Just days after Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas announced the formation of the KC COVID-19 Small Business Relief Loan Fund, the non-profit selected to handle the program has already stopped accepting applications.
On April 1, Lucas announced the approval of the $500,000 emergency loan fund geared towards helping extremely small local business who often would not qualify for other available programs. To qualify for the program, KCMO businesses were required to have less than 20 employees and 2019 revenue of less than $750,000. The loans were to be for 6 to 12 months and were offered at a 0% interest rate.
Alt-Cap, a Kansas City noprofit, was selected to handle the program because of their ongoing work to increase the flow of capital to communities and businesses not adequately served by mainstream financial institutions. However by the end of the week, the organization was so overwhelmed, they were no longer taking applications for the program.
A message posted on their website read:
“We have received an extremely high volume of requests for and are not accepting new applications at this time. We know this is an extremely challenging and critical time for our small business community and our team is working hard to process and respond to all inquiries. Please sign up for our newsletter or follow @AltCapKC for announcements about future funding.”
KCMO’s contribution to the relief was supposed to be an initial contribution with Alt-Cap hoping to raise $5 million to assist Kansas City small businesses. Other organizations who have contributed to the fund include the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation; Michael and Leah Hoehn of Automated Systems, Inc. and Neal and Angela Sharma of DEG; PortKC; and AltCap.
While the Kansas City Missouri funds were to be targeted to Kansas City Missouri businesses, the fund was open to businesses across the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The broader fund dollars are available to businesses with up to $2.5 million in annual revenue, with applications available for 3-year, short-term loans up to $100,000 with no interest and deferred payments for the first 6-12 months.
Priority will be given to small businesses in retail, food service, arts and entertainment, hospitality, healthcare not directly involved in the COVID-19 response, fitness, personal service, and transportation. The KC COVID-19 Small Business Relief Loan Fund will provide flexible, patient capital for the area’s hardest hit small businesses.
No minimum credit score is required, and collateral requirements are flexible.
Additional information about eligibility and application materials can be found at www.alt-cap.org/covid-relief-fund.