grWAAM AI is grant research, writing, and award management simplified. We use speech-to-text AI API to generate a grant proposal narrative. Complete a grant writing course, attend a webinar, or hire a grant writer. Once you win a grant, grWAAM AI will manage your award and handle compliance.
by Ira Revels
Introduction
Millions are currently available in small business grants. Few grant writing skills are required. Did you know that you can automate the grant writing process for RFP responses? grWAAM makes it painless for small businesses and non-profit organizations to respond to Requests for Proposals. Create better grant proposals and optimize your organization's funding success.
How to Find Grants for Your Business?
Right now, if you are a business owner, finding and getting grants couldn’t be easier. Since 2020 the U.S. government since the onset of COVID-19 has spent $3.95 trillion to stimulate the economy. Just consider that 71% of government spending has occurred in grants and fixed charges or $5.1 trillion. Another 12.3% or $879 billion is for contractual services and supplies. This means that if your small business can respond to government RFPs then you’re in a great position to sell your business services and products. Besides contracting with the government there are several funding opportunities across a wide variety of programs that are created specifically for BIPOC and women small business owners.
First of all, what is a grant?
Noun. A sum of money awarded to an individual, company, or non-profit organization by a government or other organization that does not have to be paid back to facilitate a goal.
Now that you know what a grant is, keep in mind that grants do not need to be repaid. They are considered “free money,” but most funders will require that you submit one or more written reports on a schedule. Grant funders may also require financial reports that show how much of the money has been spent and whether the numbers align with your initial request.
Why are grants important for small businesses?
Small business owners find themselves in the challenging position of having to juggle multiple tasks and opportunities often simultaneously. Being an entrepreneur in the Creator Economy is not easy especially as you are faced with innovating while inflation is at an all-time high. With prices for goods and services increasing, small businesses must be able to deliver the goods consistently and on time and gain consumer confidence. Grants are important because, in essence, they will enable you to try and fail using someone else's money.
How to find grants for your small business.
Finding grants is easier than ever, especially since there is an increasing number of funding opportunities available to small businesses. Whether they are available from government agencies such as the SBA, the state, or local small businesses, particularly small business owners can find grant funding to support their projects. Once a long and difficult process, grant research is now fast and often simple using the internet. Online searching for grant funding opportunities has gotten easier, but where to search, making timely responses to RFPs, and knowing which keywords to use can often be confusing. The results for grant searches can take an entire day to sift through.
Applying for a grant
Finding grants, if you know what you’re doing, are focused, have the right search strategy, and don’t miss the deadline can mean crossing the first hurdle. The next step is to apply for the grant. Yet, before you can apply you must ensure that the funding opportunity and your capabilities are a good match. Compliance with funder requirements is also a key need. So, how do you ensure that what you found is a good match? Ensuring that you have reviewed the funder and applicant qualifications is a great place to start. Do you have the minimum requirements to apply? Often funders want to know your legal tax status. Is your business registered properly? Small business funders may also ask why you need funding. This is important, especially for COVID-related funding opportunities. You may also need to have registered, been operating your business well in advance of 2020, and been impacted by the pandemic when the COVID funds began.
Tips for writing a grant proposal.
1. Know what you’re looking for.
Besides COVID and in an effort to stimulate job growth and entrepreneurship, especially for historically underrepresented people, grants are being offered by numerous Corporations, private foundations, and community foundations. Applying for these funding opportunities simply requires carefully reading the funder program description.
2. Read, read, read.
The old saying, “Reading is fundamental” definitely applies to grants. Sometimes funders will explain their approach to grant-making within an overview or description. They may focus on a particular community or a specific topic. Funders may want to impact a specific outcome. For example, food insecurity, youth development, or business innovation are typical topics of concern among funders.
3. Determine if you’re a good match.
Once you have read the funder requirements you will be able to determine that you are a good match. Being a good match for a funding opportunity first of all means that you are qualified to respond to the funding announcement. Secondly, being a good match means that you can properly describe your rationale for solving the problem the funder seeks to solve. Next, you are capable of demonstrating your past achievements on similar types of projects. You are also able to explain the scope of work including goals, objectives, timelines, milestones, outcomes, and a budget. Not all grants will require these elements, but depending on the types of grants you are applying for these are the basic elements funders seek from grant submissions.
So once you determine that you meet funder qualifications and your business or proposed grant project will make a measurable impact, submitting a grant proposal is the next step!
Writing grants and making compliant submissions boils down to a numbers game. Researching grant proposals, writing responses, determining ‘fit’, and then crafting a winning response takes time. Time is not generally what small business entrepreneurs have to devote to a process that ultimately requires focused attention.
Hire grWAAM AI (pron. /gram/)
grWAAM AI simplifies the grant research, writing, and award management process by using Artificial Intelligence and grant writing professionals with over 25 years of experience. We automate grant research, writing short letters of intent, RFP responses, or funding applications. Once you have successfully secured funding, our onboarding specialists help manage grant awards and compliance so you don’t have to.
Whether you are a small business entrepreneur, non-profit organization director, or fundraiser use grWAAM AI to make grant research, writing, and award management painless. Our platform helps you quickly create better grant proposals to win grants. We accomplish painless grant writing and proposal development using a process that has been created with grant seekers in mind.
STEP 1: Tell us what you need.
Are you seeking capacity funding for your company or non-profit, a specific project, or for a different purpose such as responding to a specific RFP?
STEP 2: We’ll build a master template for your grant project.
Once we talk through your needs, we compile the information including any written content you may already have, keywords, and ideas into a master template.
STEP 3: Send & easily update your grant “letter of intent.”
The compiled master template is presented to you as a letter of intent, a well-formed summary narrative paper, or a simple outline that you can update as needed.
STEP 4: Scale your responses to RFPs.
Most importantly, now that you have a document that you can use for different types of RFP responses you can scale your submissions.
Conclusion
Grant research and writing are how small businesses can sell their products and services. Whether by responding to contracts from the government, corporate, community, or private foundations businesses can take advantage of trillions of dollars in funding opportunities. Yet the grant research and writing process can take valuable time that entrepreneurs don’t have. That’s why businesses need to hire a grant writer who has years of experience and a simplified process for getting funding quickly.
Schedule a call with us today at grWAAM AI. https://grwaam.com
West Hartford, CT 06119
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