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June 17, 2021
For those of you who have applied for Shuttered Venue Operators Grants (SVOG) through the Small Business Administration (SBA), I wanted to let you know that I have been participating with a small group of national stakeholders in Daily SVOG Briefings with SBA, Congressional, and White House staff to help speed up and streamline the awards process. I didn’t want to overload your email inboxes with updates, sometimes two times a day, so I wanted to let you know where I have been posting takeaways from these briefings to help you navigate your SVOG application process.
As you know, the Arts Action Fund regularly sends out breaking news email updates with new FAQs, guidelines, and more located on our COVID-19 Arts Resources Page. But now with Daily SVOG Briefings, I am posting updates every day (M-F) to keep you informed! You can see these updates on my Twitter account @Nina4arts, our Arts Action Fund Twitter account @artsactionfund, and posted online in the Top Stories News section of our website.
Here are some highlights of my SVOG updates:
- SBA will complete the award process on 10,000 applications (all of Priority 1 & 2) before July 4th. So far, 2,642 SVOG applications have been processed. 732 of these processed applications have been fully awarded and many more are queued to be awarded or will be receiving a request for more information. There will be some declines, but it will only be for ineligibility, not for lack of additional information needed, etc. All remaining SVOG applications (including priority 3) will be processed no later than mid-July.
- SBA has surged the program with 100+ staff of highly experienced reviewers borrowed from other SBA grant programs.
- SBA will now disburse the awards in one lump sum, instead of multiple tranches.
- SBA has confirmed that all ELIGIBLE applicants in Priority 1, 2, 3, and Supplemental will be funded. There are ample funds still remaining.
- There is no specific deadline for applying. It’s until funds run out. It’s highly recommended to apply by early July.
- Errors in the Do Not Pay List, Deathmaster List, IRS Form 4506-T are all being reconciled quickly. At this point, if you know you need to correct your 4506-T form, please wait until you are contacted by SBA. You can’t do it proactively and submit.
- More than 1,800 applicants have not yet completed their SAM.gov application, which is very important to receive your SVOG funds into your checking account. Please make sure you’ve hit the “SUBMIT” button.
- Once you receive your funds, you will be able to pay for costs incurred retroactively from 3/1/20 through the end of this year 12/31/21, as laid out in your proposed budget. You will be able to pay only those costs incurred by 12/31/21 for up to a year after receiving the disbursed funds into your checking account. For those receiving Supplemental grants, everything will be extended by an additional 6 months.
- Problem anomalies continue to happen. Please email meat [email protected] with details of the issue and I will forward them to the SVOG team leaders at SBA.
I also wanted to remind you that in honor of the Juneteenth holiday, our offices will be closed and there will be no Office Hours with Nina tomorrow June 18th. But, I will be back the following Friday, June 25th at 11am ET to continue answering your pressing COVID-19 relief questions.
Nina Ozlu Tunceli
Executive Director
To read an archive of Arts Action Fund federal updates, visit COVID-19 Arts Federal Policy Updates & Action Alerts.
