Supporting Struggling Small Businesses
The pandemic and Covid-19 mitigations began inflicting immense damage to many small businesses in March of 2020. Thousands of small businesses initially applied for Illinois Business Interruption Grants. While these grants helped some small businesses, approximately 80% of eligible small businesses which applied were not awarded a grant.
Subsequently, Illinois received over 8 billion dollars in American Rescue Plan Act funds. However, only $250 million were allocated for Back to Business grant program. These funds will likely be exhausted before many struggling and eligible businesses receive grants.
Illinois still has billions of federal funds and should replenish the Back to Business grant program with an additional $300 million. Our policymakers should not pick winners and loses when there is adequate funding to support the struggling small businesses.
House Bill HB5489 will allocate an additional $300 million for the Back to Business grant program. Please ask your legislators to support this legislation so that struggling small businesses can receive the support they need to recover from a pandemic, and associated mitigations, which they could not control.
SBAC Empower and Greater Roseland Entrepreneurial Circle
DONATE An Exciting New Program for Small Businesses… Starting this September, the Greater Roseland Chamber of Commerce and SBAC Empower will be launching an incubator and joint mentoring program dedicated to helping both prospective small business owners and established small business owners in the Greater Roseland area. Each applicant will be assigned a specific cohort…
Congrats to Patti & Her Team!
DONATE Congrats Patti! Patti is one of the recipients of the Best Networking Mentor award from Networlding! From their LI post: These mentors will now join a vibrant community focused on aiding new adults in kick-starting their careers. Building on the success of my 2002 networking contest, we aim to recreate that magic. Stay tuned…
Congrats to our Founder Scott Baskin!
DONATE Congrats Scott! Scott has been appointed to the Illinois Health Benefits Exchange Advisory Committee: a committee charged with helping implement the Illinois Health Benefits Exchange to provide affordable health care options for individuals and small businesses. This is due to Scott and the SBAC’s hard work passing a law about this back in 2023.…
