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“$80 billion is given away every year in state and local incentives,” according to Atlas Insight Managing Partner Brian Corde. “Plus, the Biden administration has added $455 billion just in federal grants.”

In this investment landscape, manufacturers need all the help they can get finding, applying for and complying with these incentive programs. Atlas Insight, the NAM’s partner for its Incentives Locator, walks companies through this entire complicated process.

Last week, we talked to Corde and Kathy Mussio, Atlas’s other managing partner, about how companies select their new sites. This week, we’ve asked them what manufacturers need to know about incentives.

How do incentives work? Incentives come in two forms, Corde and Mussio explained. First is the type you automatically qualify for if you meet the requirements, known as statutory or as-of-right incentives.

• The second is the type that Atlas lends its expertise to—discretionary incentives. These programs offer funds and other pools of money that require business cases, negotiation, applications, and later, proof that a company has met its stated obligations (also known as compliance).
• These programs can take many forms. As Mussio put it, “Some states have programs that offer cash to help close the financial gap between two competing locations or increase a project’s ROI—helping to make a location more competitive in the financial analysis.”
• There are many, many incentives out there, the Atlas partners told us, and the most important steps are understanding which ones a company may be eligible for and helping clients quantify the potential savings.

What if you’re staying put? These incentives aren’t just for new facilities, Corde and Mussio emphasized. “A majority of incentives are given to companies staying in place,” Corde added.

• Companies can take a lot of actions to qualify for incentives—expand their workforces, buy new equipment, train workers in new technologies or add square footage for new production lines.
• “It’s our job to help NAM members identify their projects that could use incentives. Then we benchmark the incentives, then negotiate on the companies’ behalf, then lock the incentives down with the state or city,” Corde said.

What’s benchmarking? Atlas compares incentive offers from states and localities with the incentives awards that similar companies have received in the past, another way to help ensure that their clients get the best possible deals. There’s always room for negotiation, the partners say.

• Atlas keeps two databases: the first, a listing of all the incentives that exist on the federal, state and local levels, along with all the necessary forms, key contacts and any other requirements. The second database is a list of what other companies have received for similar types of projects.
• This allows Atlas to identify the typical dollar range that an incentive should provide—so a company knows whether it has been offered a good deal, and whether it should negotiate, or even go elsewhere.

How do you get the money? After companies successfully secure an incentive award, they must follow compliance schedules to ensure they keep receiving the funds as project milestones are met, while also retaining documentation in case of audit.

• The government offering the incentive typically requires filings to verify how many employees were hired, the wages they earned, even the employers’ contributions to health insurance premiums.

A lot to lose: “We are being conservative when we say that 50% of incentives awarded never pay out,” Corde said, all because companies fail to fulfill compliance requirements.

How can Atlas help? Atlas creates a “holistic incentive management for its clients, for the entire life of the incentive,” so that companies actually receive their money, the partners explained. It even helps with old incentives that remain incompletely documented.

• “When we retained Atlas, it enabled us to bring several one-off incentive agreements around the U.S. into a centralized process,” said a Schneider Electric spokesperson. “That made it so much easier for us to document our part of the expansion agreements and collect the incentives we were owed. Plus, their performance-based fee for this process has been best in class.”

How to get started: The NAM Incentives Locator is a service for NAM members, which provides a complimentary initial assessment call and preferred rates on contracted services, including an exclusive success-based fee schedule.

• Atlas is often “only paid for successful outcomes, either a confirmation letter or when the company receives the money over time. We will help you be successful and then benefit once you are,” said Corde.

The bottom line: “You need to have a strategy to go after these incentives, because your competitors are.”