The Canadian Chamber announces $10K lifeline for 62 small businesses across Canada

The funding was designed to help small businesses across the country stay afloat and support their recovery efforts, paying salaries, retrofitting their workplaces and acquiring technology to adapt their business model. (Pexels photo)

(OTTAWA) – The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and Salesforce today announced 62 businesses received the $10,000.00 grant from the Canadian Business Resilience Network Small Business Relief Fund.

“Reviewing the applications was both heartbreaking and inspiring. We saw how seriously small businesses across Canada have been hurt by the pandemic, but we also saw how determined these entrepreneurs are to preserve their employees’ jobs and to serve their customers and their communities. Today is a happy waypoint, not an end point, and we won’t stop finding new ways to help Canada’s businesses reopen and recover. We’ll be with them every step of the way,” said Perrin Beatty, President and CEO, Canadian Chamber.

More than 1100 small businesses across Canada applied to the relief fund. The recipients best demonstrated their financial strain, how the business will use the grant to change or innovate, how the change or innovation will sustain the business’s recovery and allow it to prosper, and how the grant will support the role each business plays in their community.

The fund was managed by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and made possible through the generosity of Salesforce (NYSE:CRM). The funding was designed to help small businesses across the country stay afloat and support their recovery efforts, paying salaries, retrofitting their workplaces and acquiring technology to adapt their business model.

“It has been incredible to see the resilience coming from Canada’s small business owners over the last few months. We know it hasn’t been easy,” said Margaret Stuart, Canada Country Manager, Salesforce. “The applicants have further demonstrated what we at Salesforce already knew to be true – that Canada is rich with innovation and entrepreneurial talent. We’re hopeful that these grants will provide essential support to small business owners as they return to work.”

A complete list of the winners can be found here.

About the Canadian Business Resilience Network

Supported by the Government of Canada and led by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Business Resilience Network is a coordinated, business-led, inclusive campaign to help businesses emerge from this crisis and drive Canada’s economic recovery.

About Salesforce

Salesforce is the global leader in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), bringing companies closer to their customers in the digital age. Founded in 1999, Salesforce enables companies of every size and industry to take advantage of powerful technologies—cloud, mobile, social, internet of things, artificial intelligence, voice and blockchain—to create a 360-degree view of their customers.

For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Please visit www.salesforce.com/careforsmallbusiness to learn more and view our full suite of resources helping small businesses navigate the global COVID-19 pandemic.

About the Canadian Chamber of Commerce – Because Business Matters

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce helps build the businesses that support our families, our communities and our country. We do this by influencing government policy, by providing essential business services and by connecting businesses to information they can use, to opportunities for growth and to a network of local chambers, businesses, decision-makers and peers from across the country, in every sector of the economy and at all levels of government, as well as internationally. We are unapologetic in our support for business and the vital role it plays in building and sustaining our great nation.