REGIONAL— As legislative economic relief stalls, United Way of Northeastern Minnesota has directed its own effort to provide assistance to area businesses affected by the fires in the Boundary Waters and subsequent closure of the wilderness area.
To date, the group has raised more than $251,000 for the Ely area, which is currently being distributed to area businesses, but Executive Director Erin Shay says more relief is needed.
“We’re hearing that this is the only funding at this time that’s going to be available for these businesses,” Shay said.
Despite raising over a quarter of a million dollars in donations, Shay said that businesses in the Ely area requested more than $755,000 on their applications to United Way, far exceeding the money available.
“The requests where we saw the greatest losses were, of course, from our outfitters in the Ely area,” Shay said. “We had some that were losing $7,000 to $10,000 a day in revenue, and some of them still remain closed today. Most of them were averaging a 40-percent loss in annual revenue.”
United Way distributes donated money based on an application created and approved by its board to assess the financial needs of businesses. It asks the businesses several questions about how they are doing.
“So, for instance, for the Ely businesses, like, was a business completely closed? If so, how long was it closed for? Did they have to lay employees off? If so, how long? How many employees were impacted? Have they been able to maintain payroll?” Shay said.
Those applications are reviewed by a panel, in this case made up of United Way staff and board members, Ely residents, as well as people who were not affected by the crisis to give a more detached opinion.
“And we sat together as a team and we reviewed all the applications. Again, we prioritized where the greatest needs were with the amount of funding that we actually had to be able to give out and allocated that out.”
Shay said the money is currently being distributed to businesses that were awarded funds.
“And our goal is to continue fundraising. We know that we were not able to meet the need for some of these businesses, and if there’s an opportunity for us to do that or to provide additional grant dollars, we’d like to be able to do that,” Shay said.
Shay explained that there is a huge need for long-term recovery options, not just in Ely but in places like Cook and Brimson.
United Way is still looking for donations.
“We have a $25,000 match that was committed to our organization just prior to the weekend,” Shay said, adding that these funds will assist in the ongoing recovery process.
Shay said that donations range from $1 to $25,000 and she has been amazed by the amount of support seen from around the state of Minnesota.
“This is the most out-of-area support that we have seen come in,” Shay said.
Lessons learned from past responses
United Way of Northeastern Minnesota has a history of providing economic relief to the region.
“This is unfortunately the third year that the region that we serve has experienced some sort of a natural disaster,” Shay said.
United Way assisted in relief during flooding across the region two years ago, and just last year stepped in when people lost homes and properties to the Brimson fire.
“What we decided after last year’s natural disaster, the Brimson fires, is that we were going to keep our crisis and disaster recovery fund year-round,” Shay said.
Shay explained that when crises happen, it is beneficial to have money on hand to help with immediate relief.
“With the Ely fund, one of the first things we were hearing is that people needed air purifiers, and so having dollars available and just ready for us to be able to spring into action is really important for us,” Shay said.