PayPal Provides $5M In Grants To Support Minority Businesses
PayPal Holdings Inc. provided $5 million in grants to support Black-owned businesses in the U.S. recovering from the economic impact of COVID-19 pandemic, the company announced Friday (Sept. 25).
The grants are part of the San Jose, California-based worldwide online payments system’s $530 million pledge made earlier this year to strengthen minority communities and fight for economic equality and racial justice.
“To rebuild and succeed over the long-term, it’s important for these businesses to have a strong ecosystem of support,” said PayPal CEO Daniel Schulman in a statement. “Through our grants to effective community nonprofits, PayPal is working to support and strengthen Black-owned businesses and catalyze the critical work these organizations are doing to sustain Black-owned businesses and communities now and in the future.”
The nonprofits include: 1863 Ventures, Association for Enterprise Opportunity, African American Alliance of CDFI CEOs, Baltimore Business Lending, Black Girl Ventures, Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives Micro Finance Group, EnrichHER, Expanding Black Business Credit Initiative, Grameen America, Kiva, MORTAR, Nebraska Enterprise Fund, Neighborhood Development Center, Operation HOPE, Opportunity Fund, Rising Tide Capital, Russell Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, Start Small, Think Big, Walker's Legacy and Women's Opportunity Resource Center.
In addition to the donations, PayPal employees volunteered to work with these nonprofits. The company has pledged to match $2 for every $1 employees donate and $20 for every volunteer hour contributed to the organizations, up to $500,000.
In an interview with PYMNTS, John Rainey, PayPal’s chief financial officer, said executives have learned to pivot amid the myriad of challenges this year with ground-level, tech-driven insights that move beyond tracking money flows.
He said to do so they must take the long-term view while being mindful of the intersection of finance, operations and the customer experience while finding new methods to measure and address pain points.
“CFOs get typecast more than other executives as being just debit- and credit-oriented,” Rainey told PYMNTS. “That may have been true some period of time ago. I think it’s very different today.”
A study conducted by PayPal and PYMNTS revealed that 40 percent of customers are shopping more digitally than physically.
Of those who previously reported plans to get back out there as soon as possible, about half have since reconsidered that proposition and decided they’d rather wait for a vaccine.