Must have information on the reality of FREE GOVERNMENT GRANTS.

1.
FREE GOVERNMENT GRANTS!
Fact OR Fiction
Sound familiar; eerie yet enticing? To professional grant writers these “offers”
are a pernicious scam, it’s a wishing well, except rather than a penny or dime,
your tossing in $19.99 or more, and you’re not getting $19.99 back, much less
$1.9 million!
This is not some harmless hoax. Seminar sellers and book hucksters routinely con people into shelling
out hundreds of dollars to hear lectures or purchase directories that contain information readily
available in any public library or on the Internet; in fact, I’ll be sharing some of those “freebie” websites
with you here.
Despite the grim picture I’ve painted, there are authentic government grants for businesses and
individuals; the United States government does indeed award $400 billion annually through its 26
federal entities, what they don’t tell you is that they are very restrictive. In fact, looking back at each
federal grant I’ve written as a professional fundraising consultant, I can tell you with some authority
that there are in the area of 15 criteria you need to meet to even consider taking the time and
spending the money to write one of these monsters (yes, monsters,
imagine writing a Ph.D. dissertation). Hey if winning grants were that
easy, everyone would be rich. Right? Right.
So, in order to make this monster of a process KISS ‐‐ keep it simple
stupid (recall that one from college marketing?), I’ll break it down for
you. And then YOU count up the criteria you meet, or don’t meet, and
from there make the decision to embark on the FREE GOVERNMENT
GRANT! band wagon.
The first question you need to ask yourself is: Who Are You? I ask
because if you fit one or more of the following nine definitions you get to move on to the next six set of
criteria.
1. Female
2. Minority
3. Unemployed/Underemployed
4. Disabled
5. Recently released from prison
6. High School Drop Out
7. Veteran
8. Recent Immigrant
9. Sexual Orientation
OK, you’ve identified who you are; now let’s look at what your business is.

2.
10. Green
11. Community Revitalization: e.g. Under the Poverty Level, Rural Access, Urban Renewal, Business
located in an economically challenged area
12. Job Creation
13. Economic development, workforce training
14. Service for working poor: e.g. child care centers, transportation, low income housing
15. Innovation, social entrepreneurs, public/private partnerships
Now, if you fit one or two of the above criteria, most likely, you’ve got a long shot at winning a grant;
conversely, if you fit one or more of the 1 – 8 criteria AND one or more of the 10 – 15 criteria, you have
a very good case for support for you and your business. Here’s a scenario of what it would look like to
qualify for a federal grant:
You are a female, unemployed veteran with a disability resulting from your years of service. While in
the military you were trained as a chef, now home it’s been a dream of yours to start an organic farm
in your rural hometown. Because of the people you served alongside you see the value of providing at
risk urban youth with the opportunity to experience a rural lifestyle, so you intend to partner with an
inner‐city high school and have the youth work your small farm, harvest and sell your products at a
local farmers market. This venture will require employees, so not only will you be offering at risk youth
a positive work experience, you will hire full time and part time employees. Due to your experience as
an unemployed veteran, you have coordinated collaborations with the regional Workforce
Development Office so they may help place people with the skills you need, you have also developed a
partnership with the regional women’s prison. When a woman is
released, and if she shows interest and has passed certain security
measures, you will provide them with apprenticeships which could lead
to part time or full time employment with you or with another similar
operation, now that they have both experience and a work reference
which you will provide.
Last spring the USDA had a grant available which would be an excellent fit for a scenario just as
described above.

3. So what makes these 15 criteria so special that almost every grant requires meeting several of them?
It’s pretty simple actually. Our government grants funds to organizations/businesses that will solve
issues or problems facing the US, our economy, our citizens. They’ve identified at risk or hard to
employ target populations and if you focus on training or hiring these populations, you are helping
them solve a societal problem; making sure recently released prisoners have a fair shake and become
productive members of society rather than struggling and perhaps ending up back where they came,
which is an enormous cost to the government.
If you’ve added up your criteria and you believe you may be eligible for a government grant, here are
those “freebie” sites to search and see what is available right now.
Federal Government Website
www.Grants.gov
Fundsnet Services
http://www.fundsnetservices.com/searchresult.php?sbcat_id=30
Philanthropy News Digest
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/
Society for Nonprofit Organizations
http://www.snpo.org
Council on Foundations: Community Foundation Locator
http://classic.cof.org/locator/index.cfm
FAS Online
http://www.fas.usda.gov/ICD/grants/director.html
USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/fo/funding.cfm
GrantsAlert.com
http://www.grantsalert.com/grants.cfm?id=4&pg=0
Grant Wrangler
http://www.grantwrangler.com/subscribe.html
Environmental Grantmakers Association
http://www.ega.org/funders/funderDirectory.php?keyword=&showAll=true
Investor’s Circle
https://angelsoft.net/angel‐group/investors‐circle/apply
Funders Concerned about AIDS
http://www.fcaaids.org/publications/Publications_Mapping.htm

4.
ScanGrants.com
http://www.scangrants.com/
For more information on federal grants give our federal grant writers at Wagner Fundraising a call.
We’d love to help guide you through the process, or prepare the grant; whatever meets your needs.
More importantly, as professional fundraising consultants and grant writers we at ML Wagner
Fundraising will tell you up front if it is a waste of time and money to seek government funding.