by David Miree
For New Pittsburgh Courier
(NNPA)—Music professor Randy Gibson has helped generations of students find and polish their talent at his Gibson School of Music & Arts in Philadelphia, including singer Jazmine Sullivan and The Roots’ keyboardist Kamal Gray. This past year hasn’t been easy, but like countless other small businesses across Philadelphia and the U.S., Gibson has found a way to keep the school going, day after day, and the business is now celebrating its 26th year.
Owning a small business has never been for the faint of heart, and the pandemic coupled the typical stressors of business ownership with additional layers of financial risk and uncertainty. Yet somehow, in 2020 more than 130,000 Pennsylvanian’s found a way to open new businesses, up 26 percent from the previous year, according to the U.S. Census.
Bravery, resilience, and sheer grit are all words that come to mind. If small business owners like Gibson are willing to put it all on the line, while simultaneously employing nearly 2.5 million Pennsylvanians and 60 million Americans nationwide, how can we help them recover and rebuild even stronger?
The federal government took a momentous step in creating the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and later reconfiguring the program to ensure that Community Financial Development Institutions (CDFIs), sole proprietors, and diverse entrepreneurs have more opportunities to apply for the funding. This has allowed us at Wells Fargo to help thousands of small businesses across the state keep more than 44,000 Pennsylvanians at work through the program. A significant portion of this population has been comprised of smaller and diverse-owned businesses, with more than 85 percent of Wells Fargo’s PPP applications coming from companies with fewer than 10 employees, and 40 percent of our PPP lending going to small businesses located in either LMI or Majority-Minority census tracts.
Wells Fargo has also invested $50 million in Black-owned Minority Depository Institutions, providing capital and technical assistance for Black and African American small business owners, individuals and homeowners.
But we know more support is needed for the smallest of the small business owners, and especially Black and African American entrepreneurs who have historically faced barriers to accessing capital and other resources needed to sustain and grow their business.
Gibson School of Music & Arts is one of the many small businesses here in Philadelphia benefitting from Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund, a roughly $420 million small business recovery effort created with the gross processing fees earned from the bank’s participation in the PPP for loans made in 2020. A $5,000 grant from LISC Philadelphia, a CDFI and grantee of the Open for Business Fund, plus a PPP loan and adjustments to a virtual world has enabled Gibson to keep the lights on, the staff and teachers paid, and upgrade the school’s recording studio and concert hall on North Fifth Street.
As part of the Open for Business Fund, Wells Fargo is providing grants to nonprofits, which can then provide low-cost capital and training to diverse entrepreneurs struggling the most. We’ve already provided roughly $10 million in grants to organizations in Pennsylvania, with the majority of funding going to the City of Philadelphia to help businesses remain resilient and rebuild.
We know there isn’t a single program that will reverse the damage this pandemic has inflicted on America’s small businesses, and we must continue to work across government, private and nonprofit sectors to identify bold, rapid solutions. But our hope is the Open for Business Fund can serve as a blueprint for how private sector entities can work with nonprofits to help make economic opportunities more inclusive for diverse-owned businesses.
Wells Fargo has also joined forces with the Greater Philadelphia Financial Services Leadership Coalition, a consortium of more than 20 financial institutions which is setting up a $100 million fund earmarked for loans and grants to local minority-owned businesses.
Thanks to the tireless work of local nonprofits who serve small business, we are beginning to see relief reach owners who have weathered seemingly-impossible odds. There is still more work to be done, and we hope other companies and leaders in the private and public sectors will step in to join this critical effort.
(David Miree is Head of Consumer and Small Business Banking Diverse Segments, Wells Fargo)
GIBSON SCHOOL OF MUSIC & ARTS is one of the many small businesses in Philadelphia benefiting from Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund, a roughly $420 million small business recovery effort created with the gross processing fees earned from the bank’s participation in the PPP for loans made in 2020.
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