Another Round of WA COVID Business Relief Grants Begins

These began last year, during the business lockdowns imposed by Gov. Inslee and state officials. There have been three previous rounds of Working Washington (WW) grants from the Department of Commerce.

This latest series of grants is for $240 million in aid for small businesses and other such operations. According to the Department of Commerce, apparently the equity lens is being applied to this latest round (see qualification 3 below):

• "Businesses must apply the grant award toward expenses incurred between March 1, 2020 through June 30^th, 2021.
• Commerce must take into account previous Working Washington awards distributed by the agency or affiliated partners. This means grant awards will vary. The maximum grant award will be $25,000.
• Grants must be equitably distributed statewide and to historically underserved and disadvantaged populations."

During the previous rounds of WW grants, we saw as many as 28K applicants (that was the number in December 2020). Of those, 7,800 ended up receiving funding.

While it may seem like a lot of relief since last spring-summer, in reality it's small. According to Business News Daily, using 2019 data, Washington state has just under 609,000 small businesses. This includes the 3-5 person expresso stand, to the plumbing outfit with several trucks and 10 workers; to the 100 person manufacturing company.

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From last December, those 7,800 businesses, on average, received between $4,500 and $12,500. As we mentioned last December, one local Tri City restaurant owner told us his rent alone is nearly $10K a month. When you compare that number of small businesses (609K) with those actually receiving grants, it's less than ten percent of all the operations.

However, with Phase 3 now under way, many businesses are able to hopefully now continue climbing out of the hole they were put in months ago.

In order to qualify for this latest round of grants, businesses will need to start applying on March 29th. A business must have an annual revenue of $5 million or less.  For a direct link to the application and information page, click on the button below.

 COVID aside, here's a look at some jobs that for a variety of reasons, could go away int the next few decades.