You May Be Owed $15,000 by the Small Business Administration
Yes, you. [Use this guide to claim your pandemic relief money]
Recently the Small Business Administration (SBA) wired $10,000 to my bank account. It was a grant, meaning the money is not a loan and I do not have to pay it back. Nor is it taxable.
The reason for this apparent generosity can be traced to a $2 trillion economic relief bill passed by Congress in March of 2020 called The CARES Act. This bill recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic was negatively impacting the bottom line of small businesses across the United States and small business owners were in need of some financial relief.
You may be owed the same amount of money I received, or more, if you run one or more small businesses (on which you pay taxes), if you otherwise qualify for the grant (more on that shortly), and if you have not already collected the grant.
If you are inclined to be suspicious about the nature of this grant I recommend you dispel your skepticism for the length of this article, or at least until you have familiarized yourself with the requirements to collect the money. I really would hate for you to miss out on $10,000 (and possibly $15,000) for the simple reason that the “offer” seems too good to be true.
But right up front you should know that you may have to work a little to get your money, as I did.
It may also take some time. Though surely much less than the period slightly in excess of one year between my initial application for the grant and the time it was wired in full to my bank account.
What we are talking about is the Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program which was established as part of The CARES Act of 2020. Congress allocated billions of dollars to shore up the livelihood of economically impacted business as a result of the shuttered economy of 2020.
According to The Dallas Morning News which interviewed Alejandro Contreras, director of preparedness, communication and coordination at SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance, the EIDL program will be open through December 31, 2021, or until funds run out.
Now you might have caught sight of the word “loan” back there.
If that has you concerned you can relax. In fact the EIDL program consists of two parts. In order to apply for the grant (the free money) you must first apply for the business loan, which you can elect to turn down if you are offered it. Or you could take the loan. The interest rate of 3.75 percent on a 30 year loan is highly favorable to you as the borrower.
Either way, whether you accept any offer of a loan, or whether you are denied the loan, you are entitled to the grant money if you qualify for it.
At least in principle.
In practice, the administration of the grants by the SBA has been highly problematic. Many legitimate small business owners (hundreds of thousands of them) have been denied either the loan or the grant, or both, and have had to request a re-evaluation of their application.
I had to go through this re-evaluation business myself, and I will outline later what that entailed and why you need to be equipped to handle some possibly frustrating delays along the way.
But the bottom line is this. If $10,000 or $15,000 might make a big difference to your financial well-being then you will likely be prepared to make the extra effort to hold the SBA accountable and secure your money. You could also be lucky and find your application goes through without any issue and you are quickly funded (it is just that most EIDL applicants have not found it to work this way).
Who qualifies for EIDL grant money?
Probably you do.
There are two parts to the grant money. One is the Targeted Advance which is worth $10,000.
To be eligible for this the SBA has set the following requirements:
● Your small business must have been in operation prior to 2020. You should also have paid taxes on its revenue for the 2019 tax year. This is because the SBA uses your 2019 tax transcript to verify your income claims.● Your business address must be located in a low-income community, as defined in Section 45D(e) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (you can determine the status of your business in this regard using the SBA’s low-income community tool).● Your business must have suffered a greater than 30 percent economic loss (based on your gross income) for an 8 week period beginning March 2, 2020 compared to the corresponding time frame in 2019.The SBA says: If an applicant meets the low-income community criteria, they will be asked to provide gross monthly revenue (all forms of combined monthly earnings received, such as profits or salaries) to confirm the 30 percent reduction.● Your business must have 300 or fewer employees.
I will shortly outline some of the reasons for these requirements (for example, the low-income community requirement).
The second part of the grant is the Supplemental Advance which is worth an additional $5,000. This money is available to a subgroup of those who are eligible for the Targeted Advance and for whom the economic impact was even greater.
To be further eligible for this second component of the grant:
● Your business must have suffered greater than a 50 percent economic loss for an 8 week period in 2020 compared to the corresponding period in 2019.● Your business must have 10 or fewer employees.
Note that if you are a sole proprietor, or represent a single-member LLC, or even if you just have a side business on which you earn money as an independent contractor (e.g. Uber driver) and you paid taxes on this business in 2019 then you represent a small business and may qualify for the grant. At any rate, by applying for the loan/grant you will be able to determine whether you qualify.
For example, if you are a freelance writer who earns income from writing you might qualify. Basically, if you work for yourself and not for another party, and you pay taxes on the money you earn then you likely qualify as a small business (but do not quote me, I am not an expert in the defining characteristics of small businesses).
Why only low income communities?
To help you understand the low-income requirement I will give you a short summary of the history of the EIDL program.
Congress initially passed a bill (The CARES Act) that would allow all small business owners in the United States to apply for an EIDL loan and at the same time a grant of up to $10,000. Well, the SBA interpreted this to mean they could award less than $10,000 if they deemed it appropriate, which they did.
They introduced a per-employee proviso. The size of the awarded grant would be based on the size of the small business and calculated as $1,000 times the number of employees, up to a maximum of $10,000.
Thus any small business with 10 or more employees was able to claim the full $10,000.
Sole proprietors, and any other business with no employees other than the business owner, were eligible for just the first $1,000.
This is how I received my first $1,000 in June of 2020, wired into my business bank account just 3 days after I applied for the EIDL loan.
Millions of small business owners attempted to take advantage of the program in 2020 to rescue their laboring businesses. Perhaps predictably Congress underestimated the amount of money needed to fund the program and the EIDL grant money was quickly exhausted. Anyone who applied late to the program, but before the application process was withdrawn, found themselves caught high and dry. They received no money whatsoever and the EIDL grant program went into limbo.
Then in December of 2020 Congress allocated more money to the program and instructed the SBA to change the requirements on who could receive grant money.
The new requirements are the ones listed above, including the low-income community provision. Congress had looked at the way the SBA was disbursing money and decided low-income community business owners were disproportionately affected by the weakened economy and should be pushed to the front of the line for relief. Furthermore, the full award of $10,000 should be allocated regardless of the number of people employed by the business.
Not everyone is happy about the low-income provision as there are literally millions of small business owners whose income was severely impacted during the pandemic yet their business fails to met the low-income criteria.
To qualify for the Targeted Advance (and the Supplemental Advance), the address of your business must be located inside a low-income area, regardless of where you conduct your business.
Thus if you operate your business from home because you are an Uber driver, and you live in a low-income community, but in fact all your business is carried out in middle or high income areas, then you qualify. If the locations were reversed, then you would not qualify. Thus, two Uber drivers residing respectively in low and high income areas might be equally negatively impacted by the pandemic, but only one of them would qualify for the EIDL grant money.
Fair or not fair (and this low-income requirement might even have been challenged in court by the time you read this), this is the way the grant requirements work as I write this article. This low-income requirement could also change in the future if Congress decides to pass a bill which authorizes it.
Two more things.
First, the SBA announced in January that only those people who had applied for the EIDL program before the money ran out in 2020 would be receiving invitations to claim the balance thereof of the initially allocated $10,000 in grant money. Everyone else would have to wait until the initial applicants were served before the program could be reopened to everyone (which it was in early June of 2021, and which is the reason I am telling you about the program now — because you can apply for it if you have not previously done so).
As of the first week of July 2021 approximately 1.6 million small business owners had applied for the $10,000 of Targeted Advance money and 251,000 of them (16 percent of the applicants) have been funded using $2.1 billion of the $30 billion earmarked for the Targeted Advance program.
Second thing: Congress allocated another $5,000 for those small business owners hardest hit by the pandemic. So if you collected the initial $10,000 and your economic loss for an 8-week period in 2020 was greater than 50 percent compared to the same period in 2019, and your business employed no more than 10 people, then you qualified for that extra money as well.
As of the first week of July 2021 the SBA had disbursed to 170,000 applicants around $850 million (17 percent) of the $5 billion funding for the Supplemental Advance.
Nature of the 30/50 percent economic loss
Because I had already submitted an EIDL application in June of 2020 (and received an initial $1,000), and because I happen to live in one of those designated low-income communities, on February 17th of 2021 I received an invitation from the SBA to apply for the balance of my $10,000 .
As part of the qualification process which takes place on the SBA web site you must provide your gross dollar income for each of the 12 months in 2019 and 2020, and the first two months of 2021. So if you do not have these figures handy you will need to go look them up (for example, the deposit amounts into your business bank account if you have one).
What the SBA is looking for is proof that for at least one 8-week period in 2020 your income dropped by more than 30 percent compared to the corresponding 8-week period in 2019.
Now, as it turns out, my business did horribly in 2019. Revenue was down 35 percent. This was before any pandemic had struck.
Then in 2020 I had an almost equally bad year, but earned roughly the same income. And yet by some miracle I was able to locate exactly ONE 8-week period in 2020 where my income was down by more than 30 percent compared to 2019. Thanks both to the awesome unpredictability of statistical fluctuations and the rigid specification of the letter of the law as spelled out by Congress I qualified by way of the 30 percent rule!
Reader, if you were not at all certain about this point until now, take it from me, the way the EIDL process tends to play out is almost purely by chance!
My income for the relevant 8-week period was down 43 percent. Not enough to win me consideration for the $5,000 Supplemental Advance which requires a greater than 50 percent loss, but good enough to put me in line for the balance of my $10,000 when I applied for it on February 25, 2021.
All I had to do was ask politely for my money and the SBA would wire it to my account.
But it did not quite pan out that way.
Oh dear, Mr. Crane. It appears you did not pay your taxes…
In 2019 I paid my taxes, and I paid them on time.
However, what I did not realize until after the SBA denied my EIDL grant application on April 5th, 2021 was that the IRS had never got around to processing my tax return in 2020.
In fact they still had not processed it in April of 2021 when I signed a 4506-T form (Disaster Request for Transcript of Tax Return) authorizing the SBA to retrieve my 2019 tax transcripts from the IRS (which would allow them to verify my stated income figures for 2019).
The IRS might have informed the SBA that they had not processed my return. Instead the IRS led the SBA to believe that no such tax return had been filed.
This was apparent in the email sent from the SBA to inform me that my application for the grant had been denied:
RE: SBA Targeted EIDL Advance Application Number: 33XXXXXXXX
Dear Leonard Crane,
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has reviewed the Targeted Economic Injury Advance application you submitted and unfortunately, we are unable to approve your request for the following reason(s)
● Not Eligible: The SBA is using the 2019 Federal Income Tax Return as a means to establish that the applicant business was operational prior to 2020. In response to our inquiry the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), they reported no record found for a filing of a 2019 tax return.
It took roughly 6 weeks for the SBA to begin processing my application for the remainder of the $10,000, to request my tax returns from the IRS, and to finally deny me the money based on the apparently missing return.
When things go south. Tackling the reconsideration process
It turns out that you may be denied your EIDL grant for any of number of different reasons.
For example, as reported by investigative journalists responding to the torrent of unhappy EIDL applicants in recent months, the SBA may inform you that:
● You are delinquent in your child support payments (even though your children are fully grown and are off at college, or you have never had children).● You are not a U.S. citizen (even though you were born in the United States).● Your application raised a red flag which “caused the SBA to question the validity of certain information you submitted” (but they do not point out what that information was, so you cannot address the issue).● Your banking information could not be verified. The lesson here: Be sure to get the details correct on ALL information you submit, including your bank account information (account name, account number, bank routing number), and if you have a business account associated with your business, use it in the application.If you make a mistake anywhere in your application you may cause yourself months of delay in the processing. Get it right the first time.● You do not meet the 30 percent economic loss threshold (although according to your own math you clearly do meet the threshold).● Your name has appeared on a Do Not Pay database of some type, indicating that you are a person who does not honor your debts (even though you know this is not the case and you have a stellar reputation and credit score — the SBA has confused you with someone else).● You are deceased (despite clear evidence to the contrary).● You have apparently committed some other faux pas that does not ring true to you but has nonetheless caused the SBA to freak out and drop your application like a hot potato.
Goodness. It does seem like a bit of a minefield to have to get through, doesn’t it?
Here is why that is.
In 2020 the SBA found itself dealing with a large number of fraudulent applications for both EIDL and the Payroll Protection Program. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars slated for small business owners went into the bank accounts of hucksters. One couple in Florida filled their bank accounts with over $1 million from combined fraudulent PPP and EIDL applications.
In response to all this, by the beginning of 2021 when the SBA got around to again inviting roughly 10 million small businesses in the United States to reapply for its EIDL program, the agency seems to have adopted the point of view that all applications should be assumed to have been submitted by shady characters.
The result of this is that it seems the only applications being approved currently are those so tight and squeaky clean that it would have been almost impossible to have faked the information contained within them.
This is why the SBA has attempted to verify all income claims with tax transcripts requested directly from the IRS. While my application hit a wall because of this step and a “missing” return, the good news is the IRS has now processed all of its backlog of 2019 tax returns. This means a missing tax return is unlikely to be one of the issues that might affect you (unless you actually did not file a return for 2019).
Fortunately there is a path to have a denied EIDL application go through reconsideration.
It involves emailing the SBA a request to have your case reevaluated.
I will spare you the content of the first letter I sent off to them on April 12, 2021. It was overly long and provided the SBA with only weak proof that my application had been unjustly denied.
But in the interest of providing you with some boilerplate copy for your own reconsideration letters (if you should be unlucky enough to need to send one or more of them) I will show you two letters sent in later weeks. One to the SBA, and one that went elsewhere.
All the identifying personal information is abstracted or replaced with strings of XXXX.
It is also worth noting that when writing a letter to the SBA your solicitation will almost certainly be better received if you concentrate on making a single point and attempt to do it with as few words as possible.
I send a letter of reconsideration to the SBA
Five weeks after sending off my first reconsideration letter, and after hearing nothing back from the SBA, I tried again.
This time I had a copy of my tax transcripts which I had requested directly from the IRS:
TO: TargetedAdvanceReevaluation@sba.gov
RE: Reevaluation Request for 33XXXXXXXX
Hello SBA,
On 04/12/2021 I requested a reconsideration of my EIDL targeted grant application No. 33XXXXXXXX which was denied based on "no record found for a filing of a 2019 tax return".
However the IRS has since processed my return submitted in July of 2020 and I have attached images of the provided transcripts which you can now request directly from them.
Business name: Leonard Crane Writing Genius LLC
Business website: https://leonardcrane.com/
Business EIN: 12-3456789
Business phone number: 123-456-7890
Business address: 123 Crane Lane, Apt. 456 Cranesville, XX 12345
Business owner: Leonard Crane
SBA stated reason for grant denial:
Not Eligible: The SBA is using the 2019 Federal Income Tax Return as a means to establish that the applicant business was operational prior to 2020. In response to our inquiry the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), they reported no record found for a filing of a 2019 tax return.
ATTACHED: 6 images showing the 2019 tax transcripts I received from the IRS this week.
I am requesting the balance thereof of the $10,000 Targeted EIDL grant because my business satisfies the following requirements for the grant:
• According to the definition of a low-income community, as spelled out in Section 45D(e) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, my business located at zipcode 12345-6789 is situated in a low-income area.
• According to the monthly gross income statement I provided you for all of 2019 and 2020 my business suffered a greater than 30 percent loss of income for an 8 week period in 2020 compared to 2019. Specifically for the months of XXXX/YYYY 2020 gross revenue dropped in excess of XX percent compared to the same period in 2019.
• My business is classified as a single-member LLC.
Thank you,
Leonard Crane
May 19, 2021Although the SBA acknowledged receipt of my letters in both instances, nothing came of them.
Another couple of weeks and still nothing. More than 3 months have passed since I applied for the remainder of the Targeted Advance grant.
I decide to send a letter to my senator
Finally I begin to get impatient and decide to follow the advice of the SBA watchdogs on YouTube who are recommending we all “write a letter to your state senator” to turn up the heat on the SBA.
Jason McElhone, whose YouTube channel I highly recommend you subscribe to for updates on what is happening with EIDL and other SBA-related programs, provides just the right amount of desk slapping and hollering at the ceiling needed for his followers to vicariously burn off their frustrations at having to deal with the SBA.
So on June 7, 2021 I followed the advice of Mr. McElhone and used the contact form on my senator’s web site:
Re: Getting the Small Business Administration to discharge its EIDL Targeted Advance duty via the CARES Act of 2020
Dear Senator XXXXXX,
I am one of your constituents living in Cranesville, XXXXXX and I need your help (as do I am confident tens of thousands of small business owners in XXXXXX).
SHORT STORY:
I am requesting you send me a privacy release form so you can look into what has gone wrong with my EIDL application with the Small Business Administration.
Despite qualifying for the EIDL Targeted Advance grant (of $10,000) I was wrongly denied it on XX/XX/2021.
That was 2 months ago and I am still waiting on reconsideration by the SBA. Nothing is happening despite numerous attempts to get the SBA to address their error and I would like you to reach out on my behalf to get them to release the remaining $9,000 of the grant (I received an initial $1,000 on XX/XX/2020).
Thank you.
LONGER STORY:
As you may know, Congress passed the CARES Act of 2020 over a year ago to provide relief to Americans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Part of the CARES Act of 2020 was to ensure small business owners received Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL) and grants of up to $10,000.
To date only 140,000 or so small businesses nationwide have received the full grant of $10,000 and many (including myself) have been denied all but the first $1,000 of the grant despite qualifying for it.
In December of 2020 Congress amended the CARES Act to ensure that "targeted" entities would receive the balance thereof of the $10,000. A targeted entity is considered to be a small business which:
(1) Resides in a low-income area, as spelled out in Section 45D(e) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. (I am located in a low income area - see image: URL-TO-LOW-INCOME-IMAGE-XXXXXX)
(2) Has suffered an economic loss of 30 percent or greater for an 8 week period in 2020 compared to a similar period in 2019. (My business suffered a XX percent loss for the period XXXX-YYYY 2020 compared to the same 8 week period in 2019)
(3) Has less than 300 employees. (I am a single member LLC)
(4) Was in business prior to 2020. (My business was created in 20XX)
The Small Business Administration contacted small business owners like myself this year and asked us to request the balance thereof of the $10,000 if we qualified.
I qualified but was denied the balance.
The reason: despite submitting my tax return on-time for the business year 2019, and fully paying my taxes (again, on-time), the SBA has decided to rely on the IRS to provide tax transcripts to "validate" businesses. Unfortunately the IRS failed to accurately convey to the SBA the tax status of my businesses because, 9+ months after receiving tax returns from some Americans (myself included) they had not yet processed those returns (they have since processed my return and the transcript is available).
The SBA is denying legitimate small businesses the balance of the $10,000 Targeted Advance grant that would significantly help them survive the coming months.
I am requesting that you contact the SBA and ask them to disburse the funds as allocated by Congress to legitimate law-abiding and tax-paying American small business owners who are hanging on by a thread right now. This money was allocated over a year ago for the purpose of providing small business relief, so it is long overdue.
My particulars:
EIDL application No. 33XXXXXXXX
Business name: Leonard Crane Writing Genius LLC
Business website: https://leonardcrane.com/
Business EIN: 12-3456789
Business phone number: 123-456-7890
Business address: 123 Crane Lane, Apt. 456 Cranesville, XX 12345
Business owner: Leonard Crane
I have sent the SBA all the supporting evidence needed to prove I have paid my taxes and that I qualify for the grant. So there is NO legitimate excuse for the denial.
SBA CONTACT EMAILS:
TargetedAdvance@sba.gov (main EIDL contact address)
TargetedAdvanceReevaluation@sba.gov (contact address for reevaluation of denied EIDL grants)
TO SUMMARIZE:
Under the Targeted Advance provision of the CARES Act of 2020 certain small businesses economically affected by the pandemic were granted $10,000 by Congress. The SBA was charged by Congress to disburse these grants but has denied most small businesses the money. Small business owners like myself need help convincing the SBA to play ball.
Thank you for your time. If you query the SBA about what is going on and why they appear so comfortable strangling small businesses across XXXXXX and the rest of the nation I am sure your efforts will be appreciated by all American small business owners.
Dr. Leonard Crane
XXXXXX@leonardcrane.com
https://leonardcrane.com/Now admittedly the letter is a little long, but presenting myself to the senator as someone who is just a little irritating is kind of the point. Your senator will not be happy to hear from you, but they DO read the letters (or at least their staff do).
At any rate, nobody from the senator’s office ever got back to me on this. They did not send me the requested privacy release form.
On the other hand, three days after sending off this letter I was contacted by a loan officer from the SBA.
Others have also reported seeing progress on their EIDL application right after firing off a letter to their senator. So there may be something to this tactic. However I would suggest you first try to move things along by reaching out to the SBA via phone or email if you are not seeing progress 6–8 weeks after applying. Then use the letter to my senator approach when you feel your application is going nowhere.
Before completing their evaluation of my request for reconsideration the SBA let me know they would need (in their own words) the following items:
● Front and back of a government issued photo (Clear and Readable) identification in color (Examples: driver’s license, passport, etc.)● Complete Business Tax Return Transcript 2019 — Tax Transcripts.● Business Void Check or Business Bank Account: The Bank Routing Number and Bank Account number need to be reflected in the document.● Proof of location of Business — Examples of documents are: Rental Agreement, Invoice of Public Services or Utilities.● Proof of Business — documentation of your business nature, establishment and location.● Business: Articles of Incorporation● Business: EIN IRS Letters — IRS letters of the assignation of the Employee Identification Number.
You can see that the SBA is very concerned you are able to prove you and your business are what you claim to be.
As it happened, I had all these forms of proof ready to go if called upon (you will too). So I was able to paste the bits and pieces into PDF files, attach those to my response letter, and off it went.
I have no idea whether or not the letter to my senator helped move things along. Although I can certainly imagine the senator’s staff bouncing my query to them over to the SBA and saying in effect “Please deal with this matter so we do not have to!” it is also possible they binned my letter and it was by chance alone that my SBA loan officer made contact just days later.
I am sure I will never know.
The important point is that being persistent seems to have paid off here and the SBA letter of approval I was waiting for finally arrived 5 days after I supplied the SBA with the requested proof of identity:
RE: SBA Targeted Advance Re-evaluation process for application: 33XXXXXXXX
Dear Applicant, Leonard Crane
We have reviewed your reevaluation request for the Targeted Advance. Based on our review, we have determined that you are eligible for the Targeted Advance. If you receive the Supplemental Targeted Advance invitation, complete the application and send me an email or call to review your case.
Respectfully:
XXXXXXXX
Loan Officer
Office of Disaster Assistance
U.S. Small Business AdministrationEight days later I received two emails from the SBA.
The first was an “Invitation to request Supplemental Targeted Advance”. If I qualified for it I could apply for the additional $5,000. But I did not qualify so I did not apply. At this point I logged into my SBA account portal and saw that the status of my Targeted EIDL Advance had changed from Approved to Funded.
The second communication came a few hours later and let me know my Targeted EIDL Advance was approved in the amount of $9,000 and would be deposited into my business bank account, where it landed a day later on June 24, 2021.
Note that just over one year passed between the day I applied for the first $1,000 of the EIDL grant and the receipt of the balance of the $10,000 which Congress had initially intended be disbursed to all small business owners sufficiently negatively impacted by the 2020 pandemic.
If you will be applying to the EIDL program for the first time you should expect your timeline to be MUCH shorter because you will be applying for the full amount for which you are entitled.
How to apply for your EIDL $10,000 Targeted Advance, and $5,000 Supplemental Advance
Now that I have educated you on most of the things which could possibly go wrong with your application (I am sure to have missed some) you ought to be able to consider yourself fairly well prepared to go ahead and apply for the EIDL Loan and the grant.
Just remember that to avoid unnecessary and lengthy delays in the processing of your application you really want to get your information correct the first time you fill out the application. So think carefully about it and do your homework ahead of time.
Some extra tips:
TIP #1: This is important for everyone who applies as the owner of a business without employees (i.e. you are self-employed and have no one on the payroll other than yourself). You are considered an employee of your business, so enter 1 (one) as the number of employees at your business, and not 0 (zero).TIP #2: The SBA will ask a lot of weird questions in the application as they try to figure out just what kind of person you are. Do not be intimidated by the questions. Just work your way through them one by one. Remember, more than one million other small business owners have filled out the same application. You can too.TIP #3: Once you have applied you will be sent an email asking you to create your SBA EIDL Portal Account. You will use a username and password to login to your account.
You are also going to be prompted to submit extra information from within your account under the Steps To Complete section (for example, you will need to fill out the IRS form 4506-T which authorizes the SBA to retrieve your tax transcripts).
When you have completed all the steps you will see the word Submitted appear as the Status for your EIDL Advance or EIDL Targeted Advance (one or the other may appear - in my account both do).
Until you see a submitted status nothing is going to happen with your application, because it will be deemed incomplete. So be sure to check into your account as often as you need to ensure you have submitted all the requested information needed to trigger that submitted status. If any clickable buttons remain in the Steps To Complete section then you are not yet finished with your application (the buttons become grayed-out and non-clickable once information is submitted - at least that was the case in my account).
After your portal account shows that your application is fully submitted it becomes a waiting game.
Do not be too impatient to receive a decision on your application. It may take 30 days or more, even if everything goes smoothly. The status of the grant in your portal will first go from Submitted to Approved (or Denied) once your SBA loan office has made their decision, then from Approved to Funded when the money finally hits your bank account.
To get started with your grant application, here is a link to the EIDL application form.
As an aid to what to expect when you go to fill out the EIDL application here is a detailed run-through video of the process from YouTuber and small business entrepreneur Aubrey Janik:
For more information about the EIDL program see this page on the SBA’s web site about the Targeted EIDL Advance and Supplemental Targeted Advance.
Good luck!
P.S. If you know anyone who runs a small business in the United States who might not have heard about the EIDL program please consider sharing this article with them. Odds are they will be very thankful you did.
~ // ~
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
If you found this article valuable, or you know someone who could potentially benefit from the information presented in it (i.e. a small business owner in the U.S.) please consider sharing this article. Thank you.
About the author of this article, Leonard Crane. Stellar human being. Spends entire days writing his articles so that complete strangers can benefit from his insights. Just love the guy.
I am also inclined to think he may be one of the better thriller novelists ever to grace the pages of Medium. Or if not, at least he has been decent enough to make his finest work freely available to all Medium subscribers.
Thus, if you enjoy rip-roaring tales of adventure in the style of Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, be sure to spend a couple of minutes checking out his Ninth Day of Creation.
Go on. I double dog dare you to go read my book and not fall in love with me. Seriously friend, it is never going to happen.
Other short but astonishing creations for you to consider from the startling talent that brought us Leonard Crane Writing Genius LLC:
