Nationwide — The third round of PPP funding will aim to guarantee that thousands of African American entrepreneurs will get a fair chance. This comes after the first two rounds disproportionately left out thousands of minority-owned businesses in underserved communities.
One new method that has been implemented to help ensure that more Black business owners will be included is that priority for the loans has been given to smaller, community-based lenders that are based in underprivileged urban areas.
At least one confirmed Black-owned firm, Diversity City Media, has partnered with several community financial institutions to launch PPPLoans.com, which makes it easy and simple for entrepreneurs to apply. In fact, the initial part of the entire process takes just about two minutes. Their goal is to help at least 10,000 applicants if not more.
The first two rounds of PPP mostly went to larger corporations and left out millions of minority-owned businesses that needed the help the most. But the third round will be much different.
According to Bloomberg, the SBA officially reopened the program on January 15th to traditional banks with assets of $1 billion or less and will allow all other banks to participate starting on January 19th. The loans are forgivable as long as 60% of the funds are used for payroll costs and other newly qualified business expenses.