Santa Clara County is offering microbusiness grants to small businesses. Under direction from the County, the Enterprise Foundation will open the Microbusiness Grant portal this week for local eligible businesses to apply for Microbusiness grants of $2,500 each.
How to Apply
Applications will be available in English, Spanish or Vietnamese starting at 9 a.m. on Thursday, March 17.
You can access the applications at AccessSBDC.org.
Who Qualifies?
To qualify for one of the $2,500 grants, a Santa Clara County business must meet certain criteria.
The business must have been in business in 2019, have been negatively impacted by COVID-19, made less than $50,000 in total revenue in 2019 and have fewer than five employees.
Applicants’ businesses must still be operating or plan to reopen in 2022.
About the Microbusiness Grant Program
Last year, the State of California announced it would provide approximately $50 million in one-time grant funding to counties to help small businesses. In January, the County of Santa Clara Board of Supervisors accepted approximately $2.4 million from the California Microbusiness COVID-19 Relief Grant Program.
The money must be used to aid microbusinesses adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Small businesses, many of them mom and pop operations throughout Santa Clara County, have faced a tremendous amount of hardship over the last two years due to the pandemic,” said Board of Supervisors President Mike Wasserman. “We’re excited local small businesses can start applying for these needed funds to help mitigate the loss of revenues caused by the pandemic.”
The program is expected to provide grant relief to at least 875 microbusinesses in two phases. This first phase will award 500 grants to qualified businesses on a first-come, first-served basis. The second phase, which will follow, will remain open for at least 45 days and all remaining grants will be awarded on a lottery system.