As communities throughout the Texas Hill Nation clear up after one other spherical of harmful flooding, San Antonio-based nonprofit LiftFund is providing grants of as much as $10,000 to affected small companies and nonprofits.
This system covers 16 counties: Bandera, Blanco, Burnet, Comal, Edwards, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Llano, Mason, Medina, Menard, Actual and Uvalde.
The funding can be utilized for rebuilding and repairs, broken tools and working bills whereas companies work to reopen.
Many have been nonetheless recovering from final 12 months’s historic floods when rising water swept by the area once more this month, dealing one other monetary blow to communities that rely upon domestically owned companies.
“Our hearts are with the Texas small companies which are going through one more tragic catastrophe,” mentioned Amy Hereford, president and CEO of LiftFund. “When disasters strike, they want trusted companions who can reply in a matter of days to maintain the enterprise and its workers. Our workforce is ready to assist enterprise house owners stabilize, get better, and proceed serving the communities that rely upon them.”
Eligible candidates will need to have been working on or earlier than July 1, 2025, and should show financial losses attributable to the July flooding.
Adrian Gonzalez, who leads LiftFund’s work within the Kerrville space, mentioned the nonprofit determined to launch one other grant program after seeing firsthand how final 12 months’s help helped companies survive.
“We decided the necessity once more to open up a grant program, and lots of companies noticed the profit to that no-cost cash,” Gonzalez mentioned.
Along with grants distributed after final 12 months’s floods, LiftFund supplied zero-interest, no-closing-cost restoration loans to assist companies whose rebuilding bills exceeded accessible grant funding.
Gonzalez mentioned getting monetary help into the arms of enterprise house owners rapidly can imply the distinction between reopening and completely closing.
“Most small companies don’t have two weeks’ price of money reserves available,” he mentioned. “So, should you don’t get money of their arms in a short time, there’s a really sturdy chance that they could not make it by the catastrophe.”
The financial injury extends past buildings that flooded, Hereford mentioned. She mentioned communities typically expertise a pointy decline in client spending whereas residents get better and vacationers postpone visits, creating further challenges for companies that escaped vital bodily injury.
“Your inside city customers, their disposable revenue is prone to be capsized for a second whereas they take care of this, after which your exterior guests will pause,” Hereford mentioned. “And we all know this from doing over 50 disasters over 30 years at this level.”
Whereas surveying injury throughout the area, Hereford mentioned she noticed the widespread results of the flooding on crucial group providers.
“I simply got here from a nursing house. They’re having to evacuate a few of their residents,” she mentioned. “A few of their residents don’t have any relations they may go to only but, and so the nursing house is scrambling to attempt to discover what can they do with them.”
She additionally described injury at an animal shelter in Uvalde.
“This animal shelter was already full to capability as a result of they’re coping with the screwworm downside on the identical time on this group, which implies their animals have been quarantined to have to remain right here,” Hereford mentioned. “So, I perceive that their facility was broken, and they also may have to move [the animals] to a different facility.”
A number of companies at Kerrville’s City Creek Village have been broken when floodwaters entered a number of buildings.
Proprietor Harold Buell mentioned water reached a couple of foot deep inside a few of the constructions.
“This has by no means occurred earlier than,” Buell mentioned. “Final Fourth of July we had the very best it’s ever been, however this 12 months it obtained into the buildings, you recognize, as a lot as a foot. Then there’s all the apparent injury.”
One of many hardest-hit tenants was Health First Sports activities, a domestically owned sporting items retailer operated by Dale and Brooke Guthrie. The enterprise, which is making ready for the busy back-to-school purchasing season, sustained vital injury to flooring, partitions, sheetrock, air-conditioning techniques and merchandise. The purchasing middle additionally consists of Hill Nation Bicycle Works and a espresso kiosk within the parking zone.
“The longer we’re shut down, the more serious it’s,” Buell mentioned. “As a result of it’s developing on again to high school, which is our greatest season of the 12 months.”
LiftFund has deployed greater than 525 grants and loans totaling greater than $17 million to Hill Nation companies throughout the previous 12 months. The nonprofit has spent greater than three a long time serving to entrepreneurs get better from disasters, together with hurricanes, wildfires, floods and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Each small enterprise that reopens strengthens its group,” Hereford mentioned. “When entrepreneurs can get better, workers return to work, households regain stability, and native economies start transferring ahead once more.”
Functions for the 2026 Texas Hill Nation Flood Aid Program at the moment are open.
Buell mentioned recovering from one other flood won’t be straightforward, however he stays optimistic.
“You might have your ups and downs in life,” he mentioned. “You simply need to growl at it and attempt to work your means again up.”
This story first appeared at Texas Public Radio.
