As protests continue to roil the nation, small businesses across the U.S. face three overlapping challenges: a pandemic, an economic crisis, and the explosive response to yet more killings of black people by police. Before the response to George Floyd’s death, the situation for small businesses — particularly minority-owned small businesses — was already dire and the urgency to respond to the clear economic devastation of COVID-19 is only becoming more serious. In effort to directly address these critical needs in the state of California, the California Small Enterprise Task Force (CASE) is working to mobilize $1 billion to provide low-interest debt financing to the small businesses that are essential to local economies and livelihoods.
Join this 60-minute session as we look at the state of California and specifically the new California Small Business Rebuilding Fund launched by the CASE Task Force as a case study for how a committed and diverse group of stakeholders can collaborate and design new solutions quickly — and how this model can be leveraged and replicated elsewhere.
The session will be an opportunity to hear from a small group of partners who are creating new structures, building bridges between existing institutions, and moving capital quickly and responsibly to rebuild and shape a more inclusive recovery. Speakers include:
For those who would like to learn more before this session, please check out the following articles about the fund as it's being built.
LA Times | Bay Area group raising $1 billion for small businesses hurt by virus, theft, curfews
SF Chronicle | High-powered Bay Area group aims to outdo DC in coronavirus help for small business