Federal Grant Funding
The federal government awards billions of dollars in grants every year. Hundreds of thousands of recipients can use these to further their ideas, projects, and services that help the economy.
Contrary to popular belief, a grant is not free money. Most federal grants will not help a start-up business. Most new companies will need to receive a loan if they do not have the funds.
Grants are created for all types of organizations, whether they are large, small, nonprofit, or foreign. The following organizations are the most common eligible applicant type:
- Government
- Educational
- Public Housing
- Nonprofit
- Small Businesses
Less commonly, grants are created for these other applicant types:
- Other than small businesses (for-profit)
- Individuals
- Foreign Applicants
Register
To apply for a federal grant, your company must be registered in SAM to receive federal assistance awards.
Your Electronic Business point of contact will then need to create their account within Grants.gov or the other grant agency sites if required. Most will still require you to have a Grants.gov account.
Some steps have changed when creating a login for Grants.gov. You will still need to create a separate account on the site and verify your email address. Once you have finished, Grants.gov will request that you connect your Login.gov account.
Once you have connected your Login.gov account, you will no longer need to remember the information you set up for Grants.gov, since the only true login system is now through Login.gov.
Finding and Writing Grants
Once you have done the first steps to getting your organization ready for a grant, you can start the process of finding, writing, and applying for it.
You can search for grants without needing to log in to Grants.gov by selecting Search Grant in their navigation bar. You can search by keywords, eligibility for businesses, or by specific categories.
Once you have found a grant that suits your organization's and the funding agency's mission, you can start writing your proposal.
This process can take hours to get all the necessary information and people together to build a plan and a budget. All this while someone needs to write the overall purpose of what you need the grant money for and how this benefits the agency to provide you with these funds.
Our affiliate has access to grant writers and sourcing if that is something you need assistance with. If you would like to speak with someone about receiving this assitance or if you would like to just go over your options, you can reach out at (855) 545-6604.