Hi -
I am a business and training consultant for Maryland's Small Business Development Center - a non-profit agency funded by the US Small Business Administration and the State of Maryland that offers FREE consulting and training to small businesses. As you can imagine, we are currently serving THOUSANDS of businesses state wide, trying to keep entrepreneurs up-to-date with resources, programs, and most importantly, information that can help their businesses survive this very difficult time.
Last week I hosted two free webinars reaching over 1000 business owners, offering timely, relevant information about governmental programs that can assist these individuals with obtaining financial relief during this crisis. With the passage of the CARES Act last Friday, I am hosting two additional webinar sessions this week; these sessions have been picked up throughout the state of Maryland and are now being joined by individuals in several other neighboring states.
Unfortunately, my organization does not have the budget or ability to upgrade our webinar subscription to support these additional attendees; my understanding is that currently, we are capped at 500 live attendees per session, and my webinars from last week that served only four counties of our state nearly reached that cap. I am deeply concerned that we are going to hit that cap with our webinar sessions tomorrow and Thursday, but as I mentioned, we don't have the capacity to upgrade.
I am wondering if there are non-profit rates or if a temporary escalation of my agency's GoToWebinar access could be provided so that we can continue to offer FREE support to the hundreds (and now thousands) of businesses that are looking to us for information on how they can survive this challenging period of time.
I am happy to provide additional verification of my employment, my agency's mission, the content of my webinars, the provisions that state that we are not profiting from or charging for these sessions, etc. Thank you in advance.
Best,
Steven Colella
Business Consultant, Maryland's SBDC
www.marylandsbdc.org
scolella@harford.edu
443.356.2818
