Bucks County’s Board of Commissioners last week awarded $4.8 million to small businesses in the county’s latest round of recovery grants.
The commissioners approved the grants on March 2 during their regular public meeting. Spread over 785 business in 46 municipalities, the grants vary in size from $2,000 to $30,000, and are intended to help businesses cope with the negative economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commissioner Chair Bob Harvie said in this round of grant awards – the first of the Bucks Business Recovery Grant Program – businesses that did not receive grant money through the Bucks Back to Work program were given priority.
“We’ve given out somewhere in excess of $30 million in small business grants,” Harvie said. “It’s something we wanted to make sure we were spreading out as much as we could.”
Just less than half of all applicants for Bucks Business Recovery Grants received grant awards through Bucks Back to Work, which issued grants in 2020 and 2021 totaling more than $26 million to some 1,500 local businesses.
Of the 945 businesses that applied last year for a recovery grant, about 6 percent were non-profits. Business Recovery Grants were awarded to both non-profit businesses and for-profit entities.
A breakdown of awardees by for-profit/non-profit status is not yet available, as grant awards are still pending to about 30 businesses.
A full list of recipients will be posted in the coming weeks to the county’s COVID-19 Economic Resources Portal.
To administer the grant program, the county partnered with the Bucks County Economic Development Corporation, Bucks County Industrial Development Authority and the Redevelopment Authority of Bucks County.
The Bucks Business Recovery Grants program is fully funded using federal money received through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).
Media Contact: James O’Malley, 215-348-6414, [email protected]