Torn between paying her family’s bills and sending back retainers to her clients, wedding photographer Jackie Fox was relieved to learn she had won a grant from the state intended for sole proprietor business owners who lost money as a result of Covid-19.
The Agency of Commerce and Community Development told Fox Aug. 4 that a check was on its way, so she refunded about $7,000 to people who had booked weddings and then canceled them as a result of the pandemic.
But the grant check didn’t arrive. When Fox called ACCD to find out where it was, she learned that the fund – which uses part of Vermont’s share of the federal CARES Act money – was exhausted, and she wouldn’t be getting the grant as told.
“I had been refunding money under the premise that I would be receiving this grant,” said Fox, of St. Johnsbury. She added she had tapped into a federal Economic Injury Disaster Loan, or EIDL, to pay the refunds. “I don’t have that kind of money lying around.”
Fox and other business owners applied for grants this summer through the Emergency Economic Recovery Grant program, which the ACCD launched July 6 to help tide businesses over during the pandemic. Sole proprietors are not eligible for the Covid-19 business grants program – the state’s largest – unless the business is owned by a woman or minority. For those two groups of sole proprietors, the ACCD set aside $5 million, divided roughly in half.
Forty-eight people were told their grant applications had been approved, but didn’t get checks, said Ted Brady, deputy secretary of the ACCD. He said the incident was caused by the program ACCD uses to review grant applications and pay checks.
The program “didn’t turn off when we hit $2.5 million in women-owned sole proprietors, and so the program allowed us to approve more applications than we had funding for,” said Brady. The program has funded 340 women-owned sole proprietors, with the average grant amount around $7,000.
Some of those in the wedding business shared their experiences on a Facebook group for wedding professionals where Talena Companion, owner of Premier Arts and Events, has been helping business owners learn about grants and other assistance since the crisis began in March.
“Many of them made financial decisions based on this approval” of the grants, said Companion. “It was a true lifeline.”
Companion said that as a result of the cancellations, many wedding businesses had to refund money that they no longer had in their bank accounts. “By and large, deposits are also working capital for us during the off-season,” she said.
Wedding photographer Geoffrey McLoughlin of South Burlington said he was told Aug. 4 he had been approved to receive a grant of $12,000. He called ACCD twice after the check failed to arrive. McLoughlin owns the Portrait Gallery with his wife, Wendy.
“It’s frustrating that they told me this money was coming, and never told me it wasn’t coming, and I had to call up and bug them,” he said. “They finally said, ‘I’m sorry, we ran out of money.’”
McLoughlin said he had already taken money out of his savings – thinking a check was on its way — by then to pay off some obligations.
“It’s not a huge, huge number,” he said of the $12,000 he expected. “But for a small business like mine it’s a pretty substantial number. It probably could have gotten me through two to three months of bills.”
The ACCD the week of Aug.17 emailed grant applicants to let them know the money for the women-owned business grants program was gone. It said if money set aside for minority owned businesses was left over, that would be used to pay for the grants for the women-owned businesses.
Of the $2.5 million for minority-owned sole proprietorships, about $2 million has been spent, Brady said, adding that he’s not confident there will be money from that fund available for the women-owned sole proprietors whose applications were approved.
“A lot can happen in seven days,” he said Aug. 24. “I can’t speak to the surety of that happening.”
If that money isn’t available, Brady said money from the $133 million the governor has recently requested from the Legislature in federal CARES Act money would be used first to pay the grant applicants who were approved but not paid.
“Our goal is to not allow this to occur again. We recognize this has put a hardship on these folks,” said Brady. “Our intention is to find funding to fund their applications because we want to help businesses; we made a commitment to these people in a way; and we think it’s the right thing to do.
“It’s going to take us a couple of weeks to figure out how.”
