The County of Ventura will begin accepting applications tomorrow for the second round of its $5,000 COVID-19 Business Assistance Grants. To be eligible, businesses must have annual revenues between $25,000 and $2.5 million. Businesses who previously received Ventura County Business Assistance Grants in the first round are not eligible. Please review the program flyer below for more information.

The application is entirely on-line at www.VCbusinessgrants.org, with applications being accepted beginning 8:00 AM on Wednesday, March 31, and through 6:00 PM on Tuesday, April 6. This is one of the easiest grant applications yet seen during the pandemic, plus the County has established a call center at (888) 405-1004 if you have questions or need assistance. The County is also hosting free webinars in both English and Spanish in the coming days; see the 'Free Webinar' section below for registration links.

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To move ahead to the orange tier, a county must have sufficiently low new COVID-19 cases. Based on current orange tier rules, Ventura County must have two consecutive weeks of a rate of less than 4.0 adjusted new cases per 100K population. For reference, here are the Ventura County case rates for the past month:

Today's report counts as the first of the two consecutive weeks of a new COVID-19 case rate below the 4.0 needed to move Ventura County to the orange tier. Note that the state has also announced that COVID-19 tier requirements will be relaxed when California has vaccinated 4 million people in its "health equity areas" (California is currently at approximately 3.5 million mark in this metric). When that happens, the requirement for orange tier is relaxed to 6.0 adjusted new cases per 100K population, which Ventura County has already achieved for two consecutive weeks. Thus, there are two possibilities for Ventura County to move to Orange Tier in the next week:

State health officials will continue publishing weekly statistics every Tuesday afternoon at covid19.ca.gov/safer-economy/. You can also search by county and business type to see how shifting to orange tier will affect your business.

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English: Wednesday, March 31, 5:30 PM | Register Here

Spanish: Thursday, April 1, 5:30 PM | Register Here

Learn how to apply for Ventura County's Second Business Assistance Grant Program for small businesses and non-profit organizations. Review the online application step-by-step, and get your questions answered live. Visit www.VCbusinessgrants.org for more program information.

Friday, April 9, 12:00 PM | Register Here

The Economic Development Collaborative will share the latest information and answer questions about EIDL, PPP, Unemployment Insurance, grants, and all currently available COVID-19 related business resources. Please register in advance; space is limited.