Six months to launch, and only Virginia has an SGO list on file. Here is why everyone else is waiting, and what to do with the wait.

There is a gap in the middle of the federal Education Freedom Tax Credit (FSTC / ECCA / §25F) that the roster counts hide. Thirty states have completed the formal advance election and appear on the IRS's official list of participating states, a count our own participation map now matches exactly. Kansas filed on July 7, and Kentucky, which joined by overriding its governor's veto, filed on July 22 and appeared on the IRS list on July 27, taking the official count to 30. New York has announced it will participate without yet electing in. Either way the program goes live January 1, 2027, and that launch date, not anything that happens this year, is what governs when a donation can earn the credit: §25F is a credit for the 2027 tax year, so no gift made in 2026 qualifies, even to an SGO that is already certified. Nobody is making a credited donation before January 1 regardless of how fast the states move. What is striking at the halfway mark is that the machinery meant to run the program from day one is not standing yet. As of early July 2026, with roughly six months on the clock, no state has opened a process an organization can apply through to be certified as a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO). Not one, including Virginia, which is the lone state that has actually sent Treasury a list: Gov. Youngkin named eight organizations by letter on January 9, 2026, without ever running an application round, and flagged that the list may change as federal guidance arrives. The election put states on the map; it did not switch the program on, because the criteria an application would be judged against, and therefore the certified-SGO list in all but one state, do not exist yet.

The reason is a deliberate sequencing choice at Treasury, and it is worth stating plainly so operators stop refreshing state websites waiting for an application form that is not coming this summer. The only part of §25F the IRS has fully built out is the state advance election, the Form 15714 filing a governor or designated official uses to opt a state in. The rules that govern SGO certification itself, who qualifies, how a state builds and submits its list, the deadline mechanics for the first year, were expressly deferred to the proposed regulations Treasury previewed on June 10 and said it expects to issue no later than the end of September 2026. Until those land, states have nothing final to certify against, and they are saying so, in writing, on their own pages.

The state agencies are unusually candid about the hold. Alabama's Department of Revenue has already published the six criteria an organization must meet to be certified, 501(c)(3) status, scholarships to ten or more students at more than one school, at least 90% of income spent on scholarships, no earmarking for named students, Alabama students only, and ALDOR certification, then states directly that it is “awaiting additional guidance from the Treasury Department” before finalizing deadlines. Nebraska's §25F page says flatly that it will post SGO forms and procedures only “after the final federal guidance has been published.” Mississippi's governor said the state would designate eligible SGOs “in the coming months.” Tennessee has assigned its Department of Education to certify organizations and submit the list, but has not opened a window. The pattern is identical across every participating state we checked: authorized, staffed, and frozen, all waiting on the same September document.

That turns a vague “sometime before 2027” into a sharp and predictable calendar. If the proposed regulations publish at the end of September and carry reliance for the 2027 tax year, as Treasury signaled they will, then the real certification sprint is the fourth quarter of 2026: states open applications, organizations apply and get listed, and each state submits its roster to Treasury, all compressed into the weeks before the January 1 launch. The states that did their homework early, Alabama pre-publishing criteria, Nebraska standing up an information page, Tennessee naming its certifying agency, are the ones positioned to open fastest once the gun sounds. The states still deciding who even administers the list (West Virginia adjourned without designating an officer) will be slower. For an operator, the state you organize in may determine whether you are certified in October or scrambling in December.

The mistake would be to read “certification is closed” as “nothing to do yet.” The wait is the build window, and almost everything an SGO needs is within an operator's control right now, independent of the September rules. The 501(c)(3) determination, the segregated account that will carry the 90%-of-income test, the annual-audit relationship, and above all the donor pipeline can all be assembled now, and the donor side is the one that decides whether a new SGO survives, because acquiring donors can cost more than the 10% administrative cap allows, a squeeze we covered in our look at §25F marketing costs. An operator who spends the third quarter building an audience it does not have to buy, and picking software that keeps intake, income verification, receipting, and disbursement inside the cap, walks into the fourth-quarter certification window ready to file rather than starting from zero. Our guide to starting an SGO lays out exactly what can be done before the rules finalize.

So the honest status of the program at the halfway mark is this: the yes votes are in, the plumbing is not connected, and the connection date is now legible. The end-of-September proposed regulations are the event that starts the certification race in every opted-in state at once; the first state to actually open SGO applications after that will be a genuine first worth marking. Until then, the work is preparation, not paperwork. Operators can track which states have opted in on the national participation map, see the current field in the SGO directory, and use the runway rather than wait it out.

Correction, July 29, 2026: this piece originally said no state had put an SGO list in front of Treasury. That was wrong, and our own Virginia page had the fact: on January 9, 2026, Gov. Glenn Youngkin sent Treasury and the IRS a letter naming Virginia’s initial eight Scholarship Granting Organizations, two in-state and six national, noting the list may be updated as federal guidance arrives. Virginia is the exception to everything below. What remains accurate, and is the point of this piece, is that no state including Virginia has opened an application process an organization can apply through, and that the criteria those applications would be judged against still do not exist. Virginia named eight organizations by letter; it did not run a certification round.

Update, July 22, 2026: Kentucky became the first state to open any SGO sign-up step, when Secretary of State Michael Adams filed a regulation opening the state’s SGO declaration process alongside completing Kentucky’s federal election. The distinction in this piece still holds: Kentucky opened a state-level declaration under its own HB 1, letting 501(c)(3)s get in line under state law, but federal SGO qualification, the criteria every state ultimately certifies against, still arrives with Treasury’s end-of-September regulations. Kentucky moved first on the part it controls; the national certification race still starts in September.

Update, July 29, 2026: Treasury’s entries in the 2026 Unified Agenda put a shape, if not a date, on the rules this piece is waiting for. Both §25F entries are listed as an interim final rule with accompanying temporary regulations, an instrument that takes effect on publication rather than after a comment period, and the temporary rules exist specifically to let states submit their SGO lists in the fall of 2026 before final regulations publish. If that holds, certification opens on a faster track than a proposed-rule-then-comment cycle would allow.