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Evaluation Record of Various Administrative Options for ActivitySim

Background

In July 2024 the ActivitySim partners (approximately 14 agencies) were notified that AMPO did not intend to continue to extend administrative support for the ActivitySim project beyond June 30th, 2025. AMPO's decision kicked off a multi-month effort (conducted by the ActivitySim partners) to evaluate as many options as possible along with documenting the various tasks that were being covered by AMPO and partners that may not have been commonly known or planned for. The remainder of this page captures first a list and record of all options considered, then followed by a record of the tasks that were captured.

Administrative Options

Administrative Tasks

• Consultant Related Tasks

  • Developing contracts
  • Establishing contracts
  • Developing task orders
  • Executing task orders
  • Receiving invoices
  • Reviewing invoices
  • Paying invoices
  • Tracking expenditures

• Partner Related Tasks

  • Developing partner MOAs
  • Developing partner funding agreements
  • Sending and tracking MOAs and funding agreements
  • Executing MOAs and funding agreements
  • Support agency-specific admin / procurement tasks, such as adding AMPO as a vendor
    • What info provided? Tax ID? Other?
    • TO DO: AMPO to forward email threads from various agency procurement interactions

• Overall Projects Tasks

  • Developing website collateral
  • Updating website as necessary
  • Developing print collateral
  • Conference coordination
    • Reviewing materials
  • Development of logo / marketing info
  • Transmit logo information
  • Development of trademark
  • Maintenance of trademark?
  • Transfer of copyright to new entity (in repo)?
  • Update license as necessary?
  • Ensure license history is clean and plan for moving forward

• Transition Tasks

  • Develop inventory of historic executed agreements
  • Identify and and transmit all historical executed agreements not already in the shared drive
  • Transmitting all historical financial documents and history
    • Identify number of past years (5 years, ideally) to request / transfer
    • Data items
      • Income received from partners and dates
      • Payments to consultants and dates
      • Consultant Invoices
      • Direct costs
    • TO DO: Reach out to AMPO’s accountant to request financial history information
  • Archive organization
  • Transferring trademark to future ActivitytSim home
  • Transmit unexpended funds to from AMPO to new ActivitySim home
  • Establish new contracts between existing vendors and new ActivitySim home
  • Establish new task orders between existing vendors and new ActivitySim home
  • Review financial history to establish new overhead rate and direct expenses allocations
  • Establish new internal administrative expense tracking system
  • Finalize what the AMPO allocation is this year

• Questions

  • How are we going to track all expenses and time in advance of transition to new ActivitySim home, so that transfer of funds is clean?
  • Should we set aside off-the-top additional admin funds for new ActivitySim home
  • AMPO Research Foundation is a nonprofit federal 501(c)3 - can / should we set up parallel organizartion? What is the relationship between AMPO 501(c)4 and AMPORF 501 (c)3?

• Tasks

  • Dig up emails from May/June discussions about AMPO costs and expenses to ensure that financial handoff is clean
  • Identify new ActivitySim home by January 2025

• Organizational Start Up Tasks