The Hamilton Business Relief Fund is raising its goal. The fund was started by a subcommittee of the Hamilton Downtown Association (HDA) to provide cash assistance to local businesses being hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. A GoFundMe site https://www.gofundme.com/f/hamilton-business-relief-fund was established and an initial goal was set to raise $20,000. The fund has reached that benchmark and gone beyond.
According to HDA Director Claire Kemp, $20,000 was recently distributed to 21 different businesses.
“Every business that applied for help got some funding,” said Kemp. She said funding awards ranged from a low of 20% up to 100% of the applicant’s requests.
Kemp said that when they reached their initial goal of $20,000 they decided to keep the fund going and bump the goal to $40,000.
“Now we have received applications for over $50,000,” said Kemp, “So we are already thinking about bumping the goal a little higher as more requests come in.”
Kemp said that there are a lot of businesses being impacted by the emergency and the government funds have been slow to arrive and some funds have now run out.
“There are people out there getting desperate,” said Kemp. “Some, despite the federal programs, are just falling through the cracks. It’s makes this fund still really relevant.”
Some citizens in the Stevensville community have been paying attention to the success that Hamilton has had with its business relief fund.
The non-profit Project 59870 has decided to create a similar fund for Stevensville businesses that are struggling. The GoFundMe campaign called Stevensville Business Relief Fund https://www.gofundme.com/f/stevensville-business-relief-fund1
launched this week with an initial goal of $10,000. Anyone needing more information or wanting to donate offline or find out more about the grants can contact Victoria Howell, chair, at 207-8793.