Discover your small business grant game plan

What is a Small Business Grant?

Susan Guillory

A grant is financial assistance that is given to a person, business, nonprofit, or corporation from federal, state, county, or local governments, or private businesses or corporations. There are a number of companies, nonprofits, and government agencies providing essentially funding to small business owners in the form of a small business grant. And the best part? Grants do not require repayment of any kind.

Grants can be formed to target businesses based on a variety of factors, including minority-owned businesses, specific for-profit businesses as well as non-profit organizations, veteran-owned businesses, grants for women entrepreneurs, and more.

You don’t have to make your pitch on “Shark Tank,” refinance your home, or take out small business loans to take the next step in your entrepreneurial journey — business grants may help you get there, if you know where to look and how to apply.

We’ve pulled together numerous resources for business owners searching for small business grant opportunities. The majority of these have broad grant application requirements, meaning many businesses qualify.

Keep in mind that this can be a double-edged sword for applicants, though — you can apply for a lot more business grants if the qualifications are broad, but that means more competition for the grant. Often, you can find more success by finding niche grants for your industry, or based on your ownership structure and makeup.

In that spirit, we’ve provided some how-to advice all business owners can use to get your grant entries and/or grant proposals together, along with lists of small business grant programs, split into some of the most-searched-for categories.

Types of Small Business Grants

There are several types of grants, and you may only be eligible for certain ones. Grants generally come from the following sources:

• Federal state or local governments
• Foundations
• Businesses

Government grants are often the most involved, while grants made by businesses may include a “competition” aspect.

Above, we’ve rounded up examples of some popular grants in these categories. However, don’t limit your search to just these grants. We’ve also included several resea b rch tools you can use to find grants that may be a fit for your business.

How to Find a Grant for a Small Business

A quick Google search will pull up millions of results for business grants. So many possibilities are out there that it can seem impossible to narrow down the prospects. But there are a few resources that can not only help you find the right grants for your business, but even assist in the application process, and help you identify grant opportunities that can’t be missed.

OpenGrants

OpenGrants offers the most comprehensive data set of public and private grant funding in the United States. The site offers both free and paid membership options. With the free membership, you can search the grants database, hire grant writers (for a fee), and get access to resources and guides.

With the paid membership, you can flag grants, get email alerts when new grants are added, take notes on grants, use the power search feature, export results, and get personalized matching.

Grants.gov

Free money from the government — who wouldn’t want a piece of that? Grants.gov is the federal government agency’s landing page for all federal government grants across agencies. It’s a great resource for finding grant opportunities, but small businesses may be disappointed to find that many of the grants are closed to them.

The site includes grants for school systems, local governments, individuals, and nonprofits as well, so you have to sift through to find ones that are the right fit for you. Also, the federal grants available to small businesses have specific requirements when it comes to business size. (You can read more about how the federal government determines which businesses qualify as “small” businesses in this article.)

If it seems like receiving a business grant, specifically a government-funded one, is tricky, that’s because it can be. Here are some general guidelines and requirements that the federal government uses to determine business grant eligibility requirements:

• Grants are not provided for starting a business.
• Grant money is not made available for a business to pay off debt or to cover operating expenses.
• State and local grants that are provided by the federal government may be awarded to organizations that assist with economic development.

GrantWatch

GrantWatch is another database of grants of every kind, though it’s a subscription-based service you will need to pay for. The site has a wide variety of grants offered by federal, state, and local governments, as well as foundations and corporations. The site is constantly being updated, and grants that have closed are archived. 

You can filter the more than 25,000 grants by category to narrow down the ones targeting small businesses like yours.

Your Local Librarian

Among the many, many things local libraries provide for free or at a low cost to business owners is help finding grants. Just ask your librarian. These men and women are trained researchers with access to hundreds of databases.

Libraries often work in conjunction with local Chambers of Commerce or business organizations already and may be able to connect you with experts who know the local lay of the land and help you find business grants specific to your community.