Nonprofits given more time to apply for COVID-19 funds

Posted 12/29/20

A mad scramble to award hundreds of thousands of dollars to local nonprofit organizations within a matter of days has been slowed down.

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Nonprofits given more time to apply for COVID-19 funds

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A mad scramble to award hundreds of thousands of dollars to local nonprofit organizations within a matter of days has been slowed down.

Park County commissioners learned last week that they were being given more than $600,000 of federal COVID-19 relief funding — and they needed to dole it out to churches and nonprofit groups by Thursday or risk losing the money.

Commissioners quickly began spreading the word about the available funding and called a special Wednesday meeting to consider applications.

However, after initially threatening a veto, President Donald Trump decided to sign a package of COVID-19-related legislation on Sunday that, among other things, extended the deadline for states to spend their shares of the CARES Act funding into the new year. As a result, commissioners were able to scrap their special Wednesday meeting. They’ll instead plan out a less rushed process for distributing funds through the state’s new Community Charitable Relief Program.

The delay will give local churches and nonprofits “more time to submit their information to the commissioners,” said Susan Kohn, the commissioners’ executive assistant.

Not only that, but the extended deadline for the CARES Act funding also means more groups will be eligible for the dollars.

Under the state’s rules for the charitable relief program, as long as the Dec. 31 deadline remained in place, nonprofits were only able to seek reimbursement for free goods and services they provided during the pandemic (like food or clothing). Commission Chairman Joe Tilden had questioned whether the county would even get $100,000 in eligible applications on the short timeline.

For example, as of Monday morning, Kohn had received just three applications and two were incomplete. The third, from Muley Fanatic Foundation’s Yellowstone Chapter, was a $137 request to cover lost donations, she said — and that request would have been ineligible under the initial rules.

However, with the CARES Act deadline extended, the state will now allow organizations to seek reimbursement for donations and other revenue they’ve lost this year; for example, Tilden noted multiple groups had to cancel major fundraisers due to COVID-19 precautions.

The State of Wyoming has allocated a total of $12.1 million to the Community Charitable Relief Program, splitting up the funding across the state’s 23 counties and putting commissioners in charge of the distribution.

“Never has the work of charitable organizations been more important and they have shouldered additional responsibilities in so many ways,” Gov. Mark Gordon said in announcing the effort on Dec. 22. “This program will give county and tribal governments the ability to provide some more support to those organizations that they know have served the public and been impacted by the COVID-19 crisis.”

Park County received its $600,388.45 share on Christmas Eve. County commissioners are next scheduled to meet on Tuesday, Jan. 5, where they’ll “determine when the funds will be allocated,” Kohn said.

For more information, visit www.parkcounty.us.

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