Wow! Free money from the government…for everyone…just for the asking! That’s great news in today’s economy…and sadly the general public believes it’s actually true. But before you go happily down the grants trail, let’s separate the facts from the fiction.
Can anyone get a grant? Technically yes; but every funder has its own parameters of service and eligibility criteria. It’s your responsibility to know which programs might apply to your own nonprofit business. There are so many Federal agencies out there and each of them has grant money to offer; but the general belief is that there’s someone “in the government” just sitting there with an open checkbook on the desk waiting for your letter. It just doesn’t work like that.
There are a lot of scams out there on the web, especially when you just type the word “grants” into your search engine. If it’s a government grant you’re looking for, every grant…repeat…every grant the Government is going to award will be on www.grants.gov. So don’t let anyone sell you a list when you can simply get it for free yourself. Grant research takes time. The only way to shorten your research time is to know exactly what you’re offering and which agency might be interested in your particular program.
Be prepared before you go hunting for grant money. You’ll need to have a business plan that’s well written because a grant application is typically just the information you have in your plan in someone else’s format.
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