Business and Finance

CDFI Fund Reminder: Annual Compliance, Certification and other Reporting Obligations

Published

12 months ago

September 18, 2023

Daily News Staff

Reminder: Annual Compliance, Certification and Reporting Obligations

Are you the Authorized Representative of either a Certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) or an organization that has received a Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) Award and/or Allocation? If so, don’t forget that in order to maintain your organization’s CDFI Certification status, you must submit the Annual Certification and Data Collection Report (ACR). Additionally, to ensure compliance with your Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement(s) you must complete and submit the annual report(s) specified in these agreement(s).

Failure to file required annual compliance and Certification reports or advise the CDFI Fund of certain Material Events may result in default and/or noncompliance with your organization’s Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement(s), or termination of your CDFI Certification.

The due dates to submit annual compliance report(s) vary by fiscal year end date and type of award, as well as by the specific terms within each organization’s individual Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement(s). The due date for Certified CDFIs to submit the ACR also varies by fiscal year end date. This reminder is specifically for organizations with Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreements, as well as ACRs, which have an upcoming report(s) due by September 30, 2023.

While the CDFI Fund is still currently not accepting NEW CDFI Certification Applications, Certified CDFIs are still required to submit an ACR in accordance with their existing ACR reporting schedule, as listed in the Awards Management Information System (AMIS), to maintain their Certification status.

How to Check Your Report Date

CDFI Fund Recipients and/or Allocatees: The due date(s) for your organization’s required report(s) can be found in the Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement(s) on the Reporting Schedule in AMIS. Please review the Agreement(s) applicable to your organization to check if you are required to report at this time and for additional information about annual reporting requirements.
All Certified CDFIs: The due date(s) for your organization’s Annual Certification and Data Collection Report can be found in the ACR Reporting Schedule in AMIS. Please review the ACR Reporting Schedule in AMIS to check if you are required to report at this time.

Extension for CDFI/NACA/RRP and NMTC Transaction Level Report Due Dates

All CDFI/NACA/RRP Award Recipients and NMTC Allocatees with a TLR due date between 8/31/2023 and 11/30/2023 have a new due date of 12/31/2023. This due date change was done so that the CDFI Fund could implement changes in AMIS to the CDFI/NACA/RRP TLR and NMTC Allocatee TLR. At this time, the Organization Name Look-up Capability in AMIS for the TLRs is disabled until the CDFI Fund completes its deployment later this year of new features to the TLR for the CDFI, NACA, RRP, and NMTC programs. Users may still access the geocoding Import and Template download at the bottom of the TLR page in AMIS. If you have any questions, please submit an AMIS service request with “TLR Upload Lockout” as the subject heading. The CDFI Fund will send out an email once the TLRs have fully reopened in AMIS.

Annual Certification and Data Collection Report Deadline Reminder

All Certified CDFIs are required to submit ACRs on an annual basis. CDFIs must submit their ACRs, in AMIS, within 90 days of the end of their organization’s fiscal year, unless directed otherwise by the CDFI Fund.

For the 2023 reporting cycle, all Certified CDFIs, regardless of their date of Certification, will be required to submit an ACR. Currently Certified CDFIs will NOT lose their Certification or be placed into a cure based on accurate analysis or responses to the 2023 ACR. However, an organization may have its Certification terminated if they fail to submit their 2023 ACR by the required deadline. Submission of the ACR on an annual basis is a requirement of CDFI Certification.

The AMIS ACR Reporting Schedule displays the due date for the ACR based on the organization’s fiscal year end, unless directed otherwise by the CDFI Fund. If an organization received its initial CDFI Certification after the 2023 ACR reporting cycle opened in December 2022, then its 2023 ACR due date is more than likely not within the 90 days of the end of the organization’s fiscal year window. The ACR Reporting Schedule section is located at the bottom of the Certification Related page in AMIS. Additional information on the AMIS Reporting Schedule can be found in the AMIS Training Manual – Annual Certification and Data Collection Report available on the CDFI Fund’s website. Be sure to check whether your organization’s fiscal year end is correct on your AMIS Organizational Detail Page.

Failure to file the required ACR will result in a loss of status as a Certified CDFI and may lead to additional sanctions for CDFIs that are program Recipients.

Advise the CDFI Fund of Material Events

As specified in the terms of your organization’s Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement(s), please remember that your organization is required to advise the CDFI Fund of an occurrence of a Material Event, which should be submitted via a Service Request initiated in your organization’s AMIS account. CDFI Fund Recipients with active awards are required to submit a Material Events form within 30 days of the occurrence of a material event. New Market Tax Credit Program (NMTC Program) Allocatees are required to submit a Material Events form within 20 days of the occurrence of material event, including all necessary supporting documentation with the Material Events form submission. Please refer to your Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreements(s) for guidance regarding submission of a Material Events form.

The CDFI Fund is reminding all Certified CDFIs, Certified CDEs, as well as program Recipients and/or Allocatees to review their recent organizational history to determine if a Material Events form should be submitted. Certified CDFIs that do not have an Award, Assistance and/or Allocation Agreement should report changes in their organization’s fiscal year end through the AMIS Service Request portal.

Submission of Audit Confirmation Requests

Hard copy submissions of CDFI audit confirmation requests for information should no longer be mailed to the CDFI Fund. CDFI Recipient auditors should now submit all audit confirmation requests via email to FMAuditConfirmations@cdfi.treas.gov. This includes but is not limited to verifications, validations, and confirmation of balances of financial assistance received from the CDFI Fund.

The CDFI Fund will respond to all audit confirmation requests by email, only. As such, requests must include an email address and instructions of where the CDFI Fund should deliver the requested information. Questions regarding the process for submitting audit confirmation requests can also be submitted via email at FMAuditConfirmations@cdfi.treas.gov.

Updates for CDFI Program Healthy Food Financing Initiative-Financial Assistance Award Recipients

All CDFI Program Healthy Food Financing Initiative-Financial Assistance Recipients (HFFI) are now required to enter aggregate HFFI data in their Performance Progress Report (PPR), just as they enter aggregate data for the other deployment performance goals. Keep in mind, HFFI Recipients must continue to enter individual HFFI data in the CDFI Transaction Level Report (TLR).

For More Information

The CDFI Fund has developed training materials to help users better navigate AMIS. All AMIS training manuals and information can be found on the AMIS Training Materials page at https://amis.cdfifund.gov/Training. Information and instructions on submitting annual compliance and certification reports, as well as Material Events forms can be found on the CDFI Fund’s website at the following links:

Small Dollar Loan Fund Program Compliance Resources and Reporting (Updated – August 25, 2023)
CDFI Program and NACA Program Compliance Resources and Reporting (Updated – August 25, 2023)
Rapid Response Program Compliance Resources and Reporting (Updated – August 25, 2023)
Capital Magnet Fund Compliance Resources and Reporting (Updated – June 14, 2023)
NMTC Program Compliance Resources and Reporting Updated – December 5, 2022)
Certification of Material Events Form
ACR Information (Updated – March 8, 2023)
AMIS Compliance and Performance Reporting (ACPR) (Updated – June 2023)
Certification Blackout Period Frequently Asked Questions (Updated – February 3, 2023)
AMIS Training Materials

If you have questions about the annual compliance and certification reports, or Material Events please submit a Service Request via your organization’s AMIS account. For more information about the CDFI Fund and its programs, please visit www.cdfifund.gov.

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Lifestyle

A college course that’s a history of the future

The course “Science Fiction as Intellectual History” explores how sci-fi reflects cultural thoughts and anxieties, using stories to analyze technology, future predictions, and evolving societal ideas.

Published

2 days ago

September 12, 2024

Daily News Staff

Sources of culture and thought can be found in literature and art that was considered lowbrow. Forrest J. Ackerman Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

Adam Jortner, Auburn University

Text saying: Uncommon Courses, from The Conversation

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course:

Science Fiction as Intellectual History

What prompted the idea for the course?

For most of its history, science fiction was a disreputable, throwaway genre. But sources of culture and thought aren’t just found in classic literature or in the writings of the great thinkers. They’re also in popular entertainment: movies, comics, pulp magazines, TV.

Big thoughts often come in chunks with labels like “The Future” or “Technology” or “Freedom.” And most ideas about these things are shaped by science fiction.

So in this class, my students explore how the theories of Charles Darwin, for example, are reflected in science fiction like “Jurassic Park,” “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” “X-Men” and “The Wrath of Khan.”

I’m lucky to be the third generation of professors teaching this course at Auburn. It’s an old staple here that I inherited.

What does the course explore?

I usually pick three big plot ideas from sci-fi: alien encounters, time travel and superhuman abilities. Then we trace the development of those ideas, primarily through American fiction.

Movie poster featuring a distressed young woman and a young man holding a torch trying to fight off approaching humanoids. — A movie poster for the 1960 film ‘The Time Machine,’ based on H.G. Wells’ 1895 dystopian novel of the same name. Pierce Archive LLC/Buyenlarge via Getty Images

Students might read H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” which was written in the 1890s and tells the story of the Eloi and Morlocks, post-human races from 800,000 years in the future; C.L. Moore’s secret visitors from the future in the 1953 novella “Vintage Season”; and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 escape to an idealized 1950s in “Back to the Future.”

These works all include mind-bending theories about what time travel might look like. But students also see how each of them tells a different story about the anxieties and obsessions of the times in which they were created.

For example, Wells’ novel is a vision of how thousands of years of Victorian class divisions lead to the evolution of a group of cannibalistic underground humans. In “Back to the Future,” Marty McFly leaves the dingy, broken-down 1980s for a clean and shiny version of the 1950s, one that looks much more promising than 1985. The film taps into the 1980s political and cultural nostalgia for so-called “simpler” times. (Of course, in their version of 1955, Biff and Marty never deal with segregation or Cold War nuclear panic.)

Science fiction offers a kind of film negative of history – a back door into what made people worried or scared rather than what was heroic. Sci-fi captures that fear and anxiety.

Rod Serling’s 1960 “Twilight Zone” episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is the story of how neighbors turn on each other when they suspect an alien invasion is taking place. It parallels the American crisis over desegregation and communist subversion.

As Serling concluded, “For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout of its own – for the children, and the children unborn. And the pity of it is that such things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.”

Why is this course relevant now?

New technology, along with endless predictions and prophecies about the future, bombard students.

It’s important to take a moment to step back. How is the way we talk about and use technology influenced by the way we’re trained to think about technology and the future? And how much do past visions of the future dictate the choices of the present?

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

Students often think technology has rules and it will follow those rules. But technology doesn’t work like that.

That’s both terrifying and uplifting, because it means that we can still create and imagine our future as we see fit.

What materials does the course feature?

I anchor the course with a series of novels; the list changes, but it always includes “The Time Machine” and Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1971 novel “The Lathe of Heaven.”

Beyond that, I try to pepper in a mix of pulp stories, TV shows, radio dramas, comic books and films. I assign the 1970s avant-garde sci-fi stories of Brian Aldiss and Joanna Russ, and underground literature from the 1980s, such as the graphic novel “Ed the Happy Clown.”

Smiling elderly woman with gray hair and a bowl haircut sits on steps surrounded by red flowers. — Writer Ursula K. Le Guin at her home in Portland, Ore., in 2001. Beth Gwinn/Getty Images

I shape the course like a traditional “great books” course – those that feature the works of intellectual and literary giants – by assigning a different work every week. I just have a different idea about what makes a great book.

We also spend a delightful week examining the economic and cultural history of “so-bad-its-good” B movies and late-night features, where I have them watch an episode of the Canadian sci-fi show “The Starlost,” considered one of the worst shows in television history. Sometimes you have to learn what not to do.

What will the course prepare students to do?

They learn to read and think. They learn that all stories have ideas and philosophies, whether simple or complex, wise or foolish.

I hope they learn to watch for nonsense in public debates about technology and the future – like how some people assume computer modeling for human language is the same thing as language – and keep an eye out for ideologies masquerading as action films.

I hope they learn to love an author they’ve never read before – and learn to appreciate how much reading and stories make life worth living.

Adam Jortner, Goodwin Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion, Auburn University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Our Lifestyle section on STM Daily News is a hub of inspiration and practical information, offering a range of articles that touch on various aspects of daily life. From tips on family finances to guides for maintaining health and wellness, we strive to empower our readers with knowledge and resources to enhance their lifestyles. Whether you’re seeking outdoor activity ideas, fashion trends, or travel recommendations, our lifestyle section has got you covered. Visit us today at https://stmdailynews.com/category/lifestyle/ and embark on a journey of discovery and self-improvement.

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Economy

Kroger Exec Admits to Inflating Essential Item Prices

Published

2 weeks ago

August 30, 2024

Rod Washington

Kroger Exec Admits to Inflating Essential Item Prices

Inflating Essential Pricing

In a tense federal courtroom in downtown Portland, the spotlight was on Kroger executives as they faced sharp scrutiny over allegations of inflating prices on essential staples such as eggs and milk. This courtroom drama unfolded against the backdrop of Kroger’s proposed national merger with supermarket behemoth Albertsons — a move Kroger claims is vital for their competitive edge in the retail market.

Outside, the drama resonated, with Kroger-owned Fred Meyer’s workers, represented by UFCW Local 555, actively striking across Portland. Their signs, a vivid display of protest against unfair labor practices, underscored a deepening divide between corporate profits and workers’ lived realities.

The union drew a connecting line, spotlighting Kroger’s courtroom admission as emblematic of a broader corporate disregard for both consumer and employee welfare. “Kroger’s exposed strategy of upping prices on basics like milk and eggs only intensifies our drive for equitable labor terms,” the statement from UFCW Local 555 forcefully articulated.

Central to the courtroom revelations was an internal company email, wielded by FTC lawyers, authored by Kroger’s senior director for pricing, Andy Groff. The email candidly noted that the retail price upticks on milk and eggs were “significantly higher than cost inflation,” laying bare a strategy to offload elevated costs onto consumers. This disclosure stirred a noticeable reaction among courtroom attendees, piercing the veil typically shrouding corporate decision-making.

Kroger countered, urging the email’s context be considered as isolated rather than reflecting their broader price strategy. “The email in question does not define our company’s enduring commitment to compress margins and competitively price our goods,” defended a Kroger spokesperson, emphasizing ongoing responses to erratic pricing landscapes since 2020 and maintaining that their pricing aligns competitively with industry leaders like Walmart.

Simultaneously, the ongoing strike at Fred Meyer accentuated community solidarity and frustration concerning soaring living costs, linking the in-court disputes to palpable systemic issues. “It’s as if there’s ‘big corporations’ on one end and ‘everyone else’ on the other,” voiced Justin Godoy, echoing a common sentiment among shoppers disillusioned by perceived corporate avarice overshadowing basic needs.

Understanding Inflation in Today’s US Economy: Causes, Effects, and Policy Responses

From the corporate side, Fred Meyer linked the strike’s timing to the pivotal merger, framing the union as pivotal in safeguarding the fate of unionized grocery stores across America. “The merger underscores our commitment to the future of unionized grocery stores,” the company declared, steering the conversation towards a favorable merger outcome.

With the strike poised to continue until the following Tuesday disrupting operations across 28 stores, and an impending decision on the Kroger-Albertsons merger, the issues of corporate stewardship, labor rights, and consumer advocacy hung in balance — unresolved yet deeply interwoven. Community backing for the strikers was palpable, and the reverberations from these intertwined disputes were set to resonate well beyond Portland, casting a long shadow over the national conversation around corporate integrity and economic justice.

Author

Rod Washington

Rod: A creative force, blending words, images, and flavors. Blogger, writer, filmmaker, and photographer. Cooking enthusiast with a sci-fi vision. Passionate about his upcoming series and dedicated to TNC Network. Partnered with Rebecca Washington for a shared journey of love and art. View all posts

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Lifestyle

Equip Your Student with a Leading Laptop

Published

3 weeks ago

August 22, 2024

Daily News Staff

Top computing options for a new school year

(Family Features) Preparing your student for a new year of education takes on many forms. From trusting them with heightened responsibilities and finding the right gear for their new hobbies to equipping them with the top tech for a successful school year, the back-to-school season is a critical time.

Simplify your shopping list with trustworthy tech that helps students make the grade with these recommendations from the experts at Qualcomm. Laptop performance is reborn with the Snapdragon X Elite platform, a powerful, intelligent and efficient processor that’s built for AI. With cutting-edge responsiveness, students can navigate demanding multitasking workloads across productivity, creativity and immersive entertainment – while getting up to multiple days of battery life on a single charge.

Find more education solutions at qualcomm.com/snapdragon.

Harness the Capabilities of AI

Level up your productivity and get creative with the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x, powered by Snapdragon X Elite. With incredible on-device AI performance and speedy Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, the possibilities are endless so you can create on the fly, anywhere you go. It’s not just smart – it’s your creative sidekick that knows what you need before you do. Built for AI, it streamlines your creative tasks with leading on-device intelligence capabilities.

Power Your Productivity

Built to work on the go thanks to its powerful performance and groundbreaking on-device AI travel assistant, the HP OmniBook X AI PC can help you unlock unparalleled productivity. Powered by Snapdragon X Elite and its intelligent, efficient processing capabilities, it features up to 26 hours of battery life to tackle notetaking, homework and beyond. Fuel your creative potential with super-charged performance that’s equipped with Wi-Fi 7 for seamlessly quick connectivity and a collection of AI tools and solutions to keep you running at your best.

Discover an All-New PC Experience

In the classroom and beyond, you can unleash power-packed performance and advanced AI with the Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge. Powered by the Snapdragon X Elite processor and built for Galaxy AI, the thin and lightweight laptop, which is available with a 14- or 16-inch screen, offers 16 gigabytes of RAM to transform how you create, communicate and play by providing powerful computing, AI performance and power efficiency.

Navigate Complex Workloads with Ease

With cutting-edge responsiveness and unmatched speed for navigating the multitasking required in today’s digital-first age, the Dell XPS 13 – featuring powerful, on-device Copilot+ AI – lets students effortlessly tackle complex workloads. Powered by Snapdragon X Elite and featuring premium audio and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, the strong, lightweight laptop is crafted with machined aluminum for an elegant, minimalistic design.

Combine Outstanding Performance with Ultimate Flexibility

Effortlessly shift from tablet to sketchbook to multiple monitors – whatever the school day requires – with the Microsoft Surface Pro 11 and its unique detachable kickstand design. A laptop reimagined, this flexible, powerful 2-in-1 provides AI-accelerated power, multi-day battery life and lightning-fast speed via the Snapdragon X Elite processor to keep up with students all day long, no matter where their studies take them.

SOURCE:
Qualcomm