The Los Angeles County Workforce Development, Aging, and Community Services Department was allocated $60 million in CARES Act funding to assist the business community in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. $46.

Businesses/organizations may only apply for one of the following funds:

Pandemic Compliant Fund – Awards up to $5,000 per business to help businesses employing 1-100 employees, offset costs related to compliance with local health orders and recommended safety measures. Prioritizing funding awards to the most heavily disadvantaged communities in the County.

General EAG Funds – Awards up to $25,000 to businesses employing 1-100 employees that have been impacted by COVID-19 for a variety of eligible uses. Prioritization will be given to businesses based on CalEnviroscreen 3.0 scoring and to those businesses that have not received local CARES Act grants. Businesses not located in the City of LA will be prioritized. Prioritizing funding awards to the most heavily disadvantaged communities in the County.

Social Impact Funds – Awards up to $50,000 to support LA County Social Enterprises, Social Community Business Enterprise (CBEs) and B Corporations. Prioritization will be given to Social Enterprises. Others will be prioritized by CalEnviroscreen.

For Pandemic Compliant Fund

• Business has never been debarred from receiving funding from or contracting with the Federal government, the State of California or Los Angeles County.
• Must employ at least 1 and no more than 100 employees at the time of application.
• Businesses or non-profits located in Los Angeles County and registered by the State of CA can apply except for marijuana dispensaries, tobacco stores, liquor/wine stores, adult parlors and casinos.
• Businesses must expend funds between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2020.
• Business must self-attest that they will follow all state and local public health orders.

For General EAG

• Business has never been debarred from receiving funding from or contracting with the Federal government, the State of California or Los Angeles County.
• Businesses located in Los Angeles County and registered by the State of CA can apply except for marijuana dispensaries, tobacco stores, liquor/wine stores, adult parlors and casinos.
• Have been established on or before December 4, 2019.
• Between 1 and 100 employees at the time of application.
• Experience economic hardship, impact and need as a result of COVID-19 demonstrated by a decrease in net income between Q1 and Q2 of 2020 due to COVID-19 through attestation.
• Businesses must expend funds between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2020.

For Social Impact Fund

• Businesses located in Los Angeles County and registered by the State of CA can apply except for marijuana dispensaries, tobacco stores, liquor/wine stores, adult parlors and casinos.
• Business has never been debarred from receiving funding from or contracting with the Federal government, the State of California or Los Angeles County.
• 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(19) approval letter, if applicable.
• Have been established on or before December 4, 2019.
• Experience economic hardship, impact and need as a result of COVID-19 demonstrated by a decrease in revenue between Q1 and Q2 of 2020 due to COVID-19 through attestation.
• Businesses must expend funds between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2020.

First, based on the specific list or certification for your business/organization you were invited via email to apply. Second, we strongly encourage all applicants to review the eligibility requirements for each grant fund to ensure that you meet the requirements and determine if any of the grant fund opportunities is right for your business/organization.

Only businesses/organizations certified as a Community Business Enterprise, Social Enterprise, or B Corporation are eligible to apply for the Social Impact Fund. You can check the LA County vendor certification list to verify if you’re a certified social enterprise or community business enterprise: https://camisvr.co.la.ca.us/LACoBids/CertList/VendorCert

Pandemic Compliant:

• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Physical business modifications to allow for social distancing

General & Social Impact:

• Payroll for employees providing COVID-19 response (e.g. front-line health workers, social service providers, etc.)
• Mortgage payments
• Rent
• Utilities
• Inventory
• Supplies
• Cost of Goods Sold
• Employment training
• Cost of converting to on-line sales and/or delivery
• Liability Insurance
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
• Expenses for public safety measures undertaken in response to COVID-19
• Expenses for acquisition and distribution of medical and protective supplies, including sanitizing products and personal protective equipment
• Expenses to allow employees to work remotely/from home (remote access equipment such as phones, computers, printers, etc., software and corresponding licenses, etc.)
• COVID-19 public health precautions
• Expenses for food delivery to residents, including, for example, senior citizens and other vulnerable populations, to enable compliance with COVID-19 public health precautions.
• Expenses to facilitate distance learning, including technological improvements
• Expenses for property modifications to comply with safety guidelines.
• Nonprofit essential safety net services to County residents such as housing, food,
  • employment search, and transportation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Utilizing grant funds for any costs that are already covered by restricted funding sources and in particular federal or local CAREs Act funding.
• Please complete the line item budget below identifying how the grant funds will be spent. Satisfy any outstanding tax liens, legal judgements or be spent on any lobbying activities.
• Expenses for state share of Medicaid
• Damages covered by insurance
• Payroll of benefit expenses for employees whose work duties are not substantially dedicated to mitigating or responding to COVID
• Expenses that have been/will be reimbursed under any federal program
• Reimbursement to donors for donated items or services
• Workforce bonuses other than hazard pay or overtime
• Severance pay
• Legal settlements

Businesses/organizations will be required to upload all the required documents listed below. Unfortunately, due to the volume of applications incomplete applications will be disqualified. All documents should be clear and legible.

1. California Secretary of State – Certificate of Status (Active and Good Standing) in PDF format.
2. Valid and up to date Business license (if applicable). Pursuant to the County of Los Angeles (County) Code, any business, located in the unincorporated area of the County or in the cities of Malibu, Santa Clarita, or Westlake Village, that conducts a business activity that may have an impact on the health, welfare or safety of the public must hold a County Business License to conduct that activity. Some businesses may require more than one County Business License.
3. 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(19) approval letter, if applicable.
4. Legible, complete, signed and Federally accepted Federal business tax returns for 2019 or [if business tax returns for 2019 has not yet been submitted], business tax returns for 2018 and an IRS accepted 2019 extension.
5. January and August business bank statements from 2020.
6. Business owner(s) valid identification card(s) (e.g., driver’s license, State ID, CityKey ID, or consular identification card/matricula).
7. Completed and signed Form W-9.
8. Payroll records verifying your number of employees as of your application date.
9. Profit and Loss Statements for Q1 and Q2 2020 (only for those applying for the Employer Assistance or Social Innovation Funds).

Go to https://businesssearch.sos.ca.gov/ and search your business name. Click on your business name and then order your certificate for a cost of five dollars. Your certificate will be emailed to you by the Secretary of State.

Applicants will be notified via email 3-4 weeks from the date of their submission regarding whether their application has been approved or declined.

In accordance with guidance from LA County, payroll for employees is an allowable expense to mitigate the economic and health impacts of COVID-19. Payroll and staff costs can be used to mitigate business losses and interruptions as a result of COVID-19. Payroll costs may also include public safety, public health, health care, human services activities to respond to COVID-19. For non-profits and social enterprises this may also include employees engaged in front line humanitarian relief, such as contact tracing, testing, project roomkey, transitional shelter programs, food delivery, etc. Grantee is not allowed to use grant funds for bonuses or other payroll expenses such as:

• Expenses for the State share of Medicaid
• Workforce bonuses other than hazard pay or overtime
• Severance pay

NO and if an applicant applies for more than one fund, we will be notifying you at the end of this grant period and ask you to select one fund.

If you are a Sole Proprietor, you are allowed to apply for this Grant as long as you have one employee other than yourself. As a Sole Proprietor, we also recognize that you will not have a Certificate of Status as issued by the California Secretary of State. With that, please make sure that you complete and upload a valid, properly completed and up to date W-9. Its with that document that we will understand that you are a Sole Proprietor. Without that, we will deem your application ineligible.

Also, to ensure you can submit the application, you will need to upload a document in place of the Cert of Status, you should upload a pdf of a word document with a sentence or two that explains that you are a Sole Proprietor and therefore, do not have that documentation. In other words, a pdf needs to be uploaded for that question for the application to go through. Please let us know if you have additional questions.

If you are an multiple member LLC or Partnership and your only labor resources are your Members or Partners, we ask that you upload a valid and up to date operating agreement that includes your current list of Members or Partners.

This will impact your response to your employee count question and your requirement for uploading a payroll report.

If you are a business that has temporarily furloughed its employees, your employee count should include current plus furloughed employees (as long as your intention is to re-engage and start to pay your furloughed employees within a reasonable period of time). For your payroll documentation, we ask that your payroll report includes your furloughed employees.

LA Covid Regional Fund awards are funded by the CARES Act. When selecting applicants for awards, priority will be given to businesses and organizations that have not received CARES Act Funding. We still encourage you to apply for this grant.

Yes, January and August bank statements are required documents.

No, the bank statements will not affect your eligibility. They are exclusively used to validate and verify the legitimacy of your business. For those that are applying for grants from the general employer assistance or social impact funds, your revenue will be evaluated by reviewing your Profit and Loss statements for Q1 and Q2 of 2020.

We anticipate that funds will be dispersed in early November 2020. We will notify awardees of significant changes to this.

Applicants will complete the application and upload the required documents. If there are no errors in the application then you will be able to submit the application. When the application is submitted, a verification email will be sent to the business owner/leader email address that you entered in the application (NOT the email address that was entered to save work, unless the same). You will be instructed to click on a link and enter a pin number. You will then acknowledge and sign attestations and submit. You will receive one final confirmation email after this step is completed.

Yes, you should submit your full documentation for both tax returns and bank statements.

Yes, you must maintain receipts and documentation for five years. Receipts and source documents are not required for the application, but may be collected at a later date.

Your organization will not be eligible for the Social Impact fund if you do not already hold the certification(s) as specified in the eligibility requirements. You will not be able to become certified in time to apply to Social Impact fund if you do not already hold the needed certifications.

Please still provide the revenue numbers for Q1 and Q2, 2020 along with the required financial statements. With that, please also let us know about your anticipated year over year decrease in the provided comment box. Your description should reference your total revenue for 2019, an estimation for 2020 and a brief explanation as to why the year over year revenue decrease is related to COVID-19. Please also note that given the timing for the application, we expect that your activity for the first nine months of 2020 will already give you a relatively clear indication that you’ll be experiencing a year over year decrease in revenue. To be eligible for this grant, you must demonstrate or describe a decrease in revenue due to COVID-19.

For the required document uploads, please ensure the combined size of all attachments is less than 35MB. Attachments must be uploaded as either a PDF or an image file. If you are having issues with the size limit, please compress your file(s) and reupload.

There are several reasons why you may be receiving an error message. If you receive an error message, your application was not submitted. If you are unable to access your original application after this error occurs, you will have to submit a new application. You may be receiving an error message if you are not following the parameters listed below.

• File size cannot exceed 35MB
• Uploads must be image or pdf files
• File names cannot contain special characters
• Some upload sections require a file to be uploaded to submit/continue in application
• You may not upload more than one file per upload. You must combine the files into a single pdf, but please be double check file size

If, after carefully following the parameters below, you are still receiving an error message, please submit a screenshot of the error to bizdev@wdacs.lacounty.gov email with your name and organization/business name and our technical assistance team will help you.

For the purposes of these grants, Independent Contractors are not employees.

A confirmation email will be sent to the owner email (CEO/Executive Director) as entered on the application field, which may be different than the email used by submitter and used to save progress. Also, applicants should check their spam folder. If they are still not able to find the PIN/verification email, please reach out to bizdev@wdacs.lacounty.gov for further assistance. Your application will not be reviewed without going through the PIN verification process.

Unfortunately there is no way to edit the application once it is submitted.

We we are not able to reset passwords. If you are unable to access your saved application, you will unfortunately need start a new application.

You may not upload more than one file per upload you must combine the files into a single pdf, but please be double check file size, as your files may not exceed 35MB. If you are having issues with the size limit, please compress your file(s) and reupload.

For your convenience, you may speak with a representative at the Los Angeles County Disaster Help Center by calling (833) 238-4450 to receive additional Technical Assistance.

If you prefer to submit questions by email, you may send your request for additional information to Bizdev@wdacs.lacounty.gov.