The city of Anchorage has received a $13.2 million allocation from the Department of Treasury. Officials are calling it, ‘The 49th State Angel Fund’. The money is meant to help people start small businesses.
Lucinda Mahoney, Chief Financial Officer for the Municipality of Anchorage, announced the award at Tuesday’s Assembly meeting and explained how the program will work.
“It will provide seed capital for startup businesses and for angel investments in the city of Anchorage. It’s really exciting because it’s probably one of the first times that we’ve received a grant of this magnitude that will really help us spur economic development for our community and create jobs,” Mahoney said.
The money comes to anchorage via the “Small Business Jobs Act of 2010” which president Obama signed into law in September 2010. Anchorage is the first and only city to be awarded the Department funding, which is typically awarded to states. About $450,000 of the grant will go toward overhead and the rest will be distributed to start-ups and existing small businesses with under 500 employees over the next two years. The first deadline for grant applications will be this summer.
Daysha Eaton is a contributor with the Alaska Public Radio Network.
Daysha Eaton holds a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a M.A. from the University of Southern California. Daysha got her start in radio at Seattle public radio stations, KPLU and KUOW. Before coming to KBBI, she was the News Director at KYUK in Bethel. She has also worked as the Southcentral Reporter for KSKA in Anchorage.
Daysha's work has appeared on NPR's "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", PRI's "The World" and "National Native News". She's happy to take assignments, and to get news tips, which are best sent via email.
Daysha became a journalist because she believes in the power of storytelling. Stories connect us and they help us make sense of our world. They shed light on injustice and they comfort us in troubled times. She got into public broadcasting because it seems to fulfill the intention of the 4th Estate and to most effectively apply the freedom of the press granted to us through the Constitution. She feels that public radio has a special way of moving people emotionally through sound, taking them to remote places, introducing them to people they would not otherwise meet and compelling them to think about issues they might ordinarily overlook.
