Mark Cuban is Helping Minority Businesses Obtain Federal Loans Through the Paycheck Protection Program

Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has offered to help black-owned and women-led businesses that weren’t given the chance to take advantage of the funds made available from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to Afro Tech.

The entrepreneur, who headlined the 2018 BLACK ENTERPRISE Entrepreneurs Summit, took to Twitter last week to announce that he wants to try his best to connect black-owned and women-led businesses to a bank. He also shares that there is still over $100,000 left in the program.

If you are a minority or woman owned, or any company that believes you are eligible for a PPP loan, but have not been approved, please post an overview of your status here and I will do my best to connect you to a bank. There is still more than $100B left. Let’s get that money

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 20, 2020

Critics have been saying that the loan program has been mishandled, and Cuban agrees.

It’s time to face the fact that PPP didn’t work. Great plan, difficult execution. No one’s fault. The only thing that will save businesses is consumer demand. No amount of loans to businesses will save them or jobs if their customers aren’t buying.

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 17, 2020

Under this program, which was implemented due to the coronavirus, businesses that employ less than 500 workers can apply to receive loans of up to $10 million. If 75% of the loan goes toward maintaining pre-crisis payroll levels, the federal government will forgive it.

“The money was supposed to be quickly in the hands of small businesses so they wouldn’t have the need to lay anybody off,” he told FOX Business in an interview last week. “And then hopefully, within eight weeks, everybody thought we might be back to normal. But because that money wasn’t funded quickly enough, we saw what happened in terms of layoffs.”

Cuban is encouraging people to either apply or contact a business that may need the loan in the tweet below:

If you know a business that is in that situation, please help them connect here. There are plenty of banks that want to earn their 5% . Let’s connect them ! @JillCastilla @VistaBank

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 20, 2020