Wells Fargo Donated $420 Million in PPP Fees. Here’s How It Helped 336,000 Small Businesses.

July 29, 2024 /3BL/ - In the early days of running a business, entrepreneurs have endless to-do lists. Even with all that’s on their plate, small business owners like Sara Agudelo say they’re often hoping for someone to see something special in their vision and offer a helping hand — “an opportunity.”

For Agudelo, that opportunity came in 2023 from the Miami Foundation via Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund.

“Now for my team, the way we do things in the business has changed completely,” said the owner of the Purple Orchid, a smoothie and salad chain in South Florida.

Agudelo wasn’t alone. She is one of more than 336,000 small business owners who received support to build toward their entrepreneurial dreams with the help of Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund.

By channeling all of the fees the government paid Wells Fargo to process Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans made in 2020 back into communities across the country, Wells Fargo created a roughly $420 million recovery effort to help small businesses not only weather uncertain economic times, but grow despite them.

In fact, the Open for Business Fund created or preserved more than 461,000 jobs, according to grantees in a new report outlining the fund’s impact (see sidebar).

Here are three ways the Open for Business Fund has helped small businesses across the country — likely right in your community.

1. The most in-need small businesses stayed open

The fund bolstered small businesses via grants, loans, and training from organizations in their communities.

Most of the supported businesses had less than $1 million revenue and 10 or fewer employees. A majority (72%) are owned by people with low-to-moderate incomes. Seventy-nine percent of small businesses reached by the program identify as minority-owned, and 53% as women-owned.

“[The small business owners we work with] have said, ‘I’ve never received a loan. I’ve never received a grant,’” said Azania Herron, who handled grant program outreach and communications for Foundation For The Carolinas, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based nonprofit that received a $20 million Open for Business Fund grant. “They felt like this [program] was designed just for them.”

The most-served industries were the kinds of local businesses that make up the everyday connective tissue of a community (2:37): restaurants, child care centers, and beauty salons.

The right amount of help went a long way. Most (83%) business loans and grants from nonprofits in the program were less than $50,000. This infusion of capital and business credit meant small businesses could keep employees, open a storefront, or buy equipment.

For example, Agudelo used her initial grant to buy a machine to make daily operations in her restaurants easier. She plans to use additional funding received as the down payment for a new production kitchen. She’s making business moves she never thought possible.

“Now we are dreaming and thinking about acquiring commercial real estate property for the business,” Agudelo said. “That’s just amazing.”

2. Entrepreneurs didn’t just get access to capital — they learned to thrive.

To find entrepreneurs in need of support, Wells Fargo relied on a network of small business organizations. All told, more than 200 community development financial institutions (CDFIs) and other small business serving nonprofits received funding to provide grants and loans to businesses or technical expertise in the communities they serve.

Entrepreneurs need more than money to thrive. They need know-how, too.

These community organizations — local business centers, universities, financial institutions, and many more — trained small business owners. More than 1.1 million hours of technical assistance set up entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.

The most in-demand support services were business planning, accounting, financial management, access to capital, and marketing and communications. More than half of the technical assistance was spent in one-on-one meetings with business experts. That meant the training was highly tailored, offered in multiple languages, and culturally relevant.

“We’ve had businesses that have never done balance sheets. We’ve had folks that never had profit and loss statements, although they were running a very lucrative business. This is their first time,” said Sabin Kim, a Los Angeles-based program officer with Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC).

“We say that [our Open for Business Fund grant] has been more than saving businesses. It has been saving lives,” said Dr. Gena Jerkins, executive director of the Houston Fund for Social Justice and Economic Equity.

3. The fund created a $2.1 billion ripple effect

What started out as roughly $420 million resulted in a $2.1 billion total economic impact, according to the report.

How’s that possible? Grantees leveraged their grants to garner public and private investment. Some CDFIs created completely new kinds of loans with the support. Others were able to restructure existing small business debt to help their customers take on new growth opportunities.

For example, the Veteran Loan Fund (a collaborative effort of a growing number of CDFIs) received a $1.5 million grant with PeopleFund, the Austin, Texas-based CDFI, acting as fiscal sponsor. Member CDFIs used this grant as loan loss reserves to deploy $15 million in loans and to provide 2,200 hours of technical assistance to veteran entrepreneurs across the country. In fact, $3.5 million of the $15 million that the Veteran Loan Fund leveraged with the grant came from Wells Fargo’s Community Lending and Investment group. Member CDFIs have continued self-funding additional lending to veterans while the group raises its second round. Since July 2021 to date, the group has deployed more than $60 million to 754 veteran entrepreneurs helping create or retain more than 4,400 jobs.

The Open for Business Fund continues to help small businesses

The economic ripple effect of Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund continues to make waves across the country’s small business ecosystem.

Wells Fargo donated $100 million of its Open for Business Fund to nonprofits in five markets — Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Los Angeles, and Miami — to specifically aid small businesses in acquiring assets like property and equipment.

This work is giving even more small business owners a helping hand to maintain and grow their business, just like Agudelo and her Purple Orchid restaurant chain.

Her message to other entrepreneurs? Seek out others who want to see you succeed.

“Try to take some time out of your day to find resources. There are people who want to help you and they want you to thrive,” she said. “If you take that step … you will have a lot of benefits you never thought you were going to get.”

Key takeaways

• Wells Fargo’s Open for Business Fund helped more than 336,000 small businesses and created or preserved more than 461,000 jobs nationwide.
• More than 200 nonprofits supported diverse, low-and-moderate income, and many other small businesses, which included restaurants, salons, and day care centers.
• The roughly $420 million fund created a much larger $2.1 billion impact by helping community organizations leverage their Wells Fargo grant to attract additional capital.
• Thanks to the fund, entrepreneurs received more than 1.1 million hours of highly tailored technical training to strengthen their businesses coming out of the pandemic.