Disclaimer: In this article we provide some guidelines that we feel might help you understand and write the responses to the required questions but we do not purport to say that these are the winning answers nor would these answers increase your chances of being selected by Facebook for the Grant. It’s best that you have your judgement whether to follow our words prior before penning your responses to the required questions.
On September 16 2020, Facebook announced that they will be giving S$4.75 million to small businesses in Singapore, especially those that are badly hit by Covid19. In administering this grant, they have partnered with Goodera. Each grant is S$3,500 in cash and S$2,000 in optional ad credits.
To kickstart the grant process, click here.
(If there is any issue accessing it, do try Chrome Incognito for your browser)
These are the few requirements before you can apply:
- You must be a for-profit company
- Have between 2 and 50 employees as of 1 Jan 2020
- Have been in business for over a year
- Have experienced challenges for COVID-19
- Be located in Singapore
The deadline for application is 22 September 2020.
Once you login, you will need to fill in a plethora of information to be considered:
- Your First Name
- Your Last Name
- Phone Number (Preferred)
- Email Address
- Date of Birth
- Country of Residence
- City of Residence
- Relationship with your Business
- Business Entity Name
- Business Entity Description (max 300 characters)
- UEN Number
- Business Headquarters
- Type of Business Entity
- Industry/Sector
- Principal Activities
- Whether there are no illegal activities conducted and you will comply with Facebook Advertising policies
- Whether the company is in existence for at least 1 year
- Nature of business (For-profit/Not-for-Profit)
- Whether you employ 2-50 Employees as of 1 Jan 2020
- Registered Business Addresses
- Whether Deloitte or others are your statutory auditor
- Official website of your business
- Upload the ACRA Document. To buy your Bizfile, please click here.
- Whether your company is facing these scenarios? See image below
Then comes all the open-ended questions.
“Describe the impact and challenges posed by COVID-19 to your business in 2020 ? (max 1000 characters). Please do not provide in your response any personal data (i.e. information about you or another person that identifies or could identify you or the other person, including sensitive personal data (e.g. health data)).”
- Some guidelines could be to describe how it will impact your revenue and top-line figure, how clients and customers are dwindling in numbers. Due to Covid19, most if not, all businesses’ revenue is reduced as their clients are either not buying their products or reducing their need for the services. As such, there is a knock-on chain reaction effect that causes the vendors/suppliers of the clients (which include you) to face reduced demand.
- Another reason is to share on the cost and salary pressure such as maintaining the salary and payroll of your employees and staffs. Since salary is a fixed component of operating expenses, there is a need to pay your staffs on a month-on-month basis, and to maintain that constant operating expenses out of your business. Related to the previous point, if your business faces lower demand and revenue, then your operating profit cannot be sustained to maintain your cost and salary payment monthly.
The next question is
“Why do you need the grant? (max 1000 characters). Please do not provide in your response any personal data (i.e. information about you or another person that identifies or could identify you or the other person, including sensitive personal data (e.g. health data)). *”
Some guidelines are:
- To share on how the grant comes in to support your problems as mentioned in the previous answer.
- For revenue, the grant comes in to boost your marketing spend which increase your branding, engagement and leads generation activities. With the ad spend grant of S$2,000, it can go a long way to increase your business’ online exposure and digital marketing activities. This will hopefully translate to more customers and correspondingly, a higher revenue.
- To reduce cost pressures, the grant’s cash portion of S$3,500 can help to alleviate some wage costs, pay rents, and other necessary fees and expenses.
The last question would be
“Based on how you answered the previous question, please further describe how your use of the grant would make an impact in your local community? (max 1000 characters). Please do not provide in your response any personal data (i.e. information about you or another person that identifies or could identify you or the other person, including sensitive personal data (e.g. health data)). “
Some guidelines to answering this would be:
- To focus on local workforce preservation by sharing how you will use the grant to hire locals or to alleviate and not retrench your current local employment.
- To share on how you can help the local community and the society at large with your current services and products.
- If you are providing essential services such as healthcare or medical related services and products, be sure to state this as well.
And that’s it. Just review your inputs and submit on the platform and…
Wait for good news.
Hopefully, this article will give a last-minute glimpse on how you can utilise Facebook Business Grant Covid19 2020 to help increase your digital marketing presence (and revenue indirectly) and/or to alleviate your costs.
One final parting note: If you need to better maximise your digital marketing and ad spend credits, then why not try our popular and top Facebook Marketing Ads Service where we helped more than 50 companies including, Lifelong Learning Institute, drive tremendous branding and exposure to their organisations.
