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.