Helping a clean-tech startup negotiate, clean up, and close $6M across three government awards.

The situation

A clean-tech startup requested help from Ibex to prepare for two anticipated grant award negotiations from the DOE and the California Energy Commission, as well as help preparing for an NSF Phase II SBIR submission and the potential CAP review they would be subject to.

What we did

The Ibex team first reviewed the applications / budgets submitted for the DOE and CEC grants, and successfully helped the team rebudget the CEC and DOE grants prior to award by performing a two-tier indirect rate calculation to substantiate higher indirect rates based on recent activity. While working on the rate calculation, a few things surfaced:

• Though the organization had a Phase I NSF SBIR ongoing, it was not being tracked / reported on properly, and the organization was not compliant with 2 CFR 200 / FAR part 31 regulations that are required for government grants and contracts.
• After working with the existing outsourced accounting team for a few months it became clear that the existing accounting team was not capable of the level of accounting / reporting the company needed.

Ibex took over the books and:

• Cleaned up financials to full GAAP, 2 CFR 200 / FAR part 31 compliance.
• Led the team through the Financial Management System questionnaires from DOE / CEC.
• Helped pass the NSF CAP review within two weeks.

The result

In total, Ibex helped the client secure over $6 million across three non-dilutive awards that they would have otherwise failed to pass diligence for, while also giving the team flexibility of an additional $1M+ worth of indirect dollars to spend on overhead expenses.