Jessica Sattler, with the Regional Growth Partnership (RGP), recently came to Paulding County to present to local small business owners and leaders about an available business grant opportunity. The JobsOhio Inclusion Grant (JOIG) is available to businesses located in the zip codes of Broughton, Cecil, Oakwood and Paulding villages. In addition, the grant is available to female, veteran, disabled or minority owned businesses throughout the county. Fifteen businesses were represented at the meeting by 16 individuals.
The RGP team is the NW Ohio arm of JobsOhio. They help oversee 17 counties in northwest Ohio, including Paulding County, in economic development projects and grant opportunities. With the JOIG opportunity, businesses that are over a year old and provide business to business services with at least $100,000 in annual revenue (but not over $25 million) are eligible to receive a $25,000 reimbursable grant. An additional $25,000 is available to female, veteran, disabled or minority owned businesses that are located in the above-mentioned zip codes. There is a requirement of increasing full time employment, within your business by 10%, over the next three years. A business that has 10 or less employees would only need to increase by one full-time equivalent. Last year Paulding County had two qualified businesses that applied and both received this reimbursable $25,000 grant.
The event was hosted at the Paulding Eagles and organized by the Paulding County Economic Development office, in conjunction with RGP and the Paulding & Defiance OhioMeansJobs office. OMJ Workforce Supervisor Tiffany Rockhold shared several business partnership opportunities with attendees to make sure they were aware of the many options available through the OMJ office.
“The attendance of this event far exceeded what we expected, which shows that our business leaders are engaged and paying attention to opportunities our office is sharing,” stated Economic Development Director Tim Copsey. “The questions and discussions that evolved out of this meeting to both Jessica and Tiffany were informative. It’s great to see so many business leaders participating and thinking outside the box. We are now using the knowledge that we gained from this presentation to reach out and meet with other business owners that weren’t able to attend and share in this opportunity”.
If an Ohio business would like to learn more about this grant opportunity and qualifications, please reach out to your local economic development office for more information.
