A new $54 million fund called the Wayne County Small Business Hub has been launched, and it will provide support to new and existing businesses with a focus on technical assistance.
The fund is a collaboration between the Wayne County Executive’s Office and the New Economy Initiative. The announcement was made Wednesday at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference.
The program will focus on businesses in Wayne County that have 50 or fewer employees. It will focus specifically on minority or women-owned businesses and micro-enterprises with 10 or fewer employees.
“The new economy in Southeast Michigan needs to be inclusive, it needs to support small businesses, which are often overlooked in some of these larger programs,” said Wafa Dinaro, executive director of the New Economy Initiative, during the press conference. “Today’s announcement is truly a step in that direction. This program is designed to replicate the work that NEI has done in the city of Detroit.”
Wayne County has 43 communities. Dinaro said the program will have a strong focus on Inkster, River Rouge, Ecorse and Romulus.
“All of these communities are historically underserved,” Dinaro said. “Not all of them have done very well during the pandemic, so we want to make sure that we provide people, potential business owners in these communities, with the resources they need to start a business, grow their business and grow. flourish.”
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Wayne County Executive Warren Evans said many small business owners don’t have much time to fill out grant applications because they’re busy running their businesses.
“There are a lot of communities in Wayne County that are communities in distress,” Evans said at the press conference. He said many family businesses work all day, from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. And even with a bit of funding, “What we’ve found is that a lot of these small businesses just don’t have the resources to be competitive.”
Wayne County will use $32 million from the American Rescue Plan Act and the NEI will provide $22 million in grants from the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, Ford Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, The Kresge Foundation, Ralph C. Wilson, Jr Foundation, WK Kellogg Foundation and William Davidson Foundation, according to a press release.
The money will be distributed over three years to nonprofit organizations that support businesses, including chambers of commerce, which will then disburse the grants to small businesses. Grant amounts will be determined on a case-by-case basis.
“These organisations, chambers, business support organizations will then connect small businesses with technical assistance, including accounting, legal, marketing and of course business plan development,” said said Dinaro. “The program aims to pave the way for wealth creation through entrepreneurship and truly make it more accessible to small business owners in the county.”
Dinaro also said that depending on the timeline for approval by the Wayne County Commission, she expects the funding to be available in late August or early September.
“I think what we’re really creating here is the relationship between philanthropic organizations and government, who together have enough expertise and enough money to make these things work and enough commitment to do it,” Evans said.
Dinaro said this fund has the potential to be a regional and national model for how to use American Rescue Plan Act funding.
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