CRM Giant Salesforce has announced it will dole out 500 COVID-19 recovery grants to small businesses across the United States with each grant providing $10,000 in support to cover costs such as salaries and replenishing materials.
Applications for the Salesforce Care Small Business Grants represent a total commitment of $5 million from Salesforce and will become available in the next week or two.
Meredith Schmidt, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Salesforce Essentials & SMB, said small businesses are what make our communities the places that we love to live and work in, and we want to do our part to help them survive this crisis.
Schmidt added that we hope these grants will be an influx of cash that could help with rent, salaries, materials or strategic shifts to make sure a business can still provide services and weather this storm. The Executive Vice President and General Manager of Salesforce Essentials & SMB added that we will be sharing the exact criteria for the grants in the near future.
The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) giant’s step to help small companies is of paramount value as the federal government struggles to get billions of dollars set aside for the hard-hit community to the businesses that require them the most.
The Salesforce Care Small Business Grants will be made available to small and midsize businesses to pay salaries, replenish supplies, or adapt their business models to address the challenges the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has created.
Salesforce also announced that it will provide free access to help small businesses engage and provide support to its customers remotely, as well as Tableau so they can quickly make data-driven decisions.
Last month, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced the CRM giant would not conduct any significant layoffs for at least 90 days during the coronavirus outbreak. He added that Salesforce will continue paying its hourly workers and hoping employees would do the same.
In the past, Salesforce donated $500,000 to the CDC Foundation’s Emergency Response Fund and $1 million to the University of California San Francisco’s COVID-19 Response Fund. The company is also matching employee donations to other aid organizations.
Schmidt also remarked that we know that small businesses can be some of the most innovative and resilient trailblazers, and we encourage everyone to support the small businesses in their neighborhood by buying gift cards, ordering curbside or takeout, and sharing your favorite small businesses on social media with the hashtag #SmallBizLove to spread the word.
