One of the biggest hurdles facing any budding entrepreneur or small business owner is how to find the seed money to grow the idea.
A national organization, which has a chapter in Aiken County, offered solutions to the dilemma in a recent online seminar titled “Finding Grants and Sponsorships: Locate Opportunities, Apply Confidently, Stand Out to Funders.”
The online seminar was led by Cheryl Smith, CEO of Dewlyn Nonprofit Services (https://dewlyn.com/), who also provides services to small businesses. Her presentation included where to find grants and how to successfully apply.
Smith said grants for small businesses are often seen as free money, but it is free money with strings attached. The catch is that the money must be used for the purpose outlined in the grant application.
“If you’re a business, the intent usually is to scale, and the requirement is that you’re improving and scaling your small business, your company,” she said. “There are grants where you’ve not even done anything yet. There are pre-seed grants out there. If you have a business plan that spells out exactly what this business is going to do, how it’s going to do it, and you make that feasibility clear for small business funders, that is okay.”
Finding available grant money is as easy as a simple Internet search, said Smith.
“If you’ll put in small business grants for your search, and then click under news, that’s going to get you to grants that have just become available around town. And what I mean about around town is around the country,” she explained. “You have to find who’s got these big pockets of money, and where they may be giving or offering grants to small businesses like you.”
Another option is to do a state-specific search. For example, a search of South Carolina small business grants results in dozens of sites, including two that are dedicated to growing small businesses in the Palmetto State.
https://scbos.sc.gov/business-support/business-resources/women-minority-veteran-resources
https://scbizdev.sccommerce.com/resources/capital-funding-grants
Doing a similar search for Georgia also results in a wide range of programs, including one from the Georgia Department of Economic Development (GDEcD) and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA).
https://georgia.org/small-business/finance/federal-grants-and-loans
https://dca.georgia.gov/financing-tools/small-business
Smith added that it is also important to check for grants that some major corporations offer through each calendar year.
“Some of the ones that you see populating here on my screen, many of these have active grants right now,” she advised. “I would strongly recommend that, even if you go to some of these sites and you have just missed the opportunity, go ahead and sign up so that you’re in the know the next time the opportunity is released.”
Smith explained that the difficulty in applying can be connected to the type of grant. Some government grants can take up to 200 hours to complete. However, grant applications for a small business can be completed in as little as 15 minutes. The important thing is to have documentation.
“I’m looking at a lot of small business grants that are out there, and most often, they are asking that you are a small business, that you have registered yourself, you’ve got your certificate of incorporation or your Certificate of Organization, and you were organized as a legal entity in your state,” she said.
Smith said grant money is available for both brick-and-mortar businesses as well as virtual and work-from-home companies.
SCORE is made up of volunteers, many of them retired business owners and top-level managers. In addition to providing online education programs, SCORE volunteers also provide mentorship.
Learn more about the local chapter at: https://www.score.org/greateraiken.
