Loans help with Harvey recovery
Hurricane Ike shuttered Yolonda Henry’s catering business in Stafford for six months. When Hurricane Harvey hit nine years later and took out all her equipment and office space, she was determined to recover more quickly.
That would require getting a loan. She recalled meeting a loan officer for the San Antonio nonprofit lender LiftFund at a networking event, pulled out his business card and gave him a call.
Her company, Nusky’s Fine Catering, is now one of the esti-
mated 300 small businesses benefiting from LiftFund’s Harvey relief efforts. Goldman Sachs, through its small-business program, and the Rebuild Texas Fund, formed through Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, have provided LiftFund with $7 million to assist entrepreneurs hurt by the storm.
Of that, $5 million was set aside for no-interest microloans. The remaining $2 million will be used for community outreach and to offer business education services. LiftFund already has distributed more than $2.3 million to businesses along the Gulf Coast.
Henry got the maximum $25,000 loan and built a headquarters near downtown Houston and is renovating her kitchen back in Stafford.
On Thursday, Abbott and Heidi Cruz, a Goldman Sachs executive and wife of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, stopped by Henry’s new office space to recognize her and talk about the importance of supporting small businesses in the state.
“The success of the Texas model is built upon enterprising entrepreneurs who take the risk to open a business in the first place,” Abbott said.
More than 800,000 small businesses lie within the Texas counties that FEMA designated as disaster areas after Harvey, LiftFund reports. Of that total, 650,000 are self-employed enterprises, and more than 110,000 have fewer than 10 employees.
Henry has two full-time employees and hopes to hire five more by mid-February. It’s the latest milestone in an entrepreneurial journey that began in 2007 when she acquired a catering contract at her children’s school in Fort Bend County. Specializing in creole and Cajun dishes, she expanded her business to accommodate both small dinners and large corporate gatherings.
Henry plans to launch a training program for fellow small businesses in the food-service industry on-site at her new corporate office. Her planned new hires include an additional chef, a marketing representative and an office manager.
“I see storms as the beginning of something new,” Henry said.
To ensure that recovering businesses receiving loans not only reopen but also thrive, LiftFund is offering qualified applicants a comprehensive guide to assessing what they need and how they will invest funds to achieve their goals.
“We want business owners to know they have not been forgotten,” Houston market president Richard Gianni said.