Advivo Partner, Chris Morris, shares his top tips to increase your chances of successfully obtaining funding for your small business through Government Business Grants.
With the new financial year kicking off, people are often looking for ways to fund their businesses or projects. Depending on your business, your industry, and ultimately your goals, Government Business Grants may provide an opportunity for your business to secure funding to help offset the costs associated with delivering your projects and achieving your business goals. But where do you start?
Let’s dive into our top 5 tips on how you can best position yourself and your business to be the first in line for when an appropriate grant opportunity arises.
1. Move Quickly
When grants have broad eligibility requirements, they tend to become fully subscribed extremely quickly – sometimes within just minutes of them opening. For this reason, if you’re looking apply for a grant with broad eligibility criteria, we recommend moving quickly to become as prepared as possible for when the grant opens. This will ensure that you’re in the best position at the start line of the race, allowing you to be one of the first applicants for the grant in question.
2. Do Your Research
There are many different grants open at any given time, so it’s important to understand the types of grants currently available and the ones opening in the future that could be suited to help your business achieve its goals. Government grants can be provided by various levels of Government and are mostly provided with the intention of increasing economic and employment growth within specific industry sectors or communities. Understanding the objectives of the grant/s you’re researching is important.
Broadly speaking, many grants are focused on innovation and increasing efficiencies, so if your business is investing in these areas, you are likely to find a grant that is designed to support the type of project your business is looking to undertake.
The following websites are key for sourcing and assessing information on which types of grants may be appropriate for certain businesses.
3. Have Your Ducks Aligned
This is about being prepared and planning, regardless of whether there is an appropriate grant available at this point in time or not. To have the best chance of successfully winning Government Business Grants, we recommend having your business and project goals, budget and outcomes clarified and clearly articulated in writing, ahead of time. If you do this, not only will your business be in a better position to achieve its goals regardless of grant funding, but you’ll also be better placed to spring into action when a grant funding opportunity does arise.
One aspect of being prepared which is sometimes overlooked is making sure your business financials are up to date. This information is often required for grant applications, and you don’t want to miss out purely because you weren’t up to date with your books!
4. Check Your Eligibility
You will usually find a good amount of information online about the eligibility requirements relevant to particular grants. If there is a grant opening in the future that you’re considering applying for, first check to ensure your business meets all the eligibility criteria stated, because you don’t want to waste time on an application, only to learn later that your business fails one of the basic eligibility criteria.
Once you have confirmed your eligibility, you can then move on to planning your application. This is about understanding what the Grant Assessors are after and ensuring your application is presented in a way that will best position your business or project to be considered for their funding. Remember that government grants are targeted toward specific industry sectors and business sizes, so most will have their own unique requirements that must be met before a business is considered for the grant. Demonstrating how your business or project meets those requirements is the key to showing why your application should be considered for grant funding. Ensure you always refer to their requirements and desired outcomes in your application.
5. Set Aside Time
A good application will take time to write. You want to target key areas of relevance to build a strong case as to why your business or project should be considered to receive government funding. Applications should be specific to the grant/s you’re applying for and should clearly and concisely address the key criteria of the grant/s in question. For this reason, we believe it’s best to set aside time for planning, writing, and building your application.
Make sure you set a calendar reminder for when the applications open too! This is especially important if the grant you’re applying for has broad eligibility criteria. You want to be ready to go when that grant opens because if you’re not one of the first to turn up to the start line, then your chances of winning the race will be significantly reduced.
There are different types of Government Business Grants available and, whilst many will have different eligibility requirements, most have a similar application process. If you want to be ready to apply for government grants when the opportunity arises, make sure you keep our top 5 tips in mind to ensure you and your business are in the best position for success.
Grant opportunities can come and go very quickly. If you’re interested in following the availability of grants, we suggest monitoring the websites referred to in this article. Please feel free to contact us if you would like any further information on this process, or if you require assistance with forecasting or budgeting the financial implications of your business or project.
Written By Chris Morris.
