Building your own business is both exciting and intimidating. It’s exciting because you get to be your own boss and earn as much as you can without the ceiling of a regular salary. It’s, likewise, intimidating because you may have the right ideas, partners, equipment, skills and products for an exploding new market but you don’t have any startup money.
How do you find someone who is willing to invest in your vision? Even if you do, you will encounter problems. A bank will charge you a high interest rate for borrowing their money and an angel investor will want to own a huge percentage of your business as part of the deal.
However, the US government can help. It can offer you a business grant from either a federal or state or local county level.
Unlike money you might get from other sources, a business grant by the government not only gives you the money without strings attached but it also provides you with $9,000 worth of consulting services for legal and business issues at no charge.
Business grants are available for starting a business; growing a business; buying a ranch; hiring young, disabled, or minority group members; and fulfilling a government contract.
Applying for a business grant begins with identifying exactly what type of business you are trying to begin or grow, then seeking funding for it from one of many government sponsored programs. Sometimes you can get these quite easily and sometimes you have to jump through a lot of hoops to qualify.
Once you know what you want and once you have found where to get the money from, your next step is to ask for an application, get busy in writing a very comprehensive and impressive grant proposal, and submit it well before the deadline. The earlier your submission, the better because usually the money goes to the early bird.
You can be successful in getting a business grant when you can apply these three ideas:
Know exactly what you want to do in business.
Know where to look for the business grant that you desire.
Know how to write a grant proposal that is cogent and clear.
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