Last week, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Treasury Department released the database of approximately 4.9 million Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. The release follows multiple calls from good government groups and politicians for transparency related to the $659 billion loan program created under the CARES Act.
Researchers can now search for the names of any loan recipient who received more than $150,000. The SBA and Treasury Department claimed that the loans over $150,000 accounted for “nearly 75 percent” of all loan dollars approved under the program, which allows for banks to make low-interest loans to companies and nonprofit organizations to handle economic recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Exact loan amounts are not included in the data that SBA has released. Instead, loan amounts are reported in ranges – from $150,000 to $350,000, $350,000 to $1 million, $1 to $2 million, $2 to $5 million and $5 to $10 million.
The SBA provides downloads of the data in comma separated value (CSV) format, which allows for conversion to Excel format, by individual state or data can be downloaded for all state and territories. In addition, several good government groups have converted the SBA data into searchable databases, including ProPublica and Good Jobs First, which runs the COVID Stimulus Watch site. In addition, news organizations in several different states have created their own searchable databases of PPP loan data.
Accessing the data from the SBA website requires following hyperlinks to the individual state or the collection of all data, which prompts a pop-up notification that you are leaving the SBA website to access sbs.box.com, an outside vendor that hosts the data. Once you access the Box website, the data is hosted in a folder, which contains a CSV file and PDF file with general details on the SBA’s PPP loan program. The CSV file can be opened with Excel and includes all loan data over $150,000 from each individual state or alternately you can download one file with all 56 states and territories. The data can also be accessed via databases built by good government groups, which does not require a download. Conducting a search of the ProPublica database, for instance, for the word “Rand” shows 34 loans – ranging from Rand Property Management To The Ayn Rand Institute: The Center For The Advancement Of Objectivism – with the name of business, city/state, business type (i.e. LLC or corporation), loan amount and date approved. Clicking through to any individual loan provides additional detail, including the lender, industry and number of jobs retained.