Programs
- Guaranteed loans. These are "lender-driven" programs, whereby business loans (generally made by commercial banks) receive a Federal loan guarantee. The guarantee is designed to support and incentivize rural business lending and to support rural job creation and retention. The primary program in this category is the Business & Industry (B&I) guaranteed loan program.
- Direct loans. Direct loans are made to intermediary economic development groups who will in turn assist private rural business development through the re-lending of these funds. Note that the Agency does not make loans directly to for-profit businesses or individuals.
- Grants to nonprofits & public bodies. Typically these grants are made to nonprofit economic development groups, towns, or tribes who will undertake some project in support of private rural business development.
- Grants to private rural businesses & agricultural producers. These grants are narrowly targeted and competitively awarded in support of value-added agricultural ventures and in support of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Matching funds from 50-75% are typically required.
The RBS also publishes the bimonthly Rural Cooperatives magazine. Nearly all of the Agency's programs are funded annually through Congressional appropriation as part of the U.S. Federal Government budget process.
Read more about this topic: Rural Business-Cooperative Service
Famous quotes containing the word programs:
“Government ... thought [it] could transform the country through massive national programs, but often the programs did not work. Too often they only made things worse. In our rush to accomplish great deeds quickly, we trampled on sound principles of restraint and endangered the rights of individuals.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Will TV kill the theater? If the programs I have seen, save for “Kukla, Fran and Ollie,” the ball games and the fights, are any criterion, the theater need not wake up in a cold sweat.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)