Creative Business Loan Fund

Helping creative businesses forge new opportunities and build a vibrant economy.

Strong and successful creative businesses create jobs, reactivate post-industrial spaces, and bring commercial activity to disinvested communities.

Access to affordable capital is essential to helping creative businesses maximize growth opportunities and contribute to the vitality of neighborhoods. The Creative Business Loan Fund, launched by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA), in partnership with Bridgeway Capital and the Community First Fund, offers flexible financing tailored to the needs of creative businesses across the commonwealth.

Our Creative Business Accelerator can connect you to resources and solutions that help creative businesses navigate entrepreneurship. Funding from Bridgeway, combined with the Creative Business Accelerator, ensures you have both the capital and entrepreneurial skills needed to succeed.

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Let us guide you through the journey of curiosity to funding your big idea.

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Common Questions and Answers

What do we offer?

  • Loans for working capital, equipment purchases, renovations to retail, production, or office space, and building acquisitions
  • Flexible terms
  • Competitive fixed rates
  • Technical Assistance through the Creative Business Accelerator

Who is eligible?

  • Creative businesses include craft manufacturers, arts schools, architecture firms, design and fabrication firms, media companies, and visual and performing arts production agencies
  • The fund will prioritize creative businesses located in low-income communities, those owned by Black, Indigenous, and people of color or serving a diverse market, and those located in small towns and rural communities

How much can you borrow?

  • Loan range from $5,000 up to $250,000
  • The average loan size is $75,000

Where do we work?

  • Bridgeway serves western Pennsylvania from our three offices located in Pittsburgh, Erie, and Uniontown
  • For the Creative Business Loan Fund, we work in the following counties; Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Blair, Butler, Cambria, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie, Fayette, Forest, Fulton, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Mercer, Potter, Somerset, Venango, Warren, Washington, Westmoreland

“With the PA Council on the Arts’ investment, Bridgeway’s Creative Business Accelerator will channel more flexible and patient capital into the arts and cultural ecosystem to help it maximize a recovery economy,”

T.J. Bogdewic, President and CEO, Bridgeway Capital.

This program was supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

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