Wisconsin Energy Independence Fund

General Application Instructions

1. The application is designed for you to enter information offline. When you first access the application, save the application to your local drive and close out of the on-line application. Open the saved application from your local drive and only enter information from there. The local drive normally is the C drive on Windows (Trademark of Microsoft Corporation) or the home drive on Mac OSX (Trademark of Apple Incorporated) and Linux. WHILE COMPLETING THE APPLICATION, IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU SAVE YOUR WORK ON A REGULAR BASIS.
   


2. Applicants may only apply by submitting the data electronically. Hard copy applications will NOT be accepted. You will need an Internet connection to submit the application data to Commerce.
   


3. You will need Adobe Reader version 8.1 or higher to use all the features of the PDF form. Adobe Reader is available for Windows, Apple OSX and Linux. The latest version, Adobe Reader 8.1 can be found at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html. The form has been tested in Windows and Linux.
   


4. The application does not allow for attachments. All Phase I information must be submitted as part of the application form.  Please refer to the process with questions.
   


5. Business plans and complete financial statements will be required from the top scoring Phase I applicants before they may proceed to Phase II consideration.  If you do not have a complete business plan, visit the Wisconsin Entrepreneur's Network. Business plan basics and business planning grant opportunities are available on this site.
   


6. Please fill in NA for information requested that is not available or not applicable.
   


7. When you submit the completed application data to Commerce, you will receive a message box that says the following "Cannot handle content type text/html." You can ignore this and Click the OK button to submit the data to Commerce. You should receive a confirmation email message within 30 minutes after confirming receipt of your application.
   


8. Certain fields in the form are "rich text fields." These fields allow for limited text formatting options which includes bold, italic, underline, superscript and subscript. You can copy formatted text to these fields, but only the formatting options mentioned in the previous sentence will carry over. In the application form, rich text fields will be identified by (Rich Text Field).
   


9. Text fields are limited to the space provided.
   


10. For those fields that require dollar amounts, you do not need to enter the dollar sign ($) in front of the number, dollar sign is automatically added. Also, in the fields that require dollar amounts you have the option of adding the comma between numbers, the commas will be automatically entered after you leave the field. For example, you can enter one million as 1000000 or 1,000,000, the commas will be added.
    


11. For fields that ask for percent (%) enter the percentage as a number without the percent symbol (%). For example in a field that asks for a percent value you would enter 30 instead of 30%.
    


12. Please direct project specific or eligibility questions to: David Jenkins (608-264-7651/davidj.jenkins@wisconsin.gov) at the Wisconsin Office of Energy Independence.
    


13. Questions on the application itself or the application process may be directed to: Tom Coogan (608-267-9214/thomas.coogan@wisconsin.gov) or Amy Cumblad (608-266-2688/amy.cumblad@wisconsin.gov) at the Wisconsin Department of Commerce.