“Philadelphia’s small businesses are crucial to the health and well-being of our communities, providing tens of thousands of jobs for residents, along with countless goods and services,” said Sylvie Gallier Howard, Acting Commerce Director for the City of Philadelphia. “We’re proud to commit more funding to provide much needed relief to small businesses that have been struggling during the pandemic.”

Instead of launching a new program and application process, the Department of Commerce opted to provide additional resources to the existing statewide program coordinated by the PA Community Development Finance Institution Network because there was significant unmet need from the applications to the state program and this approach distributed the money more quickly. The CRF money will be used to make additional grants specifically to the most-impacted Philadelphia-based businesses—with a focus on those in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods.

This funding for business relief is in addition to the more than $13.3 million the City already distributed^[6] to more than 2,000 small businesses earlier this year through the Philadelphia COVID-19 Small Business Relief Fund, administered by the Department of Commerce and PIDC. Even with these various rounds of financial assistance, local small businesses are still in overwhelming need of more support—estimated at more than $300 million. The City will continue to advocate for the state and federal governments to match the level of local investment being made and to provide more flexible funding to help meet the needs of small businesses impacted by COVID-19.