Since it was proposed to City Council on March 31, the SBAC has stayed ahead of its predicted launch schedule. At that meeting, Barbara Hathaway, the director of the Bee Cave Public Library, said the SBAC should be up and running within a couple of weeks.
The SBAC, which Bee Cave City Council officially approved during its April 14 meeting, is an innovative tool to help business owners experiencing catastrophic financial losses brought about by government shelter-in-place orders necessitated by the COVID-19 crisis, and Bee Cave’s library staff is administering the local program.
The SBAC’s website has online information on the Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loans Program, Small Business Administration Express Bridge Loans and SBA Debt Relief—all of which are SBA funding options.
Hathaway said on April 13 that so far no one has utilized the program’s resource connection tool, which allows small-business owners to submit questions that will be answered by staff from the Bee Cave Public Library.
Hathaway said she and her team partnered with a private company to build the website for the SBAC, and she hopes it will be useful for the people it was designed for.
“We have not had any emails come through the site yet,” she said. “Hopefully that doesn’t mean [small-business owners] are not using the resources on there.”
Hathaway also emphasized resources on the SBAC website that lead to other entities. Those include SCORE Austin, an organization that provides experienced business professionals who mentor small-business owners and also offers copious information on how to carry out assistance requests through SBA disaster relief programs.
Jim Grimsley was president of SCORE Austin for a two-year term until 2017 and is now a mentor for the organization, which helps businesses throughout Central Texas.
Grimsley said SCORE’s role in helping launch the SBAC has been to serve as a kind of model for the new website.
“What I was trying to do with Barbara [Hathaway] is make her aware of all of the resources SCORE has so she didn’t have to recreate the wheel,” Grimsley said. “I had sent her a bunch of materials that showed her the SCORE Austin website and told her to use as much as she wanted.”
Just like on the SBAC website, SCORE provides ample information for small-business owners seeking financial assistance through federal programs, as well as free mentoring, workshops and events.
Hathaway said it is important to understand the SBAC differs from SCORE with regard to certain types of assistance offered.
“We’re librarians, not business people, so we’ll do the best we can as far as pointing them to resources that we think will help them,” she said. “Particularly, [SCORE] is just a fantastic organization. They’re set up to actually pair people up one on one with a mentor to kind of walk them through the process.”
To access the SBAC, visit www.beecavesbac.org, and to access SCORE Austin, visit www.austin.score.org.
