In light of National Small Business Week this week, we wanted to share an update on Google’s ongoing efforts to help small businesses grow. You may have caught a snapshot of our Grow with Google tools on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last night! If not, you can catch up here. In March, Google announced $800 million in support for small business COVID-19 relief and recovery including support for financing and new digital tools for small businesses.
Access to Capital
We launched a $180 million Grow with Google Small Business Fund in partnership with the Opportunity Finance Network, with a goal of supporting the short-term recovery and long-term financing needs of the small businesses hardest hit by Covid-19. Since then, we’ve delivered more than $60 million in relief financing to 17 Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) in underserved communities across the country. You can learn more about this effort here.
Digital Skills & Training
Digitally prepared small businesses were more resilient through the crisis, and anticipate better revenue outcomes, than businesses that aren’t. Google has been training small and local businesses for more than a decade, but we’ve expanded our resources and tools over the past few months including:
We trained more than 10,000 small businesses on digital tools through free virtual workshops via our new Grow with Google OnAir platform. We have partnered with national organizations, including Small Business Administration, USO, the US Black Chamber and the Association of Small Business Development Centers (ASBDC), to ensure our resources are reaching businesses across the U.S.
We help more than 7,000 local and national organizations - chambers of commerce, libraries, community colleges - train people and businesses on digital skills through our Grow with Google Partner Program. Since March, our partners have hosted more than 800 virtual trainings, and reached more than 24,000 small businesses.
We also expanded our Digital Coaches program to 20 cities across the U.S., including Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Miami, Austin and San Francisco. Our digital coaches focus on helping Black and Latinx small businesses reach new customers, thrive online and grow through hands-on opportunities.
Finally, one of the best ways we can help businesses at scale is through Google products. To ensure our products are helping businesses navigate the unique challenges and opportunities they’re facing, we launched a new hub for small businesses featuring tips and recommendations to help business owners stay connected during COVID-19, gave $340 million in ad credits to our existing small and medium sized AdWords customers, made our premium video conferencing tools free to everyone, and have launched new product features - for example, merchants can now add support links for donations and gift cards to their Business Profiles on Google. Through Grow with Google, we’ve connected more than one thousand small businesses with hands-on product coaching from Googler volunteers on topics like Ads, Analytics and Google My Business.
You can learn more about our tools for Small Businesses at Google.com/Grow. As always, if you are interested in discussing these resources in more detail, I am happy to set up a briefing.
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