The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently announced $5 million in awards for its PRIME grant program, which funds training and technical assistance for disadvantaged micro-entrepreneurs.
LEAF is very excited to announce that we were selected as one of the 32 awardees out of 111 total applications. This is our second award from the SBA PRIME program since 2016. LEAF’s Technical Assistance Program (L-TAP) has steadily grown since its inception, reaching 34 low-income micro-entrepreneurs in our fiscal year 2018.
The financing will allow us to work closely with micro-entrepreneurs in the Greater Boston Area, including those interested in the worker cooperative model. Our Technical Assistance team will continue to use our expertise as a lending institution to help these entrepreneurs grow and stabilize their businesses and access capital. In addition, this year we have plans to launch a series of workshops in the form of “bootcamps”—we look forwarding to sharing more details on that program later in the year.
We are excited to keep you all updated on the progress of this great program! Thank you to the Small Business Administration for continuing to support our work—in particular Bob Nelson and his team at the Massachusetts District Office.