How To Find Government Grants
Each year, the federal government gives out over 150 billion
dollars in Government funded grant programs to businesses and
individuals. These grants are provided to assist businesses in
growing and providing jobs, and to help individuals raise funds
for education or other personal needs.
Despite the abundance of grant programs available, many
businesses and individuals are finding it difficult to locate
grants. The system can be very confusing. Luckily, there is
progress being made. The federal government actually has a
website, Grants.gov that you can visit and you can search by
agency, category, or browse the available grant opportunities.
Now, this is a step in the right direction, but as you will see,
their site is still hard to use and the search function is well,
somehow lacking. Also, this is not a complete list of all grant
programs that are available. You will likely need to employ
additional research methods to uncover many government grant
opportunities.
When researching for Government Grants, one of the best
resources for research is the Internet. Try searching for the
type of grant that you are hoping to apply for. Try putting the
type of grant in quotes - ex. "grants for single mothers", and
search with the quotes. This instructs most modern search
engines to search for the exact phrase. This will often times
narrow down the results to a more manageable size for research.
If this fails you, you may try visiting another government run
website, cfda.gov - The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance.
You may try searching this for related government grant
programs. There is a third government run website that may help
as well, located at firstgov.gov.
If you still cant find information on the type of grant that you
require, there are many commercial products available that
maintain private databases of grant opportunities. Usually, this
costs money, but the small fee might be worth it if it saves you
time and helps you find the grant that you are searching for.
Once you have found information on the grant that you hope to
apply for, it would be a good idea to contact the funding
organization and verify the details of the grant. Alot of times,
information is out of date and you want to make sure that you
have the most recent data before you attempt to apply for a
grant. A phone call or letter to the group that funds that grant
could save you a great deal of time and aggravation later on if
you wind up with out dated information.
There are numerous government grant programs available. Locating
them can be tricky, but is often times well worth the effort.
With diligent research, you should be able to uncover some good
opportunities for federal government grants.