Eleven Northwest Ohio companies, including one in Bowling Green, were recipients of Regional Growth Partnership grants in the fourth quarter of 2024 to help nurture and grow their emerging business operations.
Clark Fixture Technologies, in Bowling Green, is a manufacturer that builds accurate fixtures and engineers quality control tooling for automotive, aerospace and deep space industries.
With the grant, the company will purchase third party IT services to migrate on-premise infrastructure into a secure computing cloud environment.
The Regional Growth Partnership is an economic development organization serving 17 counties in Northwest Ohio. As a private nonprofit development corporation, the RGP is dedicated to fostering regional, national and international business investment opportunities across the region. The RGP serves as Northwest Ohio’s network partner for JobsOhio.
Through the support of the JobsOhio Small Business Grant, these 11 businesses moved forward with expansion projects which led to the creation of 50 new jobs across the region.
In the fourth quarter, the grant provided total funding to these projects in the amount of $400,000, which in addition to the new jobs, also helped in retaining 227 jobs. Total investment toward these projects by the 11 companies exceeded $2.4 million.
The Small Business Grant program was developed to provide additional financial support for qualified projects in designated communities and/or for businesses owned by eligible populations across the state. Eligible businesses must be at least 51% minority-owned, woman-owned, veteran-owned, or owned by an individual with a disability, or be located in a distressed community.
This incentive program recognizes that businesses owned by eligible populations may face additional challenges in growing their businesses. The Regional Growth Partnership (RGP) has aggressively marketed the program to communities and businesses across Northwest Ohio.
Grant decisions for the program are based on several project factors, including but not limited to company location, company ownership, jobs created and/or retained, and project fixed-asset investment. Support is generally intended for small to medium-sized companies with eligible projects.
