, then failing to meet it
  • Not maintaining records for employees paid with match dollars
  • Not properly valuating the match
  • Not meeting the match level each year
  • Counting match contributions towards more than one grant award
  • Matching contributions and cost sharing did not occur during grant award period
  • Not maintaining adequate source documentation for claimed matching contributions
• Discover how to correctly determine the value on contributed services and other cost-sharing
• Identify findings regarding cost-sharing/matching and penalties for failing to meet requirements
• Understand the definition of cost-sharing and allowability rules
• And more

Who Should Attend:

• Grant administrators
• Grant program managers
• Accounting and finance staff
• Internal auditors
• Independent auditors

Michael Brustein
Michael Brustein, a partner in the national education law firm Brustein & Manasevit, has over twenty-five years of education and workforce development law experience. From 1974 to 1979, Mr. Brustein served as an attorney at the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), the predecessor of the U.S. Department of Education. Four years into his service at HEW, he became the youngest attorney ever appointed to the position of Branch Chief. As Chief of the Adult and Vocational Education Branch in the Office of General Counsel, Mr. Brustein represented the federal government's interest in audit resolution matters before the Education Appeals Board, the predecessor of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Administrative Law Judges. In 1979, when Congress created the U.S. Department of Education, Mr. Brustein was appointed to the Transition Team. Mr. Brustein has testified before Congress on numerous pieces of education legislation. Along with Congressional staff members, he served on a task force that developed the legal framework for the U.S. Department of Education's enforcement actions. Mr. Brustein has authored and co-authored several handbooks on fiscal, programmatic, and administrative matters affecting education and workforce development administrators. A "cum laude" graduate of New York University, Mr. Brustein is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received his law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. He is a member of the Connecticut Bar, the New York State Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, the Bar of the United States Supreme Court, and several bars of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.