Grants Grow to $6M for the Benefit of Small Businesses

Grants in excess of an additional $6 million in allocations to help San Diegans were announced by Mayor Todd Gloria. This grant money is part of Gloria’s effort to help the city resident recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also, it is part of the City of San Diego’s Small Business and Nonprofit Relief Fund program. This is in partnership with The San Diego Foundation. 

Moreover, in total, the grant program has, in fact, gone and provided relief to 1,514 small businesses and 166 nonprofit organizations in San Diego.

“In fact, today I am proud to announce that we have actually provided an additional $6 million in small business and nonprofit grants throughout the city of San Diego. Therefore, this amount is on top of the $6 million that we have actually announcing back in November of last year,” Mayor Gloria said.

Moreover, this financial assistance is part of Mayor Gloria’s “Back to Work SD” program, which is allocating $10 million for small business and nonprofit grants. The San Diego Foundation has provided an additional $2 million to support local nonprofit organizations. It is to increase the total program funding to $12 million. 

Grants – Local Partners

Also, the local partners include the County of San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce, Asian Business Association of San Diego, San Diego County Imperial Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and San Diego & Imperial Small Business Development Center. Moreover, they have helped connect these funds to local businesses.

Thus, the Women’s Museum of California was one of the grant recipients. The director of the museum, Felicia Shaw, has said she’s already used the money to hire two employees.

“[These] two positions are going to be really amazing and important to the organization. It would be to do community outreach, programming. In fact, these are young women of color who were unemploying before this happened. Therefore, so we are doing the work,” she said.

Also, the relief grants to nonprofit organizations do, in fact, range from $5,000 to $100,000. Ten nonprofit organizations received $100,000 grants, including:

Casa Familiar; ElderHelp of San Diego, Elementary Institute of Science; Media Arts Center San Diego; Monarch School Project; New Americans Museum and Immigrant Learning Center; Nile Sisters Development Initiative; Urban Corps of San Diego County; Wesley House Student Residence and Women’s History Reclamation Project with the Women’s Museum of California.