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Community Futures Continues to Offer Support to Local Business Community

December 31, 2020
By Bob Peters

Cornwall Ontario – In what has been a difficult and challenging year, an unprecedented number of government programs have arisen to provide support to businesses both large and small.

The Cornwall & The Counties Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC) has played an important role in helping local business owners navigate this new landscape.

With the support of FedDev Ontario, the CFDC disbursed approximately $2.2 million through a mix of COVID relief funding and programming in 2020. This resulted in 68 small businesses receiving the urgent funding they needed to keep their doors open, adhere to health and safety protocols, and keep people employed.

“This was administered over and above CFDC’s traditional funding and advisory services which were ongoing throughout the pandemic,” says Lesley Thompson, Executive Director of the CFDC. “We continue to provide advice and support, especially in light of the new lockdown measures.”

The CFDC also administered for the second year the Rural Innovation Initiative which supported companies with grants of $25,000 for the purpose of investing in innovation capital and investments in Industry 4.0. The total funding for the two-year program totals $750,000.

This year the CFDC launched a pilot program titled the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) with funding from the Rural Innovation Initiative Program and Rural Economic Development. This program helps make complex technology solutions attainable to small businesses so that they can leverage these tech tools and advice to increase sales and efficiencies. Through this program, CFDC has brought on four new Technology Implementation Advisors delivering a range of “deep-diving” tech related services to 21 businesses (to date).

All of the above work has resulted in the CFDC team growing from 4 to 11 in just a few short months. One key move was the addition of a COVID-19 Business Relief Advisor, to help local businesses navigate through the programs, advice, and solutions they need to access to manage through the impacts of the pandemic.

Please visit the CFDC website for more information on available funding and support.

About Cornwall & The Counties CFDC

Cornwall & The Counties CFDC, through funding from the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (Fed Dev Ontario) delivers a wide variety of programs and services to support community economic development and small business growth. It employs local staff and are governed by a volunteer board of directors, made up of residents representing the community.

Web: www.mycommunityfutures.ca
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CCCFDC/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/cccfdc

Business Reopening Toolkit

Cornwall Economic Development has put together a toolkit to help businesses reopen. The toolkit includes guidelines and a maximum occupancy calculator along with signs and posters that can be downloaded and printed: