Round Rock Cares Fund Helps 80 Businesses

It is always inspiring when teams coalesce around an initiative, define it, and execute with speed. That’s exactly what happened with Round Rock Cares. It was a conceptual idea on March 18. One week later the fund was announced and four founding contributors had made $100,000 available for help. Two weeks later the first support checks were in the mail. At the time of this writing more than $165,000 had been raised to support small business in Round Rock. We would like to express our gratitude to all who have made a contribution to Round Rock Cares.

The need at this moment is easily apparent in the numbers. In ten days, more than 140 businesses applied for assistance and already much of that resource has been deployed. The total amount of requests however, was over $900,000. The founders of Round Rock Cares never had any illusions that this fund would fully fill the needs of the small business community. It was intended to be a fast and flexible source of help while larger federal programs got developed and implemented.

Still, the breadth and scope of all the requests motivated the Chamber to make a second contribution of $15,000. Read a recent article about the fund from the Community Impact Newspaper here. 

Mayor Craig Morgan is to be commended for his leadership in bringing this program from vision to reality. It is important again to thank Dell Technologies for becoming a founding partner with a $25,000 contribution. Their team was thrilled to be involved in helping their own hometown.

The Greater Round Rock Community Foundation team not only made a $25,000 contribution, but is now receiving all donations and applications, processing all applications, following up on necessary documentation, and cutting checks to provide support. It is a huge amount of work for their staff of two and their volunteer leadership. This is a fantastic example of the importance of a Community Foundation and the powerful impact it can provide to a community. Thank you.

If you are able, please consider making a contribution at RoundRockCares.org. Anything you can consider would make a huge difference to one of Round Rock’s small businesses.

Finally, entrepreneurs are doing what they naturally do to break down barriers and make positive change happen quickly. Hot Dog Marketing, led by Chamber board member Jessica Scanlon, launched a t-shirt fundraiser to support Round Rock Cares. 100% of the purchase proceeds go to support Round Rock Cares. Please support this fundraiser if you are able.