Urban league offers small business loans
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
Philadelphia is part of a pilot program to offer loans to small businesses that can't qualify for bank loans.
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The National Urban League is using Philadelphia and Los Angeles as test beds for its new program. Darryl Vereen is Director of Development for the Urban League of Philadelphia. He says the program is designed to loan money to small businesses that don't have the best credit – or don't qualify in other ways.
Vereen: If you qualify or meet the criteria, we will put in an application through our entrepreneur center and they will base it off their gross receipts for the businesses, look at little bit at their credit and it will be an alternative opportunity for those entrepreneurs.
The loans range from five to $100,000 dollars – but are only for a one year time period.
At between 18% and 36%, the interest rates for the loans are higher than those of typical bank loans.