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Corrections,
Funding Commitments, and Appeals When your Form 471 has been successfully data entered, you will receive a Form 471 Receipt Acknowledgement Letter (RAL). This does not mean that your application has been approved. Rather it simply means that your application has made it through one stage of the review process. You should review your RAL to make sure that the SLD entered all of your information correctly, particularly the Service Provider Identification Number (SPIN) of your vendors and the discount rates and funding that you requested. Also make sure that your contact information is correct. If you need to make a correction, follow the instructions for faxing the correction to the SLD. You will not be able to increase the amount you originally requested, however. Information about the Form 471 RAL and How to Use It When the SLD knows how much the Federal Communications Commission will let it commit for a particular funding year, and it has finished reviewing some applications, it will begin issuing funding commitment letters. These letters inform you and your vendors of the amount you will receive toward the projects for which you requested support. If you were denied funding for some of your projects, it will explain why. It is important to retain this letter because it includes several numbers and key pieces of information that you will need when you proceed to get your e-rate funds. Because the SLD treats support for telecommunications services and Internet access differently than it treats support for internal connections, it is possible you will get a letter that commits funding for the first two categories but defers a decision on the third until the SLD knows for sure what the threshold for approved internal connections will be. Although the SLD tries to issue the funding commitment letters before the start of the funding year on July 1, it has not yet been able to do so. In fact, it may take it as many as 20 weeks or more to complete the process. When it begins issuing funding commitment letters, it tries to issue a series of letters each week and then posts details of the approved funding commitments on its Web site. If you don't understand a decision, or believe the SLD was incorrect when it rejected one of your contracts, you can write the SLD for more information, or you can appeal the decision to the SLD or the FCC. If you wish to appeal, your appeal must be delivered to the pertinent agency within 30 days of the date of your funding commitment letter. A failure to file your appeal within that time period is automatic grounds for rejection. Most applicants start with the SLD and then follow up with an appeal to the FCC if the SLD rejects their argument. You should not send appeals to both agencies at the same time. If your issue involves a substantive policy change, it should probably be directed to the FCC. Post-Funding Commitment Questions SLD Procedure for Post-Commitment Appeals Sometimes an applicant will discover that it needs to change the name of the vendor from whom it will purchase the e-rate eligible products or services. If the wrong SPIN number was specified for the vendor in question, or the SPIN has changed because of a merger or acquisition, this change can be accomplished by writing a letter to the SLD. Currently, the SLD will authorize other kinds of SPIN changes if the original vendor went out of business, refuses to participate in the program, or has failed to perform on its contract. The procedures that should be followed are outlined through the link below. SPIN Correction and Change Procedures The FCC is currently reviewing this policy and whether it should be made more flexible. |
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