Finding And Applying For
Government Grants
By Neal Brown
According to a U.S. government website, there are $400 billion in grants
currently available in over 1000 different programs. Naturally with such a huge
amount finding a program that you or your company might qualify for is a huge
task.
This article will present some resources and strategies to locate and apply
for grant programs that you may be qualified for.
The single best source for finding grant opportunities is the government
site at
www.grants.gov . There are four ways to
search for grants on this website. The first way is a basic search. This enables
you to search by a keyword, funding opportunity number, or CFDA number. The CFDA
stands for Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. This number and the funding
opportunity number are used for specific grants. Once you have found a grant
program, write these numbers down so that you will be able to return to the
details of that grant quickly using one of these numbers.
The second type of search is by category. There are 21 different categories
that you can search by including arts, employment, environment, health, and
others. The third way to search is by government agency. There are at least 40
agencies offering grants.
The last way is the advanced search which allows you to search by keyword
plus the days since posted, agency, category, eligibility and more. You can also
be emailed automatically when grants in a particular opportunity number category
are posted.
Once you have the Funding Opportunity and/or CFDA number of the grant for
which you want to apply, you need it to download a grant application and apply
for a grant. Be sure to follow the instructions exactly and review the
application several times for completeness.
You must register to create a Grants.gov
account and receive approval from your organization to submit applications. This
also provides you with the ability to track your application status.
When you are ready to submit the completed application, you will then need
to log into
Grants.gov using the username and password
you entered when you registered with.
Once you have submitted an application, you can check the status of your
application submission. You can identify your application by CFDA Number,
Funding Opportunity Number, Competition ID, and/or
Grants.gov Tracking Number.
There are many other resources for locating government grants at
www.us-government-grants.info
Neal has an MBA in financial management.
Government Grants has more resources to locate grants.