RI Commerce to Launch New “Adaptation” Funding for Businesses During Coronavirus
Friday, October 02, 2020
Rhode Island Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor said that the state will soon be launching funding support to help businesses further adapt during the coronavirus — including making investments digitally.
“Just this week, we took to the board a proposal that they approved for [funding] for what we call the adaptation program — we want to help businesses pivot to do things they can do in this coronavirus market that they were not doing pre-COVID,” said Pryor, in an appearance on GoLocal LIVE.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“It may be that it’s a travel agency with the global freeze in travel can’t make it go, or a prom dress production or repair company, it could be a restaurant that says my revenues are down, I need to do a food truck — we are going to be providing grants of up to $50,000 to get a business back on track,” said Pryor.
“We’re going to have a strand of that program for digital adaptation, by which we mean a lot of the requests we’ve gotten over time are from businesses that want to upgrade their online presence, or have a new one for the first time, they need electronic payment systems which they haven’t utilized in the past, they want touchless payments even at the site itself. We want to help them with those digital adaptations,” he added.
RI Commerce is expected to formally launch the program in the coming weeks -- but Pryor encouraged businesses who think they might qualify to contact Commerce sooner to inquire.
Restore RI Grants Program Update
Pryor also provided an update on the Restore Rhode Island grant program for small businesses.
“If you are a small business owner, we know that times are very tough for you, and that these [Restore RI] grants are only some modest assistance,” said Pryor. “There’s a lot of things we need to do to help you. We need to keep the economy revved up, we’ve got to keep the economy open in order for it to be revved up, and we need to continue to offer financial assistance. So our hearts go out to you and the incredible struggles you’re going through.”
“We’re pleased that we passed the thousandth business mark. Actually, we’re now at the 1,100 mark of small businesses that have received these grants from our program,” said Pryor. “We’re over the $9 million mark, heading towards $10 million. The minority-owned business component of the payments is $1.5 million, and in terms of the number of businesses, we’re at nearly 20% minority-owned businesses — Black and Latino owned small businesses — which was our goal. We’re thankful to our outreach partners and that minority-owned businesses are responding as a whole.”
Pryor reminded viewers that the program has been recently expanded.
“[We’ve helped] 400 restaurants, 200 retailers - this is an expanded program,” said Pryor. “This started for businesses with between 1 and 20 employees, so if that was your old understanding, please set that aside. It is now 0 employees through 50 and for restaurants and caterers there’s no maximum — any restaurant or caterer is eligible.”
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