A new, $8 million revolving loan fund for small businesses in Seattle and King County will be launched this month by NDC’s Grow America Fund (GAF) together with the City of Seattle, King County and the Seattle Foundation. GAF is NDC’s Small Business Lending Company, partnering with client communities throughout the U.S. to provide credit to small businesses.
The new Seattle-area program, to be known as the Grow Seattle-King County Fund, is being created expressly to expand economic opportunity for Seattle and King County residents through job creation and retention and to complement other existing community-based lending efforts.
The Seattle Foundation, in its first-ever Program-Related Investment (PRI), will make a $1,000,000 investment in the loan fund, and this PRI will be matched by $300,000 from the County, $120,000 from the City and $580,000 from NDC. The total of $2,000,000 will be leveraged with private bank loans, guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration, to create the $8,000,000 program.
The fund is a new element in NDC’s partnership with the City of Seattle and King County, where we have been providing development assistance and financing for a wide variety of community and economic development activities for several decades. Chuck Depew, an NDC Director in Seattle, says “We are pleased to add this new program to our work with Seattle and King County, and we are especially grateful to the Seattle Foundation for recognizing that credit for small business is critical to a strong and robust local economy.”