How a small business finds its first grant
Most public funding is not open to a for-profit business, and the fastest possible search is one that establishes that first.
What goes wrong
The bulk of published grantmaking names nonprofits, public bodies or tribal governments as eligible applicants. A search that does not filter on entity type spends most of its time on programmes you cannot enter.
Employee counts, revenue caps and years in operation appear in prose as often as in a field. Where a source did not state one, we show “Not stated” rather than assuming there is none.
A reimbursement award pays after you have spent the money. For a business without the cash to front, an award of that shape may be worse than no award, and it is a property of the programme rather than a detail.
What to do instead
Filter on entity type first and read the funding mechanism before the amount. We can make it much faster to decide a programme is not for you — which on this path is most of the value, because the alternative is discovering it in a draft application.
Browse open records for small businesses →Step by step
Open the small-business slice and see the real size of it
The count on that page is the number of records we hold that name small businesses. It is a fact about this catalogue rather than about American grantmaking, and it is still the right place to start.
Read whether the award is a reimbursement
Where a source stated it, the record says so. Where it did not, the field reads “Not stated” and the funder’s page is where to settle it — before you plan the cashflow.
Check the size limit clause, not the industry tag
Industry classifications come from each source portal’s own vocabulary and are coarse. The size clause is what disqualifies businesses, and it is usually the shorter read.
Note the deadline type before scheduling anything
Fixed, rolling and forecasted are three different planning problems. A forecasted programme has no committed date at all, and any date you plan against is your assumption rather than the funder’s.
Questions
Are there grants for a business with no employees?
Some programmes name sole proprietors in their eligibility text. We show that clause where a source stated it; where none is stated we do not infer that solo operators qualify.
Why do so few records mention revenue caps?
Because most sources do not publish one in a structured field. We would rather show “Not stated” than infer a cap from a programme’s size, which would be a number no funder ever wrote.
Can you tell me which grants I am most likely to get?
No. Nothing we read publishes application or award counts per programme, so any ranking of your chances would be invented. What we can do is show which clauses you plainly do or do not meet.