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EDGE grants are back for small, early-stage businesses in Delaware

Sophia Schmidt, Delaware Public Media

The state is starting another round of matching grants to help young businesses grow. 

The Encouraging Development, Growth and Expansion—or EDGE—grant program is back for a third year, and this time will help even more businesses. 

The Division of Small Business will award ten grants of up to $25,000 each to businesses that are less than five years old, with fewer than ten employees. It will also award five grants of up to $100,000 each to STEM-specific startups. 

This year the program doubled the number of non-STEM grants available, but reduced the amount of each. 

Jordan Schulties is the new Director of the Division of Small Business. She says the grants can be used for a wide range of projects. 

“They can develop a website, they can develop a marketing campaign to help attract new customers,” she said. “They can use this to prototype a new product.”

The grants are a three-to-one match on the businesses’ investments. 

Schulties says the grants have made a difference for young businesses in the past. 

“It’s capital that they wouldn’t have had access to previously, so to their small business it’s been really life-changing,” she said. “It’s allowed them to take on a project that really makes them competitive that they wouldn’t have been able to do previously.”

Applications will be accepted during the month of April. 

 

Sophia Schmidt is a Delaware native. She comes to Delaware Public Media from NPR’s Weekend Edition in Washington, DC, where she produced arts, politics, science and culture interviews. She previously wrote about education and environment for The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, MA. She graduated from Williams College, where she studied environmental policy and biology, and covered environmental events and local renewable energy for the college paper.
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