This page is for West Virginia small business owners who want to know whether they qualify for the Verizon Digital Ready grant administered by LISC. The program is designed to be accessible: there is no revenue minimum, no employee threshold, no Verizon service plan required, and no formal business plan document needed. Eligibility rests on a small set of specific criteria that each have a clear binary answer. You must run a for-profit business with a primary address in West Virginia, be at least 18 years old, hold a free account on the Digital Ready platform, and complete one qualifying course or event within the defined calendar window that runs from January 1 to March 31, 2026. Beyond those hard requirements, two preference factors influence selection priority without disqualifying anyone: whether you are a first-time applicant and whether your business is in a low-to-moderate income community. The interactive checker on this page walks through every criterion one step at a time. Work through it before investing time in the application itself. If a hard requirement is not met, the checker identifies it so you can explore alternative programs rather than proceeding on incomplete eligibility.
Hard Eligibility Requirements
Every applicant must meet all of the following to be considered eligible. These are binary requirements with no exceptions stated in official LISC program documentation.
- For-profit business entity only. Nonprofits are explicitly excluded regardless of size or mission.
- Primary business address must be in West Virginia. The address is verified for all finalists selected from the applicant pool.
- Applicant must be 18 years of age or older.
- A free account on the Verizon Small Business Digital Ready platform is required. Account creation is free and takes approximately five minutes. No Verizon service plan is needed.
- At least one eligible course, virtual event, or qualifying in-person event must be completed on the platform between January 1 and March 31, 2026. Completions outside this window do not count.
- Current directors, officers, employees, or contractors of LISC or Verizon and their immediate family members are ineligible per program conflict of interest policy.
- Only one application may be submitted per person per round and only for one business. Business owners with multiple businesses must apply for their largest by revenue.
In-Person Event Additional Conditions
If you plan to use an in-person event to satisfy the course completion requirement, two additional conditions apply. The event must be listed on the official Digital Ready In-Person Events page. You must also scan the event's QR code while physically present at the venue to receive credit. Events not on the official page will not satisfy the requirement regardless of attendance. For applicants in rural WV with limited access to qualifying in-person events, online courses and recorded virtual events count equally and carry no location or QR requirement.
Preference Factors That Affect Selection Priority
These factors do not determine eligibility but influence how LISC scores applications during the final manual review stage. Both are documented in LISC's official program guidance.
- First-time applicants receive priority over prior grant recipients. Prior recipients remain eligible to apply but are explicitly deprioritized in final selection.
- Businesses located in low-to-moderate income (LMI) communities receive priority consideration. LMI status is assessed automatically by business address and does not require a separate application or designation process.
What to Do If You Do Not Qualify
If the eligibility checker identifies a criterion you do not meet, the most common paths forward include exploring the related grants section for programs with different criteria, checking the CA or NY parallel Verizon grants currently running on the same deadline if your business is in one of those states, or monitoring the Digital Ready funding page for the spring 2026 national cycle that Verizon has indicated is planned but had not officially announced as of early 2026. If the barrier is the course completion window, the next grant cycle will open a new window with a fresh application period.
