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Technical.ly
10-06-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
A powerful Philly grant is fueling small businesses — but few know it exists
This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and Philadelphia Health Partnership. This article was created independently of the project's donors. This piece is also available in Spanish, thanks to translation services by Gabriela Rivera, digital communications manager at Resolve Philly. When Juan Jimenez first heard about a program that could offer his small business tens of thousands of dollars, he thought it was too good to be true. Without finding out about it through a friend, Jimenez, who owns Castillo Mattress and Furniture, could've missed out on a $25,000 grant from the City of Philadelphia. 'The biggest thing is funding, for most businesses,' Jimenez said. 'What you need to be able to grow your business or to make more money, it always comes down to money.' The money comes from the city in partnership with lender Greenline Access Capital, which gave Jimenez a loan for $25,000 with an 8% interest rate (on the low side) and helped him apply for a $25,000 match from the city's Business Lending Network Incentive Grant Program. While Jimenez and 113 other businesses have landed grants up to $35,000, the program relies on the financial institutions behind it to tell their clients about it, Kersy Azocar, president and CEO of Greenline, told — but there's no requirement for them to do so. 'We see these programs as a complementary financing component to small businesses,' said Azocar, whose firm primarily serves Philly's Latino community, 'that otherwise couldn't get what they needed if they didn't have these grants.' If lenders neglect to mention the program, however, business owners could miss out on the opportunity. 'Ninety-nine percent of the time, they don't even know this grant exists,' Azocar said. 'They've never heard of it. They think it's not real. They're like, no, I'm not gonna get it. They immediately self-select themselves [out].' She worries small business owners won't get available funding — and it's unclear how much has been granted to date. $1.1 million was originally allocated to the program by City Council, and about $2 million has been dedicated to the program to date, according to the Department of Commerce. When the city's Fiscal Year 2026 budget is passed, the expectation is more money will be added to the program. Tiffany Justice, director of small business resources at the city's Department of Commerce, declined to share how much money is currently available in the program's fund. How to land funds through Philly's microbusiness grant program Philly launched the Business Lending Network Incentive Grant in 2022 to expand an already existing program that simplifies the process for business owners applying for loans, according to Justice, of the Commerce Department. Since its founding in 2017, the Business Lending Network has grown to 30 institutions, including banks of all sizes, community development financial institutions and nonprofits. The later addition of the incentive grant allows businesses to get part of the capital they need as a grant from the city, instead of taking out the full amount in a loan, Justice said. Businesses have to be approved by the city to get access to the lending network and they must be working with an institution within the network to access the grant program. To qualify for the grant, businesses and their owners must: Be located in Philadelphia Have 51% of the company's ownership identify as part of a historically disadvantaged community Employ five people or fewer, including owners Earn less than $350,000 in revenue Comply with city taxes The Commerce Department's review board meets weekly to review applications from the lender partners. While the lenders do most of the initial vetting of these businesses, the city dives deeper into their budgets and plans for the funds, per Justice. 'We go over the project in its whole entirety to make sure that it is a sustainable business,' she said. The original funding for the program was allocated by City Council, she explained, and it continues to be supported by city and federal funding. But first, lenders need to make their clients aware of the funds While the city has the final say over who gets approved for the grants, lenders do most of the work to identify eligible businesses and help them apply for the program, according to Justice. Greenline Access Capital, which is an approved lending partner with the city, explains the program and the criteria to its clients, Azocar said. It helps clients fill out the application, submits the application to the city and actively advocates for the business if any issues pop up. What you need to be able to grow your business or to make more money, it always comes down to money. Juan Jiménez, owner of Castillo Mattress and Furniture This entire process requires a lot of trust between the business owners and the lenders, she said. Even if owners are open to applying for the grant, they may face language barriers or lack access to a computer or the internet to fill out the application. Greenline Access Capital overcomes that by walking its clients step by step through the process, per Azocar, but lenders aren't required to be that involved with their clients' applications. The only requirements for lenders are to contact businesses within five days of applying to the Business Lending Network, if they are interested in working with them. They are also required to keep the Department of Commerce up to date throughout the process. To continue being a part of the network, lenders must attend quarterly meetings to discuss increasing access to capital for small businesses, according to the Department of Commerce. Room to grow and recover from hardship Business Lending Network Incentive Grants have gone toward everything from storefront renovations to furthering business owner education and securing stock to keep up with sales. Martha Santos, owner of interior design and event planning company M Santos Interiors and also a Greenline client, was seeking a $5,000 loan, but was able to get half of it as a grant that she won't have to worry about paying back. Santos used the money, awarded in May 2024, to take business and event planning classes with the goal of offering better services to her clients, she said. 'I also learned how to basically manage my business,' Santos said. 'The clients see the difference in my knowledge that they can [trust me more].' The only things Incentive Grants can't be used for are to refinance existing debt or to directly pay salaries. 'It allows them to think big, to really expand their business,' said Azocar, of Greenline. '[To do] things that they wouldn't consider because they didn't have the money.' For Jimenez from Castillo Mattress and Furniture, who got the grant earlier this year, the money allowed him to start a stockpile of merchandise, buy a digital catalog kiosk and invest in advertising. 'Now that I had a lot of inventory, I was able to advertise greatly on those products that I had in stock,' said Jimenez, who launched his business in 2020. 'I was able to increase sales by a lot, and actually test how much customers actually can I get by advertising.' The funding also acted as a safety net when unexpected hurdles hit. In February, Jimenez's store was damaged after the store next door caught fire. But thanks to the grant and loan program, and insurance he bought to qualify for the program, Jimenez was able to move to a new location with a full inventory and get back on his feet. 'I absolutely believe that that grant is going to help me push my business to a lot higher,' Jimenez said, 'than I would have done on my own without that help.'
Technical.ly
07-04-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
How well do you follow Philly tech news? Take the quiz to find out
Philly's tech scene is constantly moving, with people, programs and companies coming and going. If you want to test how well you're keeping up with the latest news, take our first Philly news quiz. (Hint: Study up by reading our articles and weekly newsletter.) Scroll down to take the quiz. Enter your answers below, then submit and SCROLL UP, then hit 'View Score' to see how you did. Don't see the questions below? Take the quiz here. Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
Technical.ly
02-04-2025
- General
- Technical.ly
Philly's new Vision Zero dashboard shows where and how crashes happen
This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and Philadelphia Health Partnership. This article was created independently of the project's donors. A comprehensive new dashboard means it's now easier to track progress (or lack thereof) in Philadelphia's Vision Zero program, the citywide road safety initiative. The launch is part of Mayor Cherelle Parker's effort to modernize how the city presents data to residents, a project known as Philly Stat 360. Across all city agencies and departments, the first quarter of this year brought 12 new datasets and two updates, covering things like free meal sites, infrastructure projects and how police patrol the city. The Vision Zero microsite is by far the biggest open data update. In addition to general info on the safety initiative, it offers interactive maps showing where the city installed traffic calming measures like neighborhood speed cushions (the new, squared-off road bumps), locations of serious or fatal crashes over the course of a year and projects underway across the city's 'high injury network,' aka the 12% of Philly streets that see 80% of crashes. 'The Vision Zero dashboard shows how the Parker Administration is committed to using data to drive change,' said Kristin Bray, director of Philly Stat 360, 'holding ourselves accountable to reduce traffic deaths and injuries in Philadelphia.' The data reveals a very slight upward trend in pedestrian crashes, which plummeted during pandemic shutdowns — but 2023's count was still about 31% lower than 2019. Cyclist crashes, meanwhile, are hovering at 40% lower than prepandemic. Overall, the number of pedestrians or cyclists involved in crashes decreased by nearly a third, from 1,929 in 2019 to 1,309 in 2023. And there's been a 71% increase in average daily bike trips since 2019, according to the Vision Zero site. On streets with traditionally high injury rates, the dashboard shows progress from implementing new infrastructure. For example, since the city installed speed cameras on Roosevelt Boulevard in 2020, fatal and serious crashes have decreased by 21%, according to the data. Streets Department and PPD release the most datasets Of the 14 dataset updates, only one was automated and two received accompanying visualizations as the city sets out to update its process to be more seamless with more nonmanual systems and more dashboards to display information. The Streets Department and the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) released the most new datasets, at three each. Streets updated its tracking of street poles, street nodes and traffic calming devices. PPD's new releases include its citywide boundaries of districts, service areas and divisions. Here are all the other data releases and refreshes so far this year: More new data than last year, but far from the peak Philadelphia increased its total updates by 75% in Q1 2025 compared to the same time last year. While 2024 saw a notable dip from 2023 — 95 updates in 2023 versus 68 in 2024 — this quarter-over-quarter uptick could be a positive sign for the project's future. Despite the city's slowing enthusiasm for its open data project since its origin more than a decade ago, other stakeholders in the region are still pushing ahead. Volunteers at OpenDataPhilly have stepped up to collect the releases in one place to make them easier to sift through. Plus, in 2024, the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia received a $75,000 grant from Every Voice, Every Vote for its own data project using the City of Philadelphia's releases. The effort brings together public data, community-collected datasets and academic research all in one place to foster more collaborative visualizations and insights. The city established its open data program in 2012 after Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order. The initial goal was to publish city datasets in an open data portal, hire a chief data officer, establish an open data working group and appoint a data governance advisory board. The executive order also called for an open government plan. Within a year, the city achieved six out of 10 of its original goals. Automating its data system has been a recent priority for the city as it moves the information to a central warehouse to update it at a faster pace. Then, employees will be freed up to work on projects that present data in a useful way, Kistine Carolan, senior program manager with the Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology, previously told 'Creating an interactive dashboard where people can explore the data, particularly if there's spatial information related to where they live or where they're working,' Carolan said, 'really allows a broader audience to engage with this data and use it in meaningful ways.'
Technical.ly
17-02-2025
- Business
- Technical.ly
Philadelphia's open data effort may be losing momentum, but OpenDataPhilly isn't giving up
This article is a part of Every Voice, Every Vote, a collaborative project managed by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism with lead support from the William Penn Foundation, and additional funding from Lenfest, Comcast NBC Universal, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Henry L. Kimelman Family Foundation, Judy and Peter Leone, Arctos Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, 25th Century Foundation, Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation and Philadelphia Health Partnership. This article was created independently of the project's donors. This piece is also available in Spanish, thanks to translation services by Gabriela Rivera, digital communications manager at Resolve Philly. If you want to easily sift through years of Philly campaign finance data or see a map of all the nearest athletic fields, the city's open data visualization tools make it easy. However, a quick dig around OpenDataPhilly, one of the platforms where the city publishes its data, shows some obvious weak spots. Some sources get updated regularly, while others like Police Advisory Commission complaints haven't been touched in years. The city says it's working to make the data updating process more seamless with automated systems and more dashboards to display information. The people behind OpenDataPhilly, a volunteer-run platform that collects open datasets across Philly into one place, say the open data ecosystem faces slowing enthusiasm from the city as administrations change. 'There is essentially still a motivation for the city to maintain open datasets,' Robert Cheetham, 'godfather of open data' and OpenDataPhilly volunteer, told 'But I don't think there's the same kind of energy, commitment [and] resources.' The city established its open data program in 2012 after Mayor Michael Nutter issued an executive order. The initial goal was to publish city datasets in an open data portal, hire a chief data officer, establish an open data working group and appoint a data governance advisory board. The executive order also called for an open government plan. Within a year, the city achieved six out of 10 of its original goals. However, open data has not been as much of a priority for the last few mayors, Cheetham said, and the movement lost some of its energy. By 2019, some of these initiatives, like the OpenDataPhilly platform, remained strong, while others like the working groups and advisory boards had fizzled out. Lack of requirements and automation slow public releases The city hasn't given up on the program, though. It still has a chief data officer, Tim Haynes, and the program still has a system for updating its data with a focus on turning the data into digestible and usable resources, Kistine Carolan, senior program manager with the Office of Innovation and Technology (OIT), told Without a specific requirement for city departments to provide updates to data, though, there's a lot of variance, despite years of progress. Frequency depends on the capacity of each city department, Carolan said. 'The sharing of open data has become more of a habit for city departments as part of their process of having data that they're using internally,' Carolan said. 'That's really exciting because often we have been approaching open data with a more holistic model of sharing the datasets themselves.' Still, the system for updating open data isn't as automated as it could be, she added. To combat this, OIT is in the process of moving its central data warehouse to a new version of data integration service, Data Bridge. This shift will hopefully lead to updated data at a faster pace, she said. Leaving more time for staff to work on projects that present that data in useful ways. 'We're pretty excited about that process both for allowing fresher data publicly, but also for freeing our staff to be able to engage in more projects like these dashboards or applications,' Carolan said. OIT helps make tools like the Campaign Finance Dashboard, which comes from the Board of Ethics and presents visualizations of data from campaign finance reports. The dashboard also links out to the metadata and the raw version of that data on OpenDataPhilly. Another use for the data is 'finder apps,' which help people find resources around the city like primary care providers and recycling centers, Carolan said. The free meal finder app presents an interactive map where people can look up locations for food and meal sites throughout the city, for example. 'It gives an immediate resource to people who just want to explore the data for general trends,' she said. From datasets to dashboards that the public can understand Once OIT has updated data, staff publishes it to various platforms within the hour, Haynes, geographic information officer and chief data officer, told The data is published through Data Bridge to two software platforms where OIT hosts APIs, ArcGIS Online and Carto. Those platforms are posted to the OpenDataPhilly website, the city's metadata catalog, and the Philadelphia website along with its applications, Haynes said From there, the data is available for use by students, journalists, researchers and other residents for projects on anything from voter turnout maps to sharing information about gun violence in the city. OIT then works with city departments to turn their data into interactive dashboards and applications so it's easier to understand. Having open data available is important to transparency and supports city residents working on private data-related projects, but also to improve internal operations and make city services accessible, Carolan said. 'Creating an interactive dashboard where people can explore the data, particularly if there's spatial information related to where they live or where they're working, really allows a broader audience to engage with this data and use it in meaningful ways,' Carolan said. A focus on usability, not just transparency, for the project's next upgrade OIT put out a survey to residents in 2020 to get a better understanding of how people use the open datasets and what challenges they have. In response, it developed an open data dashboard in 2021 to track the metrics around datasets that have been shared publicly. 'You'll see a list of datasets and shows when they were last updated, and if there's a visualization available,' Carolan said. '[It] helps people get a better sense of when something was last updated. That was one of the major pieces of feedback.' The dashboard currently says there have been 552 datasets released, but this includes multiple versions of previously released data. There are also 142 automated datasets and 179 datasets with visualizations. Overall, the city's open data structure has become more 'holistic,' Carolan said. Not only is the data available, but they are working to present it in a useful way that will hopefully improve resident experiences. 'More and more we're being approached by departments themselves who want to build these dashboards,' Carolan said. 'They want to do that both to have transparency about their work, but also they are able to use it more.' Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
