Winrock International announced Thursday that it had received a $500,000 grant to assist small businesses seeking loans from the Southern Opportunity and Resilience Fund in Arkansas and six other states.
The grant from the Visa Foundation will help small businesses wanting to connect with SOAR Fund lenders and whittle down a backlog of applications for assistance in Arkansas, as well as in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and West Virginia, Winrock said in a news release.
All small businesses in these states affected by covid-10 that have fewer than 50 employees are eligible. SOAR Fund loans are designed to reach the smallest of small businesses as well as those that have been historically underbanked, including those in rural areas and those owned by women, people of color and immigrants.
Calvert Impact Capital's SOAR Fund was created in early 2021 through a partnership of local and national community lenders to provide economic recovery loans to small businesses.
"The grant will help us better serve those small-business owners by helping them strategize, plan and document how they would use a SOAR loan," said Linsley Kinkade, Winrock's senior director of U.S. Programs.