Winrock International’s Arkansas Women’s Business Center in El Dorado has been awarded a $200,000 grant to improve service delivery, training and support to women-owned businesses affected by COVID-19 through a project called Ascend.
The Resilience and Recovery Demonstration Grant comes from the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership program.
The AWBC is one of 14 centers in 13 states to receive a total of $2.7 million in grants.
“This funding will support existing women-owned businesses negatively affected by COVID-19,” Chauncey Pettis, director of the AWBC, said in a news release. “Through three accelerator cohorts, Ascend will increase the resiliency and business capacity of 30 Arkansas-based women-owned companies, leading to their ability to expand their businesses and recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19.”
She and the center were recently featured in an Arkansas Business cover story about how women entrepreneurs across the state struggle to access business capital.
Winrock Spokesman Chris Hancock said in a an email to Arkansas Business that, while resources were offered to assist small businesses with COVID-19 recovery, many micro-businesses and single-member LLCs lacked the readiness to benefit from extended relief programs.
The AWBC’s goal is to take a direct and intentional approach to assist those women-owned businesses caught in the “dangerous middle” of being too advanced to receive startup assistance and too junior to have financial reserves to withstand the ongoing pandemic, he said.
Hancock explained that many businesses selected to participate in the Ascend project will be crucial “main-street” businesses, and preference will be given to those companies that were denied or didn’t meet the criteria to receive federally funded Paycheck Protection Program or Economic Injury Disaster loans.
Ascend will provide women-owned businesses in Arkansas that have been viable for three or more years the opportunity to learn better record keeping, improve business capacity, and adapt with recovery and resiliency planning while gaining access to mentors. The project will help 10 companies over a 12-month period, and is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of this year.
“With this funding, we will support WBCs that have established innovative programming to increase outreach to aspiring and active women entrepreneurs nationwide,” Natalie Madeira Cofield, assistant administrator for SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership, said in the release. “We are proud to support organizations who have deep connections to small, diverse, and rural communities across the country and who understand their unique needs.”
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