Amid pandemic, grants keep Army veteran's business afloat
Three years ago, Walcott, a
It was going well, but then COVID-19 hit — a phrase that has defined the stories of so many small businesses in 2020. In fact, it's only because of nonprofits such as
Walcott's alternative health and wellness center isn't just her livelihood — it's personal. A Humvee accident while she was serving in
Walcott couldn’t find an alternative wellness center to continue her treatment in
She put in 16-hour days to build her business and it was paying off.
“We were having our best year ever in 2019. We were booked all day, every day, we were open seven days a week,” she said.
The pandemic changed everything.
In March, the state of
“When the revenue dropped 95%, we didn’t know what we were going to do,” she told the
But while the Wellness Center sat dormant on downtown Fayetteville’s main drag, Walcott did not. She dug in her heels and started researching financial assistance to support her business and her family. Her husband, an Army veteran himself and
“I literally took those 16 hours and I completely switched to finding every piece of knowledge I could about grants,” she said.
At the same time, the nonprofit
It’s sometimes the small expenses that Retired Brig. Gen.
“They may be one car repair or repair or missed rent or mortgage payment away from a series of financial disasters that derail any hope of a brighter future,” he said.
Pray has watched the COVID-19 pandemic hit military families especially hard. Since mid-March, his organization has received nearly 3,000 requests for financial assistance. And they’ve filled nearly half of them.
One of those requests was Nicole’s. Walcott’s business serves as her home’s primary income and when business dried up, so did most of her family’s livelihood.
“Many military families are two-wage earner incomes,” Pray said. “And when one wage earner like
The organization has already started setting aside cash for the influx of requests they expect to see in the coming months as the virus surges again.
They are bracing for a potentially massive need for mortgage and rent assistance as government moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures begin to run out.
“We want to be the organization that says ‘Yes,’ not the organization that says ‘We’re out of money,’” Pray said.
Walcott was able to reopen in late May. Since then, business has been hit or miss. They’ve slimmed down staff and dropped certain services but that’s not what she says saved her business.
“If we hadn’t found a lot of the grants that I found, we probably wouldn’t be here today,” Walcott said.
Out of more than 50 grant applications Walcott has submitted, she’s received 10. When an organization says no, she applies again.
She’s refusing to take no for an answer. It’s a skill she picked in Army: keep pushing through, especially when things get uncomfortable.
“I just knew that my vision for the company was so much bigger and it didn’t stop with something like COVID,” she said. “It had to go on.”
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