Grant Awarded to Help Latino Businesses Impacted by the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the lives of many small business owners. The combination of lock-downs and COVID safety measures have been devastating to millions of businesses and their employees. Nonetheless, business owners are still trying to recover, retain employees, and return to the norm.
One of the avenues to assist with businesses with recovery is grant funding. For people from underserved communities, this can be especially meaningful. Latino business owners have been hit especially hard during this pandemic in many ways. The city of Holyoke, Massachusetts, recently received a $30 million federal grant. The city stated this funding will be used to assist and expand Latino business owners impacted by the pandemic.
How Will This Grant Help Latino Owned Businesses?
The acting Mayor of Holyoke, together with the Latino Chamber of Commerce, hosted a round-table to discuss the local needs of the community. By working together with the community, they discovered and addressed the needs of Latino business owners. During this meeting, businesses owners expressed their concerns regarding:
- Making the city more attractive for foot traffic from other places, which includes changes to things like:
- Cleaning up city streets of trash
- Closing of city streets for the promotion of large city-wide events
- Current issues with not having enough parking for customers
- Needing more crosswalks for public safety in certain areas
- Business owners also expressed a need to be able to expand outdoor summer seating areas to accommodate summer dining needs
City officials stated they are forming a committee to address these issues. The committee will work on a variety of ways to make the City of Holyoke more attractive for businesses overall. Hopefully, we’ll hear even more from this initiative as these discussions continue.
Last Minute Notes:
During these times, shopping locally whenever possible is just one way to support small businesses and the local economy. If you are a business owner, GrantWatch.com is a grant listing database that helps to connect businesses with grant funding opportunities. For more information, you can also visit the GrantWatch FAQ page. We wish you the best of luck with your grant-seeking!
About GrantWatch
A trusted resource since 2010. For more than 16 years, GrantWatch has helped nonprofits, small businesses, schools, government agencies, and individuals discover funding opportunities and navigate the grant process with confidence. Thousands of organizations rely on GrantWatch's extensive database of verified grants and funding resources to identify opportunities and secure support for meaningful projects.
Today, GrantWatch supports organizations across the full grant lifecycle through a single, streamlined platform. In addition to access to more than 11,000 active, verified, and human-curated grant opportunities, the platform includes a centralized Dashboard that serves as the command center for the GrantWatch Full Grant Lifecycle Platform, giving users a centralized view of opportunities, deadlines, research, and workflow activity across the 12-stage Grant Pipeline. Users also benefit from integrated tools including the AI Grant Finder, AI Grant Writing Tool, My Grant Calendar, Grant Alerts, Foundation Search, and Awarded Grant Search, helping move funding efforts from discovery to award and measurable impact.
GrantWatch, founded by Libby Hikind, is the author of The Queen of Grants series, including The Queen of Grants series: The Queen of Grants: From Teacher to Grant Writer to CEO and The Queen of Grants 2: GrantTalk Secrets for the New Era of Writing. Drawing on decades of experience in the grants industry, GrantWatch was created to simplify how organizations discover, evaluate, and pursue funding opportunities.
