SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — As part of his efforts to help San Diegans recover from the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Todd Gloria announced Tuesday the allocation of an additional $6 million in grants. It's part of the City of San Diego's Small Business and Nonprofit Relief Fund program, in partnership with The San Diego Foundation.
In total, the grant program has provided relief to 1,514 small businesses and 166 nonprofit organizations in San Diego.
"Today I’m proud to announce that we have provided an additional $6 million in small business and nonprofit grants throughout the city of San Diego. This amount is on top of the $6 million that we announced back in November of last year," Mayor Gloria said.
This financial assistance is part of Mayor Gloria's "Back to Work SD" program, which allocated $10 million for small business and nonprofit grants. The San Diego Foundation provided an additional $2 million to support local nonprofit organizations, increasing the total program funding to $12 million.
Local partners – including the County of San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce, Asian Business Association of San Diego, San Diego County Imperial Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and San Diego & Imperial Small Business Development Center – helped connect these funds to local businesses.
The Women's Museum of California was one of the grant recipients. The director of the museum, Felicia Shaw, said she's already used the money to hire two employees.
"[These] two positions are going to be really amazing and important to the organization to do community outreach, programming. These are young women of color who were unemployed before this happened, so we’re doing the work," she said.
Relief grants to nonprofit organizations ranged from $5,000 to $100,000. Ten nonprofit organizations received $100,000 grants, including:
- Casa Familiar
- ElderHelp of San Diego
- Elementary Institute of Science
- Media Arts Center San Diego
- Monarch School Project
- New Americans Museum and Immigrant Learning Center
- Nile Sisters Development Initiative
- Urban Corps of San Diego County
- Wesley House Student Residence
- Women’s History Reclamation Project with the Women’s Museum of California
Many of the nonprofit organizations that were awarded grants expanded their services during COVID-19 and/or serve historically underserved demographic groups, such as immigrants and refugees, or homeless students and their families.
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