In the last month, Ms. Dorse and Mr. Webb, a cinematographer, have applied for more than a dozen grants or low-interest loans from federal, state, city and private groups. So far, they have been denied, deferred and ignored.

Small-business owners around the country are facing economic challenges that threaten the companies they built. The biggest program to help them, the Small Business Association’s Paycheck Protection Program, burned through the $350 billion allocated by Congress in less than two weeks. On Friday, President Trump signed a bill for $484 billion to serve as a second round of relief funds, with $320 billion set aside to replenish the paycheck program. But some experts say that, too, will be exhausted in days.

The paycheck program has been heavily criticized because some recipients, like restaurant chains and luxury hotel companies, were not what most people would consider small businesses. The size of the loans shows that big companies got in first and may have had an advantage.

The average loan size was about $200,000, but 4 percent of the loans accounted for 43 percent of the dollars, according to an S.B.A. report on approvals through April 14. Nearly three-quarters of the loans made were for less than $150,000, but those loans accounted for only 17 percent of the funds.

“You can see that there’s a real skew in there,” said John Pitts, former deputy assistant director of intergovernmental affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and now the head of policy for Plaid, a financial services firm that connects fintech apps with banks.