More than 500 small businesses shared in a $6.7 million boost thanks to a nonprofit program developed as the novel coronavirus was taking hold in March.

The Energize Colorado Gap Fund, as it’s called, awarded the money to 547 businesses either unable to participate in the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program or were still having problems after the plan ended. 

The application process drew requests from 5,600 businesses from across the state, whose requests totaled $135 million. Small companies could apply for a grant of up to $15,000, a $20,000 loan or a combined amount of $35,000. 

Denver County had the highest number of companies receiving funds, with 99. Arapahoe County was next with 69, and El Paso and Jefferson counties each had 32 awardees. 

Most of Colorado’s counties had a business that received a grant. More than a quarter of the businesses were from rural areas. 

To qualify, companies had to be sole proprietors, businesses or nonprofits with less than 25 full-time employees, with an emphasis on those which were majority-owned by Black, Indigenous, people of color, veterans or women. They also had to demonstrate how hard COVID-19 had hit their businesses. 

Denver’s Global American Academy checked all of those boxes. 

“We needed the funding badly because we had to continue to pay our overhead to keep our doors open,” the group’s founder, Dr. H. Malcolm Newton, a veteran, told Colorado Politics. The academy, an alternative high school, had to close its doors to students when the stay-at-home order was announced, but Newton had to keep paying rent on an empty building.

“When you’re paying your overhead and you don’t have any customers … it’s pretty bad,” he said. 

Newton said his $15,000 check came last week and he immediately deposited it to keep the lights on.

“It did save the school,” he said. “On the application, we told them we were helping minority students do the testing and achieve their high school diploma. People come to us because they want to improve on reading and math. Minority students miss those basic skills.”

Newton says he will use the money to catch up with his rent and hopes to have some left over for computers.

When the pandemic hit the Denver plant-based food company Let Thy Food, their main packaging supplier could no longer provide containers, so they had to find specialty jars from out of state at a higher price for large quantities, said co-founder Christin Finch.

“The funds were deeply welcome with much gratitude,” Finch said.”It came at an ideal and perfect time. The funding is helping us to navigate through industry instability.” 

As a result, Let Thy Food’s line of whole ingredient products, including its dairy-free Chile Con Queso, did not increase in price – whether at major grocery stores such as King Soopers and Whole Foods Market; or at smaller, independent retailers such as Nooch Vegan Market.

“If we hadn’t found packaging when we did, we would have stopped within a week,” Finch said. Instead, the 6-year-old company faced an uncertain future on the crest of increasing popularity. 

The grant money for the nonprofit Energize Colorado Gap Fund came from the CARES Act funds and Gov. Jared Polis allocated an additional $6 million via an executive order last month.

“Support for our small businesses is really one of those powerful motivators that brings folks together across the ideological and geographic divide to really show the commitment to so many hard-working Coloradans across the state,” Polis said.

Energize Colorado partners with the state of Colorado, including Colorado General Assembly and the Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, community development financial institutions and regional loan fund partners.

Money for the loans come from private donors including Anchor Point Foundation, Gary Community Investments, Gates Family Foundation, Larissa Herda, Pinnacol Assurance, Thiry-O’Leary Foundation, Wendy Lea and Zoma Capital.

According to a national report from Gusto, an online payroll and benefits platform, retail trade as well as leisure and hospitality are the two industries most vulnerable in the pandemic. In cold-weather cities, they account for 54% of employment. Gusto warned, “If small business failure rates approach those seen in the spring, an additional 20,000 firms could be forced to shutter.”

As cold weather closes in and the risks increase for Colorado small businesses, Energize Colorado’s Gap Fund could make the difference between a small company staying alive or shutting its doors forever. 

“The way things are going it looks like the state could shut down again. We have a new president-elect and the country could go the same way,” Newton said. “We’re just holding on knowing those kinds of situations may happen.” 

A second application period just ended on Oct. 28, and companies will be announced at the end of the year.