Advertisement

Facebook Inc. plans to give $15 million in small business grants to companies in the Bay Area and is launching a digital gift card discovery platform to help restaurants and businesses across the U.S., the company announced Tuesday morning.

The $15 million targeting Bay Area businesses is part of the $100 million in small business grants that the Menlo Park social media giant announced last month in order to help businesses that have taken a financial hit from the coronavirus pandemic.

Half of the $100 million will be set aside for businesses owned by women, minority entrepreneurs and veterans, the company said.

“Within our overall U.S. (small and medium-sized business) grant investment, we are prioritizing 50 percent of grants to eligible minority, women and veteran-owned businesses due to the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 will have on these businesses, their employees and the communities that they service,” Facebook Global Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams said in a statement.

The new gift card platform provides businesses an opportunity to launch digital gift cards, so that customers can continue to patronize them even during coronavirus-related lockdown orders. Instagram, Facebook’s photo sharing app, is also working on offering gift cards, the company said.

In addition, Facebook is launching a set of fundraising tools that allow business owners to set up a personal fundraiser on Facebook for their business so that patrons can donate.

Facebook is also offering new tools for businesses to communicate service changes through their Facebook pages, such as online services, delivery, pickup and other changes. 

The tools allow businesses to easily indicate to customers how they have shifted their operations, as in local gyms offering fitness classes online rather than in person, for example.

More than half of more than 1,500 small business owners surveyed by Goldman Sachs last month said they would only be able to continue operating for three months or less, and two-thirds said they were uncertain about how to access and apply for emergency funding.


Source : https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/04/07/facebook-pledges-15m-in-small-business-grants.html