BEAD Matching Funds Deep Dive

Fiber Broadband Association’s Where's The Funding? is a free-to-attend 12-part webinar series to help members understand, navigate, and obtain matching funds for broadband grants.

Episode 2 will welcome Evan Feinman, who serves as director of BEAD for the NTIA. Before joining the NTIA, Evan served the Commonwealth of Virginia as the governor's chief broadband advisor for nearly four years, from 2018 to 2022.

As the governor's chief broadband advisor, Evan was given the tasked with ensuring that Virginia met its ambitious goal of universal access to broadband by 2024.

Virginia has laid a roadmap that many states have since sought to emulate. From developing a robust broadband map, to creating its broadband toolkit, Virginia's efforts helped to establish many of the policies and procedures that are now considered to be best practices in ensuring states are able to evaluate the scope of their served, underserved, and unserved populations.

During his time at NTIA, Evan has encouraged vigorous engagement between grantees and the communities they serve. He has made it clear that engaging stakeholder communities will directly contribute to the success (or failure) of an applicant's grant. He has also emphasized the importance of dialogues between internet service providers and state broadband directors. Under Evan's leadership, the NTIA has also appointed regional directors that can assist states and communities as they navigate the BEAD application process.

As Director of BEAD, Evan is the architect of the program's matching capital policies. How much funding needs to be matched? Are their requirements for the sources of matching funds? Can matching funds be waived? Evan is the one-stop-shop of all things related to matching funds. 

Evan's management and direction at NTIA has been critical for BEAD, and his experience will no doubt prove invaluable for the broadband community.