FACTOR Tightens Reins to Speed up Application Process

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The Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings (FACTOR), has placed a "no tolerance" rule around supporting documentation being sent in later than when an application is received.

While previously in some cases, FACTOR has been somewhat lenient on applicants who send in mandatory supporting documentation after they send in or submit their application to FACTOR. President and CEO of FACTOR, Heather Ostertag says the intention of the crack-down is not to be nasty but to be fair to other applicants. "The Submissions department at FACTOR has at times spent days and days waiting for supporting documentation to arrive from applicants, sometimes even weeks. This holds the entire department up which in turn, delays applicants getting an answer. It's not fair to applicants who do submit their materials on-time with the application. Why should others have to wait longer for their application to be assessed simply because someone else decided to take their time?"

As well, matching documents to applications after the fact has put an added burden onto staff and has created many challenges for both applicants and FACTOR. It has significantly increased the margin for error.

FACTOR's new General Manager, Erin Kinghorn agrees and encourages all applicants to read the application thoroughly and to start the application process early. "Within the application it clearly states all of the supporting documentation that needs to accompany an applicants' submission. If applicants are unclear or have questions about anything, they should call the FACTOR offices and ask to speak with someone from the Submissions team".

In an ongoing effort to speed up the application process, incomplete applications and applications missing any of the mandatory supporting documentation required at the time of submission will be deemed ineligible.

This comes after applicants for a November 30th, 2007 deadline had to wait 4 months to get word from FACTOR on whether or not their application was approved for funding.

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