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RHODE ISLAND FINANCIAL SERVICES CHAMPION
WHILE WILLIAM (BILL) CUNNINGHAM has been a zealous financial services champion of Rhode Island’s entrepreneurs and small businesses for many years, the COVID pandemic drove his passion, commitment, and exceptional work ethic to a new, stratospheric level. In short, Bill has been indefatigable in helping small businesses navigate through the extraordinary financial challenges that the pandemic brought.
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Bill, a Rhode Island-licensed CPA, is a senior-level accounting executive with extensive experience in a number of industries, including the arts, entertainment, and recreation, as well as the professional, scientific, and technical services sector. His particular areas of expertise are accounting and cash flow, business plans/startup assistance, financing strategies, and operations. For many years he has guided countless entrepreneurs and small businesses in his role as a Certified Small Business Mentor with the SCORE Rhode Island (SCORE RI) chapter. Funded in part by the US Small Business Administration (SBA), SCORE is a nonprofit and the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow, and achieve their goals.
Our small business community was under tremendous strain and uncertainty during the early days of the COVID pandemic. Although help was soon to come in the form of myriad federal and state grant and loan programs, the eligibility requirements for that help and the application processes were often detailed, nuanced, and not always easy for a small business owner to understand. There was an alphabet soup of COVID relief plans: the federal Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP), Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL), Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF), and Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG), in addition to a myriad of State and local grant and loan programs.
Bill stepped up, in a BIG way. During the height of the pandemic – from October 2020 through September 2021 -- Bill was the leader of SCORE RI’s “COVID Response Team,” a group of nine volunteers who met weekly during most of that period to plan, create, and deliver COVID-related educational programs and blogs, as well as to build the knowledge and consistency of the
WILLIAM CUNNINGHAM
chapter’s cadre of volunteers who were counseling small businesses on the many available relief programs. His passion for learning and countless hours of work ensured that SCORE RI’s services to the public were clear, accurate, and timely.
His commitment to our local small businesses didn’t end there. “While other SCORE volunteers stepped up to help the small businesses in need, Bill was by far the biggest contributor to our COVID educational programs and client mentoring,” said James Mutschler, the SCORE RI Chapter Co-Chair who nominated Bill for this award. As one of 50+ local mentors, Bill personally delivered 22% of the nearly 2400 mentoring sessions that SCORE RI held during that time period; more than 44% of SCORE RI’s total workshop attendees also joined in for one of Bill’s COVID-related workshops. Bill supplemented this work by writing blogs that business owners could use and go back to as they made decisions on critical topics such as how to apply for a RRF grant, how to apply for a PPP loan under $50,000, and the ins-and-outs of PPP for the selfemployed.
“I’ve known Bill for a long time, and his energy and drive to find new ways to create value for the RI small business community are unmatched,” said Mark S. Hayward, the SBA Rhode Island District Director. “During the pandemic,” Director Hayward continued, “Bill’s ‘volunteer’ job became a full-time job and then some, and we at the SBA are extraordinarily grateful for his partnership and contributions. He helped ensure that hundreds of our small businesses were able to obtain available relief funds, document the use of those funds, prepare for loan forgiveness and proper debt management, and understand the potential tax ramifications of that relief. We are gratified to be able to recognize Bill as our 2022 Financial Services Champion of the Year.”
SBA.gov/funding-programs/loans/lender-match
