State and federal governments may provide funding for your creative business, especially if your business provides services that improve and strengthen communities or that provide valuable research work. Much of the funding comes in the form of government grants. Types of businesses that receive government grants are school systems, including independent schools, nonprofit organizations and creative businesses that have 500 or less employees.
Applying for Federal and Local Government Grants
Before you launch your creative business, and even after your business has been up and running for several months or years, you may be able to receive government grants, many of which are listed at Grants.gov. Thoroughly read through guidelines associated with grants you’re interested in receiving as competition for the grants is keen. In fact, nearly 300,000 creative business leaders applied for a government grant in 2009 alone.
If you’re new to searching for and filling out grant applications, consider downloading the government’s “Search Grant Opportunities” guide; it’s available for free in PDF format. To search for grants, you can click “Grant Search” on the right side of the Grants.gov website. It’s listed under “For Applicants.” Type in a keyword for the type of government grants you want to apply for and receive. The more narrow your keywords are, the less grant opportunities you may have to search through. On the other hand, a broad keyword search may allow you to discover grant opportunities you may have otherwise remained unaware of.
General information included with grants is:
- Name of the particular government grant (e.g. FAA Aviation Research Grants)
- Date grant was created
- Deadline or closing date to apply for the grant
- Category grant is associated with (e.g. transportation, education)
- Agency sponsoring the grant (e.g. Department of Transportation)
- Contact name and information for the grant (may be a person’s name and telephone number)
Fortunately, you can download grant applications and submit them electronically. After you submit a grant application, you’ll be assigned a CFDA number. Keep track of this number as you can use it to follow up on the status of your grant application.
More Places Where Creative Business Leaders Can Find Government Grants
In addition to searching for government grants at Grants.gov, you can also apply to receive federal funding for your creative business through organizations and websites like:
- USA.gov
- Grant Space (grantspace.org)
- Small Business Administration (sba.gov)
You can also find grants via other resources. Before applying for grants through non-government sources, do your homework as not all grant operators are legit as noted in the Federal Trade Commission’s FTC Consumer Alert (see Sources at the bottom of this article).
After you get into the Grants.gov portal, click “Program Highlights” to get updated information on grant applications you’ve already submitted. Keep in mind that many of the grants have submission deadlines and grant awardees might not have final information on winners of the grants until several weeks after the deadlines.
Get into Spiral online at: https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000841/Spiral.html
Check out Long Walk Up online at: https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000531/Long-Walk-Up.html
Sources:
http://www.grants.gov/aboutgrants/eligibility.jsp (Grants.gov)
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt134.shtm (Federal Trade Commission: FTC Consumer Alert)
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