Filter: Small Business

To help the state’s small and midsize businesses get ahead, WEDC is providing them with access to the SizeUpWI tool, a customized platform that provides data-driven answers to questions about competitive performance indicators, local opportunities, and advertising hotspots.

The 2022 MARKETPLACE put the focus on diverse business owners with more than 600 people attended the event, which was held Dec. 6-7 at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee.

Across the state, more than 3,000 locally owned businesses and nonprofits are opening new brick-and-mortar locations with help from the Wisconsin Tomorrow Main Street Bounceback Grant Program. In turn, those businesses are energizing their communities.

For property owners and managers with commercial spaces to fill, it’s worth keeping an eye on local business incubators for potential tenants ready to ‘hatch’ and move into their own space.

Businesses and nonprofits considering moving into a vacant Wisconsin commercial space may be eligible for a $10,000 Wisconsin Tomorrow – Main Street Bounceback Grant through a newly created program.

Provided under the American Rescue Plan Act, the credits cover leave provided to receive the vaccination and/or recover from side effects anytime from April 1 through Sept. 30, 2021.

As we pass the one-year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wisconsin’s economy stands at a crossroads between the depths of recession and a return to healthy growth. We need to seize this opportunity for economic recovery by accelerating support for a cornerstone of our prosperity: small businesses.

Vaccines will help bring the pandemic to an end and aid economic recovery, and employers are a trusted source of information for their workers—so businesses play a key role in the vaccination effort.

Pre-registration begins April 30 for the program, which will provide emergency assistance equal to a business's pandemic-related revenue loss up to $10 million per business and $5 million per physical location.

Almost 55,000 Wisconsin small businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic received approximately $240 million last year through the We’re All In Grant Program—the largest direct-aid program for small businesses in WEDC history,Governor Tony Evers, WEDC, and the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR) recently announced.