New Castle County Uses SimpliGov to Process Emergency Federal Grant Funds

The CARES Act gave New Castle County, Delaware's smallest but most populous county, the opportunity to issue hundreds of millions of dollars toward health equity, food insecurity, emergency response, and education. The volume of funding and the compliance guidelines attached to it exceeded anything the county had handled before, and the legislation kept expanding to cover new needs. Every dollar had to remain traceable through its entire lifecycle, without exception.

• The volume of CARES Act funding, and its compliance requirements, exceeded anything the county was accustomed to
• Federal guidance expanded continually to cover new funding needs
• Every grant distribution had to remain traceable through its full lifecycle
• The county needed to serve county agencies, municipalities, and community organizations simultaneously

• A centralized application page and self-service portal covered all eligible services, live in under 48 hours
• The connected ecosystem spanned constituents, community-serving organizations (first responders, food assistance, municipal services), county finance, county legal, and contracted vendors
• Finance and legal teams used pre-defined criteria to expedite verification of each proposal
• Approved requests automatically generated a certification letter for electronic signature, then a finance task to open a purchase order and verify vendor registration before routing to accounts payable
• As new CARES Act guidance was released, the county updated form fields, signature documents, and certification letters without rebuilding the process
• A dashboard let authorized users view and gather all correspondence, documents, and payments in one place

• $322.8 million distributed over two years
• Over 1,000 grants fulfilled, with 50% going directly to residents
• No disruption to operations, with rapid change management as requirements shifted
• Passed a comprehensive third-party audit with zero findings
• Remote application filing and service delivery throughout
• Extended partnership with the State of Delaware to manage 11 mobile COVID testing sites and deliver additional unemployment, childcare, and contact tracing services statewide
• Existing forms and workflows were adapted to fulfill ARPA initiatives, including Building Better Communities and the Reimagine New Castle County Program