Taking the mystery out of obtaining a grant...
From the research I have done, I am beginning to understand why, when organizations place a request for a grant, it is a collaborative effort. That is, many of the staff get involved in the steps of finding, qualifying, collecting, verifying, and writing the draft, as well as checking, and changing as needed, before anything is turned into for final approval and before it is finally drafted and signed off on, then submitted by the deadline imposed by the grants committee. No easy task...
There are many steps, the first being - identifying the appropriate grant for your stated purpose. I read an article yesterday on a public broadcast site regarding a grant they are going to be giving.The stipulations were immense, and it became clear that matching the purpose with the requirements is a job in itself.
The first step in locating a grant is you must define your purpose.This is done by clarifying the purpose of your project by writing a concise mission statement. Once accomplished, seek funding that is a match for your project, including who will benefit, and how the grant money will be applied to meet the stated purpose. That's just in the preliminary phase, and the work hasn't even begun in processing the application.
So, I am wondering, as I am only one person, do I have the ability to identify, locate, define, collect, and process such a request, alone? I don't know.
I have been given a couple tools called the Federal Money Retriever and another called the Grant Gate. These are two databases which contain a huge number of institutions, both private,non-profits,and governmental sources which are in the business of giving grants to causes. Some contain grants only to organizations, some will give monies to individuals. What is important, as I see it, is the tools are instrumental in the search. They've taken a lot of information and made it possible for someone to locate the right grants, and research these as well.
There's a lot of hubbub on the internet about "getting a grant", such as, the Lesco fiasco. Basically, Matthew Lesco is a consultant who has put together a lot of information to sell to people who do not know anything about grants. People think when buying his products that they will be able to get a grant, simply by buying his products. This is incorrect. People are so desperate for funding, and hear all the fantastic stories, that they will take the risk by spending money (often money they can't really spare) to become in the know. The problem with this is, once you get the book, you quickly see, it is a bunch of information that doesn't tell you much more than you knew already. And half the phone numbers are outdated or bogus. Years ago I purchased Matthew Lesco's book on grants. I found it to be silly and not very helpful in understanding what one has to do to find a grant, let alone write an application for a grant. Most of what he wrote in there was horse sense, and I think that's what he used to fool people (me included) into purchasing his materials. The truth is, finding a grant is very hard work, and the process in getting a grant is harder still.
That's the beauty in the tools I mentioned. There's no other products anywhere, that takes the stress out of the search as these do. The databases are loaded with GOOD information and direction, and if one is very vigilant, finding the correct grant is made a lot easier. Then your work really begins! So I say, don't be fooled into buying useless junk when you can obtain (for free!) the Federal Money Retriever and the Grant Gate at Aidpage.
Now all I have top do is get my courage up to achieve what I have been dreaming of doing.
To learn about the Federal Money Retriever, and the Grant Gate go to:
http://www.idilogic.com
or, read the following Aidpage regarding Idilogic and it's tools:
http://us-federal-government-aid.idilogic.aidpage.com
Happy Hunting,
m_99
Hi Public Post,
It's been a while since I have posted. Changes have happened and I decided to fore go the so-called free mall. Instead, I have been thinking about a real business, with real profitability. The idea is a fairly common one but with an uncommon twist. Thinking of creating this business has led me down the pathway of locating resources to launch, grow, and manage the venture.
I read as much about entrepreneurship and funding as I can, and frequent Entrepreneur.com often, as well as StartupNation.com, business magazines, and venture capital blogs. I found the following article in one such blog. This is an article about financing as well as The Funding Universe, a new (two years) resources site for business.
This article was from the Wall Street Journal. Of course you can simply go to the Journal to read the article, and I could have provided the link, but wanted you, the reader, to have something at your fingertips. Hope it helps in your business or business plans for the future.
Enjoy, m_99
Web Sites Help Bring Together Entrepreneurs and Investors
By Daniel Hausmann of Venturewire
Nate Alder believed clothing insulation could be warmer and more efficient, so he and a few partners set out earlier this year to reinvent winter-jacket lining. Unfortunately, prospective angel and venture-capital investors didn't warm up to the idea on first look in the spring. The second time around in the fall Mr. Alder and his team walked away with $375,000 in angel investor backing. The difference, according to Mr. Alder: his start-up, Argon Technologies Inc. (www.argongear.com), went through Funding Universe, a Web site (www.fundinguniverse.com) designed to connect entrepreneurs with investors. The site can help companies tweak business plans and hosts in-person "speed pitching" -- a take on speed dating where investors are paired with entrepreneurs.
"Angels said at the speed-pitching that our pitch was so much better than before," Mr. Alder said, adding he walked away from the October event with 10 to 12 offers. "Face-to-face made the difference; it raises your chances significantly."
As the venture world has recovered from the tech bubble bust at the turn of the century, a number of sites have popped up offering advice and the ability to connect entrepreneurs with investors. These businesses take things beyond sites that simply offer message boards or rating services like the much publicized The Funded, which lets anonymous people rate VCs.
Funding Universe and others like it boast services that range from e-mailed distribution of pitches to networking conferences that mirror speed dating events. The programs, while not targeted at experienced venture capitalists, are specifically useful for business owners and angel investors lacking a robust Rolodex.
"The angel world is very inefficient," said Brock Blake, chief executive of Funding Universe. "Angels don't walk around with a sign on their back that says 'Angel Investor.' "
Mr. Blake launched Funding Universe, his first start-up, two years ago after graduating from Brigham Young University. On his own, he raised a few hundred thousand dollars in angel backing in the months after the site debuted to help it grow.
On Funding Universe, entrepreneurs can post their business plans for free. The company then helps businesses fix pitches and rates business plans, posts video pitches, and introduces companies to investors with comparable portfolios. The services after the free posting come with a charge; a subscription can range from $20 to $50 per month depending on services. In its network, the company has 718 investors and over 21,000 entrepreneurs, according to Mr. Blake.
One of the strong components of the site, according to investors and start-ups, is the face time provided by the speed-pitching events. Mr. Blake lines up 30 to 50 investors in a room, and about 10 start-ups go table-to-table delivering seven-minute pitches. The company has six Utah-based events lined up for 2008 and is looking to book more across the country.
Other sites offer varying levels of help similar to Funding Universe. Plan Heaven allows companies to post pitch videos that are then distributed to a network of investors. The service is free but the site does not track the results of its users. Another site, Go4Funding, lets entrepreneurs and investors post their needs and contact information, ala Craig List. The site charges consultants, lawyers, accountants and others $100-per-month to advertise on the site.
Another site, Go BIG Media LLC's GoBIGNetwork.com, essentially works as an online classified service for the start-up community. Users can post ads to invest, get invested and find employees, and also find advice through blogs and forums. Ad posters pay $59 per month, per ad; people looking to contact posters pay $39 per month, and vendors, such as loan providers, pay Go BIG $10 per lead to find companies in need.
Of the 100,000 start-ups in the system, 10,000 are actively fund-raising, Go BIG Founder Wil Schroter said. Of that number, 82% will get contacted, and some will get as many as three responses. However, Mr. Schroter said his company doesn't proactively track how many of those responses results in a check being cut. Often those responses are from intermediaries of investors, such as capital brokers, Mr. Schroter said.
Rich Sloan and his brother Jeff, both veteran entrepreneurs, offer tips through podcasts, a nationally syndicated radio show and their blogs on StartupNation.com. The site also has subscription services for business plan tracking, patent and corporate paperwork. Mr. Sloan said he has about 130,000 users.
While many of these Web sites have popped up post-bubble, the services hark back to the late 1990s when business plans were plentiful. At the time, Joe Rubin, director of FundingPost.com, was an entrepreneur and Web site designer who calls himself not "one of the lucky people to cash out in the dot-com boom." Mr. Rubin saw a need for this in the marketplace back then for a site to assist entrepreneurs. Unfortunately for Mr. Rubin, he launched his site in 2000 just as things were going haywire for dot-coms. He stuck it out, seeing a lot of investors with money on the sidelines.
"We wanted to make something that was easy and low pressure for them," Mr. Rubin said.
Funding Post offers similar services as Funding Universe, including pitching events and introductions to investors. His company charges $75 for admittance to the events and $100 for site subscriptions; some packages can run up to $2,000 depending on services needed. About 100 business summaries have been submitted to Funding Post in the past 30 days, though he declined to discuss the company's income.
Gideon Naim, chief financial officer with RFID-tracker company CenTrak Inc., went through several Web sites, including Funding Post, when his company was founded in 2003. He attended one of Funding Post’s pitch events near the company's home base in Newtown, Pa. "We were successful in closing angel rounds not many months after," Mr. Naim said. His company has raised under $2 million to date without going to venture capitalists. The company plans to go that route in the third quarter of 2008.
Venture capitalists say, however, if entrepreneurs want to get in the door with their firms, they'd better bring a trusted friend. John Taylor, the vice president of research for the National Venture Capital Association, said he hasn't encountered a success story in the venture capital industry from this method. David Aronoff, general partner with IDG Ventures Boston, said over 95% of his firm's deals come from insiders. Of the 4,500 to 5,000 deal pitches his firm sees annually, they'll write checks for 8 to 10.
"Venture capitalists are not generally going to be cruising Web sites looking for the next thing," Mr. Taylor said.
Okapi Venture Capital Managing Director Marc Averitt said most of his deals come from trusted sources such as lawyers, accountants, and colleagues in the industry. Occasionally he'll do a deal off the street but said he is less inclined to do deals that come through brokers who charge entrepreneurs a fee.
"There are better deals that don't have that baggage," Mr. Averitt said.
But for individual and angel investors, the screening process some of these sites offer is time saved. Brigham Tomco of angel investor Meyer Ventures, a family office based in New York, served as a consultant for Funding Universe for a time. He's also attended their speed-pitching events and has not invested in a lead from there yet. He said the companies did not fit for one reason or another. Despite that he said he'd continue to look at leads because of their quality and because of Mr. Blake's screening process.
"The quality of their presentations is as good or better than what we usually see," Mr. Tomco said.
