1. Start by joining a local or national organization for women. Many organizations are willing to fund women entrepreneur. If not, they are bound to help you locate some good sources of funds.

2. Talk with Small Business Administration Agency within your community. They can give you information about grants that you can use for your business.

3. Check your current employer about programs and services they hold to fund women entrepreneurs. The company may give terms and conditions wherein your business will also benefit them in return. There is nothing wrong with this. If they can help you start a business, why not repay them through simple means of boosting up their credibility too?

4. Remember that grants are not always in a form of cash. Some organizations may give free consultation to help you failsafe your business. You can always make use of these agencies for your advantage. After all, money is not only what is needed to run a business.

5. Check out the United Women’s Chamber of Commerce, which also gives funding for businesses.

6. Organizations like Kiwanis, Zonta, Lions, and Rotary might be a great partner for a project. They may be able to direct you to companies giving grants for women.

7. Ask other local businesses how they received their initial funding

There are many ways to look for free cash to fund a business. Do not be afraid to look around to know your options. Some say that getting grants is like humbly accepting that you do not have cash to finance something. While this may create a negative impact to some, if you think about it, there is nothing wrong with getting help from grants and there is nothing wrong in enjoying and benefiting from the free cash.

If you have a look at the grants.gov website, you can find a search engine, which will provide you with all applicable government grants for women that you can consider.  All the grants have a projected budget that is clearly defined by the project for which you apply.

Sometimes it is possible to get additional financing for interesting projects, the costs just need to be justified.  Like with any government project, it will largely depend on your application, how much of the budgeted money you will get, if your grant is approved.

If you apply for research funding, then your project will have an estimated total program funding.  Sometimes these grants require cost sharing or matching funds requirement.

To bring it down to figures, some grants are valued at some ten thousands of dollars; some bigger projects can go into millions.  How much you get is depending on the budget of the project you apply for.

Unfortunately, this is not how government grants for women work. Grants are provided for certain organizations and/or individuals who will work on a  project while being funded by the government.

Why Would You Want A Government Grant?

It should provide you with funds, so that you can accomplish the agreed upon task.

Bottom line, you get a job, for which you are given funds.

Government Grants for Women Can Be Located Easily

There are opportunities for organizations and individuals; a searchable database is provided on grants.

• All you need to do is to register and search the database for a grant that would apply to you.
• Then you can download the grant package, which contains all the forms you need to fill out.
• The grant application for your government grant is easily uploaded back to the web site, once you have filled it out.  Please see our previous post on Government Grants For Women: Women Can Apply for a Government Grant in 4 Easy Steps

A business loan, no matter how favorable, is something you will have to pay back. A government grant is usually not something you will have to give back, unless you fail to comply with the stipulations of the project.

What does that mean?

Every grant is given for a certain project or in order to facilitate research.   Depending on the project for which the funding is prepared for, you will have to comply with the requirements, in order to justify spending the funds you have received. If you prove that you have done as you have been assigned to do, then you will not be required to pay any of the government grant money you have received.

Grants Are Different From A Loan

A loan may be given with a purpose attached to it, like when you are taking up a loan to finance your equipment that you need to do business; at some point you will have to provide the loaning entity with the pertinent receipts.

A government grant comes attached to a project that is being financed by that money and you will have to do the project for which you receive the funds.

Unfortunately, some projects require that you participate with some funds of your own, or that you provide other necessary items, perhaps certain equipment, or a certain degree of education.

Whichever grant you finally wind up with, if you have done as agreed with your project agreement you will not be required to pay the grant back.

One of the biggest myths currently propagated online and also on television is that there are government grants for women galore, available to anybody smart enough to find them. Shady businesspeople then promise, for a “small” upfront fee, to let you in on the secrets of wealth and free grant money.

To counteract such mostly scamming plots, the US government has established a pertinent web page, www.grants.gov. This has not only all grant information available but one can also register there and apply online for government grants.

Use this easy four step procedure to get started:

1. Find government grants for women opportunities that apply to you.

Advanced search is available to narrow your options; furthermore, there are detailed descriptions of every single project and grant that is available.

2. Get registered.

The site offers a simple registration procedure, which would allow your organization to apply for any available grant from the U. S. government. The verification of the registration takes up to five days.

3. Apply for grants.

There is always a grant application package, which needs to be completed. Tutorials and FAQ are available for better understanding and easier handling of forms, which are all in the downloadable package. The grants for women applications are electronically completed and there is a save and submit button on the forms. Once you are done with it, you save and submit it and you will see a confirmation screen appear on your monitor, telling you that the package has been uploaded.

4. Track your grant application.

There are several ways you can track your application, preferably on the “track your application” page. A detailed guide is available for download.

Applying for any type of grant can be tricky business. The application process is exhausting and needs to be done just right. Unfortunately, even if you do everything right there is no guarantee that you’ll get the grant. There are some things you could avoid doing to save yourself time and possible rejection.

THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE ON APPLICATIONS FOR GRANTS

10.  Using poor grammar, spelling errors and incorrect information.

A grant officer goes through thousands of grants a day. Reading one that is poorly written and badly expressed is sure to make you look like you’re not serious about your application.

9 COMMON GRANT APPLICATION AND GRANT PROPOSAL MISTAKES

9. Do your money research correctly.
Grant officers are intelligent and will catch inflated pricing in your grant and then you don’t come out looking very good.

8.  Read the instructions properly!
If you rush through the instructions you could easily fill out the application incorrectly.

7.  State clear, concise and precise objectives.

6.  Submit the application within the specified time frame. Late submissions are trash.

5.  Include a business plan.
A business plan shows your interest and motivation and states how the money will be used productively.

4.  Don’t rely just on the grant money for your entire project.  Have other sources of income to sustain your plan long term.

3.  Don’t write a proposal and send it to all the agencies you know. Grant officers can recognize generic, bulk proposals.

2.  Your proposal must look professional.  Shoddy proposals are easy to spot and not taken seriously.

1.  Don’t ask for more money than you can ever get. Thus it is better to ask for $1,000 and get it, instead of $1,000,000 and being rejected.

If you are a woman and you are interested in funding your business with a government grant for women, it is not easy to find the right place to turn to.

The actual problem is to find a grant, not a loan, which will help you in your business start. Currently, the government offers a web site www.grants.gov, where extensive resources are provided and where applicants can really find out how to get government grants for women.

Other than this website, there are no real government led web sites providing grant information.

On the other hand, loans to start a business can be found on many pages, such as www.sba.gov and similar.  These sites provide no resources to genuine grants for women, it is focused on loan information for women entrepreneurs.

Grants are not given for personal financial assistance and certain organizations are more likely to qualify than others for a grant.

There is a United States Small Business Administration sponsored national network of Women’s Business Centers, which are meant to provide information, counsel, assistance and resources for women; helping them to start and establish  successful small business ventures. The full list of such centers is down-loadable on the aforementioned web page www.business.gov.

State government offices of Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Washington and Wisconsin have offices with resources established to help women who own a business develop and grow their enterprise.

National Women’s Business Council has resources and business mentoring facilities to help women in business leadership positions successfully develop and lead their businesses; all of these places are good sources for information about government grants for women.