This is likely to be the hardest weekend ever for millions of small business owners around the country. The SBA ran out of money on Thursday after just 1.6 million business had loans been “approved”—the vast majority of which have not been paid, according to COVID Loan Tracker. There are 30 million small businesses in this country. Even discounting for shell companies, that means tens of millions of small businesses got nothing from the program and are now facing doom. Forbes estimates the program only funded 5% of small businesses in the country.

PLEASE HELP SMALL BUSINESSES BY FILLING OUT OUT THE COVID LOAN TRACKER SURVEY.

Congress needs to urgently refund the program to help these businesses, but it is also worth noting that there were vast discrepancies in those who received PPP money. “Those who had pre-existing credit relationships with banks did much better”, says Duncan MacDonald-Korth, cofounder of COVID Loan Tracker. “And ‘big’ small businesses are much more likely to have those credit relationships”, he continued. Accordingly, COVID Loan Tracker found that over 81% of those who received PPP had pre-existing lending relationships with small banks! That means the millions of small businesses who fund themselves by making more money than they spend were boxed out of this program.

COVID Loan Tracker was started by small business owners Duncan and Rita MacDonald-Korth to help their fellow small business owners understand where PPP and EIDL money is flowing. We are empowering the business community and journalists with the data they need to keep the government accountable.