Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund is releasing its implementation plan to award funds from the the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act). The New Markets Tax Credit portion of the plan provides details on how an additional $1.5 billion in NMTC allocation authority will be provided to applicants who applied for NMTC allocation authority under the 2008 application round. This round closed in March of 2008, and awards totaling $3.5 billion were made to 70 organizations in October of 2008. The CDFI Fund intends to immediately begin processing the applications that were previously ranked so that additional awards can be made to organizations. The CDFI Fund is not soliciting new applications, nor will it be increasing the size of the awards already made to Community Development Entities (CDEs) in October of 2008. Rather, it will provide awards to additional organizations that applied under the 2008 round and were highly rated, but which did not receive awards due to the limited availability of allocations.

With the additional $1.5 billion in allocation authority, the CDFI Fund anticipates that it will be able to make awards to approximately 30 of these applications, and that these new awards will be announced in May of 2009. The CDFI Fund will not solicit nor accept any additional application materials from these applicants, but will contact these applicants to determine whether any material events have occurred since the original application submission that may have adversely impacted the organization’s ability to administer an NMTC allocation.

The Recovery Act allows an additional $1.5 billion in NMTC allocation authority to be provided to applicants who apply for NMTC allocation authority under the 2009 application round. This round is currently open, with applications due to the CDFI Fund on April 8, 2009. With the additional $1.5 billion in allocation authority, the CDFI Fund anticipates making approximately 100 awards to CDEs totaling $5 billion, and intends to announce those awards in October of 2009.

The plan also provides additional information on new reporting requirements as well as details on how the CDFI Fund will allocate additional CDFI Program: Financial Assistance (FA) Awards and Native American CDFI Assistance (NACA) Awards. read more…