Small-business financing is about more than just funding a new project or covering a cost—every dollar an entrepreneur gets is an opportunity to help their business grow and succeed. And success for small businesses means success for the nation’s economy and growth in your local economy.
Since we at Business.org are all about businesses succeeding, we decided to look into the state of funding in 2019. We examined how the average loan size and number of funded loans changed in each state from 2018 to 2019.
The numbers painted a sometimes surprising picture of small business in the United States.
We learned, for example, that Alaska and North Dakota had the highest average loan size in 2019 ($31,643 and $30,838, respectively), while South Dakota had the smallest (just $5,199). Some loan applicants will find those numbers surprising, given that lenders often offer business loans up into the millions of dollars. But 71% of businesses borrow $50,000 or less from alternative lenders,4 and most small businesses need only a few thousand dollars to grow.
We were also surprised by where businesses are getting approved for capital. The District of Columbia saw huge increases in the number of businesses funded, as did Wyoming and Vermont. So if you’re looking for the next economic powerhouse, those might be states to watch.
On the other hand, New Mexico, Oregon, and Nebraska were the only three states that took out fewer loans in 2019 than in 2018. We’ll be interested to see if the trend continues in 2020.
We got our small-business lending data from Lendio. We drew on key indicators from Lendio’s SMB Economic Insights quarterly reports, including loan application data and loan funded data. All our data comes from Q3 2018 and Q3 2019.
You can find out what small-business financing looks like in your state with the table below—whether funding is growing or shrinking and how much businesses are getting. And while you’ll need to apply for financing to find out what you personally qualify for, we hope these numbers give you a good starting point for setting your expectations.
For more details on the stats in your state, you can view Lendio’s quarterly reports by state.