SATURDAY UPDATE: Thanks to all who voted. With your help, we passed the 250 target. Next, the judges will review our 1200-word application. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

It’s a hot summer Friday – and 24 hours ahead of a deadline for us and several dozen other small businesses in the Lake Norman area. We need your votes before Saturday, June 30, in a grant competition called Mission Small Business, organized by Chase Bank and Living Social.

Here’s why we need your support: Chase and LivingSocial say they’ll give up to 12 business grants of $250,000 each. Judges include the co-founder of AOL, a cupcake entrepreneur, an executive with the US Chamber of Commerce and the founder of deal site Living Social.

Each business needs 250 votes, via Facebook only, by Saturday to qualify for the competition. So the emails, Facebook messages and Tweets are flying like crazy.

We’re asking you to go to MissionSmallBusiness.com and vote for DavidsonNews.net and CorneliusNews.net. As of midday, we needed only another 80 votes. (Update: As of Saturday morning we needed just 15 votes.) You won’t have to install any apps or software on your computer or phone. Just login using Facebook, find our listing, and vote for us.

What would we do with $250,000 … I’ve written a 1,200-word application to Mission Small Business answering that question, and explaining why we want the money. If we’re a finalist, we will be using our grant to expand our coverage and fine-tune our business model so that DavidsonNews.net and CorneliusNews.net is sustained permanently. We’ll also be looking to share our model with other communities, so that they have access to the same kind of news and information that our towns do. Meanwhile, we want to work more closely with our small-business partners and advertisers by developing a marketing training program to help them achieve their goals. And we’d like to fine-tune our business plan so we can apply to small business bankers for expansion financing.

Although we earn revenues from both advertising and reader subscription payments (have you made yours here yet?), there’s still a lot to be done.

We appreciate all your support over the past few years. Readers and fellow residents like you are essential to the success of CorneliusNews.net and DavidsonNews.net. We couldn’t do this without you.

Vote now: MissionSmallBusiness.com

ABOUT MISSION SMALL BUSINESS

Mission Small Business, organized by Chase Bank and Living Social, has set aside a grant pool of $3 million to provide grants to small businesses like ours. And businesses around the country have applied.

In the Lake Norman area, here’s how many are on the list seeking votes along with us: Cornelius 15, Davidson 7, Huntersville 13, Mooresville 14.

Of those, a half-dozen so far have qualified to have their business proposals reviewed: Love Shutter, Huntersville; 32 Flavors Boutique, Huntersville; Akula Films, Huntersville; Integrative Therapy Concepts, Huntersville; Triple Play Farm, Davidson; and Sanctuary of Davidson.

We’re not on that list yet! Please help us reach 250 too! Just go to missionsmallbusiness.com and vote for DavidsonNews.net and CorneliusNews.net. (Look for the blue “login and support” button the right side of the main page.) Then search for our name.

David Boraks is the founder and executive editor of DavidsonNews.net and CorneliusNews.net, and your neighbor for 19 years.