What do I enter in the "Please enter the price you're paying..." field of the application?

Express Program grant funds are awarded on a course-by-course basis, and our team utilizes the approved amount at the course level to determine reimbursement amounts. Courses can be approved at a per-trainee rate, a group rate, or both, depending on how the provider has submitted their courses. The course cost type affects how we process reimbursement requests.

How this affects courses that are approved at "per-trainee" reimbursement rates

Courses approved at a per-trainee rate are also reimbursed by our team at a per-trainee rate. For example, if 2 trainees are planning on attending a course that costs $500 per trainee, you would want to enter the price you are paying as $500, along with number of trainees as "2" in the application. Our application will calculate the total cost of training. 

During the reimbursement phase, if only 1 trainee ended up attending, we would only reimburse you for $500, or the cost for 1 trainee to attend.

Applying for a per trainee rate course that will exceed $20,000 in total training costs:

If you are applying in a situation where you are meeting our $20k subsidy limit for your group, please do not lower the per-trainee course cost unless you are okay being reimbursed for that lower amount during the reimbursement process. Our team will adjust the award amount accordingly, so it is OK if you go over $20k in total course costs on your application. An example:

• Sending 25 trainees to a course that is $1000 per trainee. You enter $1000 per trainee/total course cost of $25,000. We approve you for $20,000 (but up to $1k per trainee). During the reimbursement process, if you only ended up sending 15 trainees, you would be reimbursed for $15,000. If you had entered $800 per trainee & 25 trainees to stay right at $20,000 total, and only 15 trainees ended up attending, you would only be reimbursed for $800 x 15, or $12,000, even if the provider charged you the full $15,000. 
• Click here to learn more about what happens if your course cost exceeds $20k in your application.

Sending multiple trainees that are being charged different rates:

If you have multiple trainees attending a course, and their course costs are different amounts due to discounts/membership costs, do NOT enter the price you are paying as an average of the two course costs. You will be reimbursed up to the entered per trainee cost in the application, which means a lower reimbursement amount than what was paid for the trainee that paid more. We recommend entering the highest per trainee cost of the group into the "price you are paying" field, or entering separate groups for the same course on your application (a group for each different course cost level). If you are still unsure how to enter course, cost, you can email us at express@commcorp.org. 

How this affect courses that are approved at "group" rates

If you apply for a group rate course, we will reimburse you up to what is listed in the "price you are paying" field. If the course cost exceeds $3000 per trainee/per course, our team will make the determination on the award amount during review, so no need to adjust the cost you are paying to meet our requirements (we will do that for you!). For example, if you are attending a course that is $6500, and you are sending two trainees, this is how you would fill out the application-

If the "Cost Per Trainee in this group" exceeds $3000, in our review, we will lower the final approval amount down to $6000 for this course. 

In this example, if you were to submit a reimbursement request and it showed that you actually had 4 people attending the course, we would still only be able to reimburse you up the approved amount, or $6000. We recommend in this instance to input the max number of trainees that may attend this course. 

On the flipside of this example, if you were approved for the full $6500 for 4 trainees to attend, but only 2 ended up going, we could easily drop the reimbursement amount down to $6000. It's much easier for our team to remove funds during reimbursement. We are unable to reimburse more than the approval amount.