The COVID state of emergency has ended,but small businesses still need help. Comcast’s RISE grants look to make a difference

The City Controller’s office estimated 63% of the city’s 28,000 small businesses were dealt a devastating blow when the state issued its stay-at-home orders in March 2020. Lives may have been saved, but businesses teetered on the brink of death.

“The pandemic was a tough time,” said Osayi Osunde, owner of Fitness Academy in Brewerytown. “One out of four fitness firms closed for good. When you are Black owned, it is always a challenge. The pandemic made it harder than ever.”

Comcast RISE was one of the programs that stepped in with cash and resources to help stanch the bleeding during the pandemic, and Osunde was one of the first recipients of a RISE grant in 2020.

“We survived and thrived though the effects are still there. COVID is still around,” he said, adding that 2023 has probably been his most “normal” business year since the pandemic began.

“We survived and thrived though the effects are still there.”

While COVID-19 is no longer considered a global or local health emergency and many pandemic-related business resources have disappeared, Comcast has not ended the program. Applications for the next round of RISE grants of $5,000 this year are due by midnight on June 30.

Romona Mercer, owner of Aunt Verlea’s Pound Cake Experience, lost all of her restaurant clients when the pandemic struck — which left her struggling to pay her monthly $600 rent for her commercial kitchen. In 2021 she was awarded a RISE grant, and she is just spending the last of the award.

“It helped us tremendously,” she said. “That [money] took us a long way.”

Small business is the city’s economic engine. According to the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia, small businesses employ the majority of the city’s workers, producing over a billion dollars in wage tax revenues. Comcast RISE, which stands for Representation, Investment, Strength, and Empowerment, has awarded 13,000 small businesses over $110 million in monetary, marketing, and technology grants.

“After this round of awards, nearly 1,000 Philadelphia business owners will be touched by the Comcast RISE program and helped in their recovery and rebuilding from the last few years so they can move forward in a stronger position than ever,” said Philadelphia Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr. who was at the grant announcement.

» READ MORE: David Bey’s business was hit hard by the pandemic. But with a Comcast RISE grant, he now hopes to hire assistants

“The last couple of years have been unsettling. We had to close our doors and learn to operate in a new normal just like every other school,” said Renee Harris, CEO of STEM Prep Academy, an independent preschool and kindergarten. She received a Comcast RISE Investment Fund Grant in 2022.

“The Comcast RISE Investment Fund grant was a lifesaver. It went directly to paying our dedicated staff who work so hard for our families,” she said.

Comcast will award 500 recipients in Philadelphia and four other cities: Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis, and Portland. In addition to originality and persuasiveness, Comcast RISE judges will be looking for “how their business contributes to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives and advances the economic health of their local community.”

Along with money, the grant award winners will receive business consultation services, educational resources, creative production support, and a technology makeover.

For an online application go to www.ComcastRISE.com