Take Your Small Business to New Heights: Chase's Mission Main Street Grants Program with LinkedIn as Premier Sponsor

Small businesses play an important role in LinkedIn’s mission to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. In fact, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, small businesses make up 99.7% of employer firms.* That’s why LinkedIn is proud to be the Premier Sponsor of the 2015 Mission Main Street Grants^® program.

Providing value to small businesses

This program is part of Chase’s commitment to help small businesses thrive; LinkedIn’s sponsorship is part of our commitment to do the same. LinkedIn is contributing to the 2015 Mission Main Street Grants^® program by delivering additional value to all applicants.

All businesses that apply will receive access to:

• A small business marketing Toolkit, including LinkedIn best practices on branding, marketing and building your network on LinkedIn
• An exclusive webcast on “Leveraging LinkedIn to Impact Your Business” on June 10th at 2pm ET / 11am PT

20 grant recipients will also receive:

• A $100,000 grant from Chase
• A trip to LinkedIn headquarters in Mountain View, CA for a Small Business Bootcamp at LinkedIn

Learn from past grant recipients

So what can a Mission Main Street Grant do for your business, and how can LinkedIn help? We asked a 2014 grant recipient.

Mike Maloney is the President/CEO at KOTA Longboards, a veteran-owned and supported business that received a Mission Main Street Grant last year. According to Mike, the grant has been essential to his company’s existence: “The grant allowed us to hire key personnel, and gave us the money we need to get to profitability this year. But the digital, social and traditional media exposure we’ve gotten from being a Mission Main Street Grant recipient is worth several times the money we received.”

Mike is very active on LinkedIn, with over 500 connections and a LinkedIn Company Page. To date, LinkedIn has proven valuable in helping Mike build his business. As Mike explains, “LinkedIn helps us reach like-minded businesspeople with an entrepreneurial spirit, which is core to our brand. It has also helped us find sales reps who can get our longboards into the right retail stores.”

Last year, Mike used Company Updates on the KOTA Longboards’ LinkedIn Company Page to promote his Mission Main Street Grants application and tapped into his LinkedIn network of Navy veterans and other professional groups to help secure the necessary 250 votes to qualify for the grant. As a result, KOTA Longboards received 250 votes in just 4 days.

Mike’s advice on using LinkedIn? “Share your story in an authentic and genuine way within relevant LinkedIn Groups. As long as it’s honest and authentic, it’s the best place to build relationships. The LinkedIn community is motivated to help entrepreneurial businesses succeed.”

If you are ready to take your small business to new heights, apply for a grant through June 5th at MissionMainStreetGrants.com.

*U.S. Small Business Profile, 2014 - SBA, Office of Advocacy