Sick of being someone’s employee and would love to be an employer yourself? Do you have the perfect idea to start a business of your own? You can very well make a perfect entrepreneur with all this entrepreneurial spirit. But having just an idea can never make your business successful. No startup business generates revenue at its early stages. Running a business not only needs the time and effort but the money too. You will have to keep the business running for atleast a couple of years before you could see considerable profit from it. Your personal savings serving as your startup capital might help you set up your business, but will definitely not suffice to have your business running at the initial stages and not to forget your bills.
Without proper funding, a great idea for a much greater business can stay right on paper for a pretty long time or even soon find a place in the trash. And with dozens of small businesses started every week, without the proper funding your business might have its doors rolled down forever. However there are several options available to every budding entrepreneur through which they can invite considerable funding to their business. But it is completely in the hands of the entrepreneur to choose the best lucrative funding option eliminating the ones that are alluring but completely deceiving.
With several options to acquire the necessary funding to your startup, figure out the perfect plan for running the business and work out the numbers to keep your business running at its initial stages. Applying for small business loans, crowd funding, venture capitalists, professional money lenders, angel investors and banks are the most sought after ways for funding a startup business. And recently, startup grants have caught the entrepreneurs’ attention.
Startup grants
Grants are simply awards or gifts given out to skilful and adept performances in various fields. Similarly, startup grants are simply awards mostly in the form of cash given to worthy startup companies or startup ideas to cut the red tape and keep their business doors open.
The aim of startup grants is to provide new employment opportunities by encouraging new businesses. A startup grant simply provides the entrepreneur an adequate and secure amount to keep the business running for a period of about two years. Any budding entrepreneur, an employer looking at starting a business of his own or an unemployed person in search of a job qualify for acquiring startup grants.
Applying for startup business grants – Requirements
However a startup grant will only be offered to the applicant if he/she has the capabilities to run a business and is looking at being an entrepreneur full-time and if the business can only be started after the startup business grant is obtained.
Grants are not offered to any applicant who suits the requirement. When applied, the officials concerned make a thorough analysis about the business, the competition that the industry faces already, the need for a new business at the location mentioned by the applicant and a couple more factors before sanctioning the startup business grant to the applicant.
Small business startup grants from the government
Small businesses usually satisfy the requirements for applying for startup grants but not all small businesses qualify for government startup grants. Grants are allotted to small businesses from the tax payer’s money and the government has strict rules to follow when sanctioning grants to businesses. High tech businesses and small businesses started in the research and development fields are usually the ones that qualify for small business startup grants from the government. Government sanctions grants to research and development businesses under the Small Business Innovation Research program. About 300 small business companies qualified for government startup grants through the SBIR program in 2014 obtaining an average grant of about $600,000. Like said before, the government follows a very strict set of rules in sanctioning grants. Make sure your business completely falls under the category you apply for and register your business with the correct agency. Complete and submit your application well ahead of the deadlines and avoid using abbreviations and acronyms in your application.
Business grants for women
Women are not new to the entrepreneur list and in the recent years there has been a steep increase in the number of women-run businesses. With government and private organisations providing loans and grants to every eligible small business, women business enthusiasts can make use of the targeted grants offered especially to women entrepreneurs.
Women run non profit organisations, non profit organisations targeted on servicing women, businesses focussed on specific needs for women and businesses run by women in specific locations are few categories under which government agencies as well as private institutions offer business grants for women.
Non profit startup grants
Non profit organisations work with the mission to serve people from various communities and societies rather themselves. Starting a non profit organisation is not easy as it looks and similar to any businesses, running a non profit organisation does need a considerable amount of capital. Though most non profit organisations pay their expenses with the donations they receive; several government and private foundations offer non profit startup grants to the non profit organisations as well.
In addition to government and private foundations providing non profit startup grants, there are several other non profit organisations that grant funds to other smaller non profit organisations. Small businesses that were denied government startup grants can approach non profit organisations to fund their businesses. Foundations either offer non profit startup funds for a particular program or activity or choose to fund the organisation’s complete operational expense.
Organizing membership programs, obtaining sponsorships from corporate industries and getting donations from the general public are few other ways of funding your non profit organisation.
There are a several foundations focused entirely on funding many small and medium scale businesses. As long as your business satisfies the requirement, there is always an organisation either government or private to acquire grants from.
