Over the past month, over 500 requests have been submitted by collision repair professionals asking CIF for financial assistance through the CIF COVID-19 fund that was established in late March. The initial fund, including early contributions by half a dozen generous donors, had been nearly expired in mid-April when CIF sent out a request for additional support from the industry.
As funds became exhausted, CIF had to close their website to new applications. And then, Tractable answered the CIF call for help in a very big way – by donating $25,000 to the fund.
Alex Dalyac, CEO and co-founder at Tractable, shared why he chose CIF for this donation. “At Tractable, our mission is to accelerate accident and disaster recovery across the world, with AI. But recently, the world has been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic.” Dalyac continued, “As a company, we feel we have the duty to do something to help those in need within our industry. In the collision repair sector in which we operate, as people around the world stay at home and drive less, repairs have declined by as much as half. With fewer vehicles in need of repairs, the outlook for repairers – and for their livelihoods – is at risk. Automotive repair professionals and their families are being affected, experiencing medical and financial difficulties.”
CIF immediately re-opened the website to accept new assistance requests, using Tractable’s donation to continue to provide assistance for new submissions. Michael Quinn, CIF Board President and SVP of Business Development at AirPro Diagnostics, expressed his thanks, “We are grateful for the generous financial contribution that Tractable has made to the CIF COVID-19 assistance fund at this crucial time. Many individuals are already directly benefitting from this donation.”
In our video interview below recorded last month, Quinn explained the background of the fund as well as the eligibility requirements.
“The COVID-19 fund is to assist those that have been impacted by the COVID-19 through unemployment, actual illness or, God forbid, someone who’s passed away. We know that this is an unprecedented event in our industry,” said Quinn. “We’ve responded to most recently, as you know, the Paradise fires in California, Hurricane Harvey in Houston, we go all the way back to Katrina. This event is unprecedented. We’re mobilizing, our all-volunteer board is mobilizing and our committee is mobilizing to assist those in need.”
“We’re assisting shop owners, as well as individuals within the shop. Our mission statement is collision repair professionals. That’s a broad brush from detailers, to CSRs, to anyone that’s related to collision repair professionals we will assist,” said Quinn. We’ve had many applications come in already with a lot of shops having to shut down operations temporarily or burning up their resources and assisting them and/or the people that have been impacted through unemployment.”