The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund announced Jan. 4 that it is requesting all award applicants–excluding applicants for the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) incentive and the CDFI Bond Guarantee program complete a worksheet documenting compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The CDFI Fund requests that applicants complete a Title VI Compliance Worksheet once annually with their applications as well as for their prospective sub-recipients. The CDFI Fund will use the worksheet to determine whether award applicants are compliant with federal civil rights requirements, which is mandatory to receive federal financial assistance awards from the CDFI Fund. Completion of the worksheet is requested for the Bank Enterprise Award program, Capital Magnet Fund, CDFI Program, Native Initiatives and the Small Dollar Loan program.

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The CDFI Fund published a notice in the Dec. 13, 2021, Federal Register making a correction to the November 2021 notice of allocation availability for the calendar year 2021 NMTC application. The notice corrected the deadline to submit an amendment request to remove a controlling entity from allocation agreement(s) to March 21.

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The CDFI Fund transitioned its Awards Management Information System (AMIS) to Salesforce Lightning Jan. 14. The move introduced an update user interface. The CDFI Fund offers a user guide and a series of how-to videos to familiarize users with the new interface, available on its AMIS Training Materials page. The CDFI Fund initially planned to make the switch in mid-December 2021.

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The CDFI Fund posted updates Dec. 15, 2021, to its calendar year (CY) 2021 NMTC Program application FAQs. The updates answer questions raised during Nov. 10, 2021, webinar, including how to categorize Paycheck Protection Program loans, clarifying the “last 10 years” portion in a question about the duration of qualified low-income community investments and the type of information to include when quantifying environmentally sustainable outcomes. Other announced CDFI Fund updates include slides from a recent Native CDFI and Native community development entity webinar as well as a correction to a CY 2021 NMTC Program Notice of Allocation Availability deadline.

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The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released a list of 23 Community Reinvestment Act performance evaluations that became public in December 2021. Sixteen evaluations were satisfactory, seven were outstanding. The list contains national banks, federal savings associations and insured federal branches of foreign banks.