Social media giant Facebook announced yesterday that they are gearing up to offer $100m in grants to small businesses that are struggling to stay in business during the Coronavirus outbreak.
Arival CEO Douglas Quinby called on Google and Facebook to carry forward advertising credit to help tour, activity and attraction operators.
Almost 700 tourpreneurs have signed the Arival petition at the time of publication.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook appeared last night on the primetime CNBC TV show Mad Money with Jim Cramer and revealed more about Facebook’s plan.
Facebook is looking to award grants quickly to those who they deem quality for the Facebook grants. “This crisis is unfolding very rapidly. So this is a program we really started working on at the end of last week. We’re moving as quickly as we can, and I want us to move as quickly as possible.” Sandberg told Cramer.
Jim Cramer pushed Ms. Sandberg asking why Facebook would stop at $100m in grants.
Ms. Sandberg replied that more aid could be forthcoming. “We’re just starting here and we’re going to keep trying to respond to the need we see. We’re going to get these grants out to small businesses and then… This is unprecedented. I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen next. So we are very open to considering doing more in lots of different ways going forward.”
How to apply for the Facebook Grant for small businesses
Businesses need to visit facebook.com/grantsforbusiness and sign up to be considered.
Sheryl Sandberg admitted that ‘we don’t have every criteria defined, but here’s what we know:
We’re going to ask people who have been in business for a year to apply.
We’re going to ask people to tell us what their business does and to tell us how they’re going to use the money and really, we’re going to trust them.
We’re going to trust them to use the money as they can best do it.”
Arival’s Douglas Quinby calls for Facebook to help Tour Operators with credit for future ad campaigns.
The two largest beneficiaries of the sector’s advertising spend should apply credit to future advertising to aid industry recovery, said Douglas Quinby CEO of Arival.
“Google and Facebook have profited handsomely from the risk-taking of these enterprises over the past decade. Now it’s time for them to step up and pay it forward by crediting the accounts of these at-risk advertisers.”
Arival has created a petition for those who agree to show their support.
“140 million small businesses use our platforms all over the world and we work with them every day and we heard directly from them that they were in need, very nervous, not able to pay a lot of their employees, and worried their doors were shutting.
So we’re working around the clock to help as much as we can. And we came up with this program, we’re going to give $100 million in grants. The majority is cash, some ad credits to 30,000 businesses in 30 countries”
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook