Speaker 1:
From Carr, Riggs & Ingram, this is It Figures, the CRI Podcast. An accounting, advisory and industry focused podcast for business and organization leaders, entrepreneurs, and anyone who is looking to go beyond the status quo.
Keith Hundley:
Welcome to It Figures, the CRI podcast. Today, we’re talking about the 2026 Southern Grants Forum. My name is Keith Hundley. I’m an audit partner in CRI’s Enterprise Alabama office. I am in my 26th year of working with nonprofits and governments, and especially those that are federally funded and subject to the requirements of the uniform guidance. I serve as one of CRI’s single audit specialist. I’m also one of the founders, co-host, and presenters of the Southern Grants Forum. Today, I’m joined by Holly Williamson. Good morning, Holly.
Holly Williamson:
Good morning.
Keith Hundley:
Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do here at CRI.
Holly Williamson:
Awesome. Yeah, so I have been at CRI for a few years now, and I work with our marketing team. I am our marketing project specialist and help with the project management of a lot of our marketing initiatives. I’ve gotten to work with Keith on Southern Grants Forum for a few years now. Right after I started actually was SGF in Nashville. It was one of the first things I got to do with CRI. Now, this will be my fourth one, so it’s a fun experience to come back to from starting here till now.
Keith Hundley:
Thank you, Holly. We’re fortunate to have Holly and the rest of the marketing team working with us on the Southern Grants Forum. They do a fantastic job and there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes leading up to the Southern Grants Forum each summer. We’re grateful and lucky to have someone of Holly’s talent and skills as part of the team.
Holly Williamson:
Happy to be here.
Keith Hundley:
What is the Southern Grants Forum? The Southern Grants Forum, it’s a three-day educational event for grants, management professionals from federally funded entities. This covers a broad range of entities within the nonprofit and governmental sector. Historically, we’ve had attendees from state and local governments, school boards, colleges and universities, tribal governments, various governmental associations and authorities, healthcare entities, social service organization, and many others. Again, like I said, it’s a very diverse group. I went back and looked over the past few years and it just amazes me at how diverse the makeup is of our attendees.
We offer a wide range of topics of great interest to the grants management professional. Those topics include a grants management update covering the latest from the OMB, federal agencies, revisions to uniform guidance, and the latest in legal developments from the federal courts. Our co-host and co-sponsor, Attorney Brian Tipton, will be providing that update. He does that. He kicks us off every year with that. Brian is the principal at Tipton KPCL Law. As I said, he’s a founder and co-sponsor and presenter for the Southern Grants Forum. We will also have topics dealing with the uniform guidance.
The latest updates from FASB and GASB. On the FASB side, Alyssa Hill from our CRI Houston office will be doing that again this year. She does a fantastic job. Then over on the GASB side, we’ll have Dean Michael Meade joining us, the Guru guy. He’s our GASB guru, if you will. He spent 24 years at GASB. For all you governmental folks that are going to be attending, he’s probably had his hands pretty deeply into a lot of the pronouncements that you had to implement and utilize. Dean is just a great resource, extremely knowledgeable on the GASB side. We’ll be doing sessions on internal controls. I usually typically do an indirect cost session and will be again this year.
Procurement, audits. Sandi Guy, our human capital partner at CRI will be doing some stuff related to human capital. We’ll probably feature some grant writing. That’s always a very popular topic. That will be something we’ll bring some outside folks in to help with. Cybersecurity, David Mills will be back again this year. David’s with us most years to do cybersecurity. While this is not a technology conference, we do incorporate a lot of technology, or I should say some technology into the event because technology is such an important part of what we all do and we think it’s very relevant that we have the latest we can get, the latest information in those areas.
We’re still fine-tuning the schedule and subject matter. We should have all that firmed up by the end of December in our website updated, so you’ll be able to see exactly what’s on the schedule for next summer. You will hear from a diverse group of subject matter experts from CRI as well as subject matter experts from outside of the firm. Our keynote speaker will be Beth Z, also known as your nerdy best friend. She goes by Beth Z because no one can pronounce her last name. I’ve seen her last name. I think she made a good choice here. She’s doing a session titled Super Tech Tools to Get Stuff Done. She’s a technology guru, very entertaining speaker.
I think everybody will really enjoy her session. We also get a double dose of Beth. She has agreed to do a stump the nerd booth, where you can speak with her on a one-on-one basis to get your technology questions answered. Think of her and their booth as, we have many peanuts fans on here, I think of Lucy with her little psychiatry thing with five cents and the psychiatrist is in things. She’s going to be doing something like that, where it won’t cost you five cents, won’t cost you a penny. You can go up to her though with your technology questions and she’ll be happy to talk with you one-on-one. I think that’s a great thing for attendees.
Who attends, and you might be asking yourself, “Is this a good fit for me?” Well, the grants management professionals that attend, they’re a diverse group just like the organizations that send them. If you’re a board member, if you’re a CEO, a CFO, a program director, if you’re part of the physical staff, you’re part of the program staff, basically anyone involved in federal grants management, then this is an event that’s for you. Who should attend? What are you going to get out of the event? Well, we’re in our 12th year of hosting this Southern Grants Forum. I think the content and speakers are first-rate.
We really strive to bring you the latest and most relevant information related to grants management. We listen to our attendees when it comes to content and we are constantly striving to update and bring fresh material to the event. A good example of relevancy is what happened last year, as everybody knows for, well, I say last year, earlier this year in July of ’25, we were in New Orleans. Brian, I mentioned Brian a moment ago doing the grants management update. Well, you all remember earlier this year, the new administration took over and made a lot of changes related to federal grant funding and all of this.
Brian was actually, an hour before he went on stage, having to update his proposal for things that had come down that morning. Literally got the most timely and relevant information in that presentation. I hope this next time around in ’26, things have calmed down a little bit, but that gives you an idea of just how we want this to be the latest information. As far as content goes, several people actually last year in New Orleans talked to me about, come up to me with some questions on wage rate requirements. That’s the Davis-Bacon stuff that you federal grants folks know all about. We didn’t have any sessions last year. We’ll be adding something this year to address Davis-Bacon, so we do listen to our attendees.
We asked that. We tell you that when we do the surveys, we want you to tell us what is needed, what are you missing? We add that content to our events. I was mentioning Beth Z’s keynote session a few minutes ago. It reminded me of another reason why I think this is such a good event and why you should attend. The smaller size of the conference compared to a lot of others allows attendees and the speakers to have one-on-one time. If you ask our presenters from past events, they will tell you that as soon as their session ends, session attendees, I’m not going to say everybody, but it can be a few up to 10 or 15 folks or more, will come up to them after their session’s over with their unique problem or question for their organization where they need help.
I just think it’s a great opportunity for grants management professionals and our subject matter experts to get together and hopefully solve a problem or address an issue. Holly, you’ve been involved now, as you said, I think this will be your fourth year for several years, certainly. Would you share some of your observations? Because, again, you’re not presenter, you’re looking at this from a completely different perspective and you’re able to sit back and observe everything going on and talk to folks. I know they come up to you with questions and issues they’re having. Share some of what you’ve seen, what you perceive from the event or feedback you’ve received from other attendees, and just share that with us.
Holly Williamson:
Yeah, absolutely. What you mentioned ties in with this well. I’ve been to three now in three different cities and something that stands out every time is really the aspect of community and how everyone is able to engage with each other. People are really able to connect with their peers because we keep it at a smaller size. I see so many people who come year after year and they’re excited to see the people they’ve met before and to meet new faces. It’s just great to see how they can share ideas with each other, help each other solve problems. I see people all the time, we have some great apps we use where people can connect, and I see all the time people are setting meetups for coffee or going out to a dinner together.
Going out just to explore the city together. It’s really neat to see how people can connect with each other. That’s something I’ve really enjoyed seeing about it.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah, that’s really good. I’m glad you brought that up because that’s something I encourage folks. When we’re doing our sessions and we ask a question, I encourage folks to participate and to share their experiences and their issues because the best… We’ve got good people in the rooms leading sessions, but a lot of times talking to their peers and getting to know the other folks in the room, because they’re the ones in the trenches every day and they’re the ones that a lot of times can help solve or experience these same issues this group may be having and work together. I love that community thing. I think it’s a great aspect of this.
Holly Williamson:
Absolutely. You’ve probably experienced this too, Keith. I feel like on the speaker side as well, like you said, it really allows people the chance to ask their questions and come up maybe one-on-one afterwards. Or, the speakers are great at allowing time for engagement, interaction in the sessions where they can really share these specific situations they’re going through and talk to the speaker and everyone else about how to solve their problems and what they’re doing.
Keith Hundley:
Yeah. A lot of folks don’t like to necessarily, I’m that way sometimes, raise their hand and ask their question publicly. They want a little private time for that. Yeah, I encourage that too. All of our speakers are aware of that and make themselves available.
Holly Williamson:
For sure.
Keith Hundley:
If somebody’s rushing to the next session, I’ve told folks, “Well, you just tell me when and where we’ll meet up and talk.” We’ve had some of those situations too where we’ve had to schedule something during the conference to get together to go over some things. There’s been times where I’ve brought other partners, other speakers into the conversation, depending on what the issue is to help solve or provide information. Sometimes we have to research and get back to them. It just depends. It varies. It’s amazing these groups are so diverse and their issues are so diverse. You just never know, but that’s all really good stuff.
The when and where, so I know what you’re thinking. I like what I’m hearing. When and where is the Southern Grants Forum going to be in 2026? Well, I’m happy to tell you that we’re going to be coming back to Nashville. We’re going to be in Nashville, Tennessee, July 13th through the 16th of 2026. Next July, next summer. We were there a few years ago, and Nashville is just a great city for this type of event. It’s one of my favorite cities in the country. It’s got its own unique vibe and Music City, USA, and there’s a lot more to it than just the music aspects. But anyway, so the event itself, the onsite check-in will be Monday, July 13th from 1:00 to 5:00 PM.
Sessions will begin on the 14th, which is Tuesday, and we’ll wrap it up on Thursday the 16th. But if you can’t make it in, sometimes folks can’t get in by 5:00 o’clock on Monday, don’t panic. We’ll have registration check-in tables every morning, certainly Tuesday, Wednesday mornings available. We’ll get you taken care of. The registration process or the check-in process goes very quickly and won’t be an issue. Early bird registration, let’s talk about the pricing, it’s $899. This is good through January 31st of 2026. That’s a savings of $100 from our standard rate, which begins February 1st. That registration at that point in time on February 1st will go up to $999.
I think it’s still a really good bargain, even at that price compared to other events that do this type of stuff. Again, I think it’s just a really good price point. The event will be held at the Loews Nashville Hotel at Vanderbilt Plaza. We were there previously. We were at the Sheraton downtown. I believe the Loews is in the midtown area, a little different location, but still within about a mile, I think, of Broadway and everything. There’s stuff around the hotel certainly to do. But if you want to go down to Broadway and that area, it’s probably a pretty good hike, at least a mile. You probably want to Uber over. But again, there’s so much to do in Nashville.
The Loews Hotel, the Loews chain, it’s a luxury brand. I think everyone’s going to be well pleased with the accommodations. Rooms started a discounted rate equal to the 2026 federal per diem rate of just $217 a night. You’ve heard that correctly, $217 a night. That’s a really good rate in Nashville. I’ll be honest with you, a few years back before we were there the first time at the Sheraton in the downtown area, we really never thought we’d be able to do this in Nashville just because Nashville’s been such a hot property for so long, that just hotels did not want to work with us on the rates. We always try to get the federal per diem rate for our attendees, for organizations at this event.
You’re federally funded, you should be getting the federal per diem rate if you can. Again, the Loews, we were fortunate enough to have them work with us and give us such a great rate. It’s important to note that the room block will close on June 19th. We expect the event to sell out before that date, so I encourage you to register early and book your rooms early. In the past, we’ve been able to pull additional rooms into our room block as needed. That will likely not be the case in 2026. For all you soccer fans out there, the FIFA World Cup will be held in North America next summer. I think the championship’s in Mexico City, regionals and quarter-finals are going to be in Atlanta.
The Loews Nashville Hotel will be hosting teams. I don’t know how many, but my understanding is the hotel will probably be full of SGF people as well as FIFA soccer teams. Actually, the week of our event, if I remember the scheduling correctly, is I believe it’s either the quarter or semifinals in Atlanta. Don’t ask me why they’re housing teams in Nashville. I’m assuming it’s just to keep them away from the distraction of the event itself and give them a nice, quiet place for practice, and I would assume probably Vanderbilt, there’s other colleges in the area they could practice, but they will be at the same hotel with us.
Anyway, I don’t expect, or we don’t expect to be able to get additional rooms, that may change. Again, there are other hotels in the area, but we try to keep everybody under the same roof so it just works out better. You don’t have to get out and walk a block or two to another hotel. Again, register early, that would be to everybody’s benefit. Let’s talk about our host city for 2026. As an attendee, there are two elements to this event that are very important. First and foremost is the content and the speakers. We’ve talked about that, and I think as always, we hit it out of the bar with that one. The second element is the location.
We put a lot of effort into selecting a location that we believe everyone will enjoy visiting. I think Nashville is one of those unique American cities, if it’s the requirement. By the way, the room rate of $217 that I mentioned earlier is available for a few days before and a few days after the event. In case you want to come to Nashville earlier, stick around to see the city and enjoy all that it has to offer. Those rates are subject to availability. Again, depending on what happens with the FIFA deal, it may or may not be available, but you certainly would need to ask the hotel. Again, I encourage you to book those early.
Holly, Nashville’s your home base, being part of the marketing team and you’re living there. What are some things people should see or do while at Nashville?
Holly Williamson:
Absolutely. Like you mentioned, a lot of the things you think of are live music and some great Southern food. Both of those are really easy to find here, not hard to come by. Broadway, of course, is going to have tons of live music, pretty much anywhere you walk in, different bands on different levels. If you’ve never been to anywhere there, Tootsies, that’s an iconic one, the big purple building. That’s a great one to check out. Jason Aldean’s is another bar down there that’s great music. Another great spot, if you’re with a large group and you want to try some different things or you just want to get a mix of some of the different staples in Nashville is a place called Fifth and Broadway.
It’s right downtown, right on Broadway, and it’s like a big food hall. You can try a bunch of different things. There’s several different hot chicken places, so you can try a few and find your favorite. It’s great for a group for just getting a sampling of things in Nashville. A couple other restaurants I would recommend are Edley’s Bar-B-Que and Martin’s Bar-B-Que. Martin’s is right downtown. It’s a really fun atmosphere. They’ve got a back entrance with a patio that’s really, really neat. One last restaurant I’ll recommend is Jack Brown’s Burgers. I pretty much tell this one to everyone I know who’s visiting.
A lot of times when they leave, they’re like, “I probably could have eaten there for every meal and left pretty happy.” It’s a casual spot, but it’s casual, but great food. A lot of great things to do. I’m biased. I’ve lived here for like five years now, but there’s a lot of fun things and it’s just a great time.
Keith Hundley:
Oh, yeah. I love Nashville. To me, I’d be nice about this, it’s a cleaner version of New Orleans and different style of music, both very festive cities and lots of fun. I love what New Orleans do. Yeah, last year, I know the last time we were there a few years ago, my wife and I went to the Johnny Cash Museum. There’s things other than bars, obviously. The Grand Ole Opry, I mentioned earlier talking with Holly before our thing this morning, that they’re celebrating their 100th anniversary. That’s one of those bucket list items, is to go to the Opry and see some great entertainment. I’m sure there’s always something going on in Nashville.
You’ll be able to entertain yourself while you’re there. I’m sure we’ll be pushing out stuff through the app as we get closer to clue people on on things to look at and think about doing and all of that. Yeah, looking forward to Nashville. To wrap things up, the Southern Grants Forum is a three-day boutique conference for grants management professionals working with organizations that are funded with federal grants. I use the term boutique because it is a small conference, limited to 250 to 300 attendees. If you’re interested in attending, I encourage you again to register early as our national event will likely sell out.
If you or any member of your team is interested in attending the 2026 Southern Grants Forum, please go to southerngrantsforum.com. That’s all one word. Here you will find the links to register for the event, book your hotel, check out our speakers, our schedule, and any other… there’s other useful information, plenty of stuff out there for you. If you have questions and you need to speak with us directly, our contact information is on that webpage. On the top line you’ll see a button that says more. Click on that and then you’ll see contact down, I guess the third thing down. Click on that and that will give you Holly’s contact information.
You can email or call her. If it’s something she can’t help you with, she can put you in contact with me. But anyway, on behalf of Holly and myself, thank you. We look forward to seeing you in Nashville this summer. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:
If you want more CRI insights or are interested in learning about our firm, please visit our website at criadv.com. Thanks for listening to this episode of It Figures, the CRI Podcast. You can subscribe to It Figures on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you prefer to listen to your podcasts. If you liked what you heard today, please leave us a review. CRI Advisors LLC is not a CPA firm. Assurance, attest, and audit services provided by Carr, Riggs & Ingram LLC. Car Riggs & Ingram and CRI are the brand names under which Car Rigs & Ingram LLC, CRI CPA, CRI Advisors LLC, CRI Advisors or Advisors, and CapinCrouse LLC, CapinCrouse CPA, and CRI CapinCrouse Advisors LLC, CapinCrouse Advisors provide professional services.
CRI CPA, CapinCrouse CPA, CRI Advisors, CapinCrouse Advisors, Carr, Riggs & Ingram Capital LLC, and their respective subsidiaries operate as an alternative practice structure in accordance with the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct and Applicable Law, Regulations, and Professional Standards. CRI CPA and CapinCrouse CPA are licensed independent certified public accounting firms that separately provide attest services as well as additional ancillary services to their clients. CRI CPA and CapinCrouse CPA are independently owned CPA firms that provide attestation services separate from one another. CRI advisors and CapinCrouse advisors provide tax and business consulting services to its clients.
CRI advisors and its subsidiaries, including CapinCrouse advisors, are not licensed CPA firms and will not provide any attest services. The entities falling under Carr, Riggs & Ingram or CRI brand are independently owned and are not responsible or liable for the services or products provided or engaged to be provided by any other entity under the Carr, Riggs & Ingram or CRI brand. Our use of the terms CRI, we, our, us, and terms of similar import denote the alternative practice structure conducted by CRI CPA, CapinCrouse CPA, CapinCrouse advisors, and CRI advisors as appropriate.
