Yes. There are Grants for Small Businesses

Red Onions with a Copper Pitcher by John C. Drew, 

October 2014.

Normally, I cannot provide much hope for small business owners seeking funding from the federal government. The idea that the federal government wants to help you start a small business is, for the most part, a complete myth. As the Small Business Administration notes on its own website, "SBA does not provide grants for starting and expanding a business."

Most of those who get support from the federal government do so by receiving loans given by private lenders that are guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. This guarantee lowers your interest rate, but it is not free money. 

Money for Scientific Research 

Nevertheless, if your small business is engaged in scientific research and development, then the federal government is interested in hearing from you. They have opened their doors wide to receive proposals in this area and they are more than willing to fund them if you are doing research which matches their own pre-selected research interests. 

The two most important programs you need to know about are the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (SBTT) programs. If you work on a SBTT grant application, then you will need to find a research institution like a major research university to collaborate with you on your research project. You will also need to share a least 30% of the research expenses with a collaborating research institution. Some of the best funders for business owners in the lucrative medical equipment field are the National Institutes for Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Regarding the NIH and NSF

I was amazed to learn that you can send unsolicited applications to the NIH without worrying about their current research interests. The next deadline for such an application would be January 5, 2016. The initial Phase I grant would be for $150,000 and any subsequent Phase II grant would be significantly higher, up to $1 million. They make it easy to give them a phone call and check whether or not there is a match. One great thing I noticed about NIH is that there is a conference in Seattle between October 27-29, 2015 where you can learn about how to apply for the NIH’s SBIR funding.

Medical equipment inventors would also be eligible to apply for NSF funding under their various medical categories. 

Tips for Winning

In general, the NIH and NSF are looking for projects which are very near to the marketplace, but still need to be tested on human subjects. From what I understand, if you do a high quality application in an appropriate funding category you have a 50% chance of winning funding. It is best to plan your Phase 1 and Phase 2 research project as one entire research operation. It seems like you are virtually guaranteed to win the much larger Phase 2 funding as long as you can prove your mettle during the Phase 1 funding research. 

Assembling Your Grant Project Team: Balancing the Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the key points in Warshawski's book is that you need to make sure that you have excellent people in other positions if you have a new or inexperienced person serving as the director or producer of a film. For example, if you have a director who is just out of film school, he thinks it is extremely important to find a producer

who has a track-record of success in funding and managing successful documentary films. This does not mean that new people cannot get a break in the industry. It only means that you need to balance new people with more experienced people to create a credible application.

Oil Portrait of a Female Model 

by John C. Drew 

September 2015

The more inexperienced the director, the more experienced the producer or executive producer needs to be for your project.

Likewise, if you have a new director, then you also need to team him/her up with an experienced videographer so that your get quality shots for your film. However, a team led by an experienced director can get away with using a less experienced crew because the funder assumes the director will make up for their inadequacies.

In the same manner, I like to balance our grant project teams. For example, if I have an extremely experienced and skilled executive director, then I do not mind teaming them up with less experienced staff - especially if this means we can save some money. If the executive director is new, however, then I argue for adding to the grant project staff members with the strongest academic credentials and experience even if they appear over-qualified for their positions.

I think that this common sense approach makes more sense when you are thinking about documentary films because the  roles of the cameraman or the director are so specific and so differentiated. In the typical non-profit it often seems like everybody is doing everybody's job.

Writing with the Needs of the Foundation in Mind: Getting Money Quicker

My Drew & Associates team recently finished up a series of proposals designed to help a young film director, Maj. Lynette Jones win funding for her film called "The Truth Behind the Camouflage." This highly topical documentary film will investigate solutions for ending sexual assault in the Armed Forces.

One of our senior associate grant writers, Pearl Rothman, took on this project because of her own experience as a screenwriter for short films and commercials. I could not be more proud of the work she did on this project.

In the process, I learned a lot about what it takes to get funding for a documentary film based on an excellent book by Morrie Warshawski, "Shaking the Money Tree." Accordingly, I thought it would be fun to share some of the new insights I will be applying to my own grant writing in the years ahead.

Grant writing for a documentary film is kind of tough because so few foundations are sincerely interested in funding documentary films. My research team, for example, found it difficult to search out funders for Maj. Jones' project. As Warshawski writes: "Remember, many foundations are funding the film not because it is a film, but inspite of the fact that it is a film!" Below, I have inserted the trailer for the film, The Truth Behind the Camouflage. 

To address this challenge, Warshawski recommends seeking funders that are interested in the subject matter of the documentary and not for funders that express a specific interest in documentary films. This seems like sage advice to me. In my experience, it is a lot easier to win a grant from a funder that has a strong interest in your topic area. This is why, at times, it seems to me that the good research is more important than good writing when it comes to winning grants.

One of the unending debates in grant writing is whether you would tailor your projects to match the funders' previous project or else stick to your own programs and then work harder to find appropriate matches. In my experience, there are generally only a handful of funders in your region that give money for what you want to do. Accordingly, it looks to me like your best bet is to see what they want to do and to start doing that.

Knowledge of People is Power: Using Teamwork to Improve Your Grant Writing

As a graduate and undergraduate student, I thought of academic/intellectual production as a lonely, solitary occupation. However, when I wrote -- and later published -- my doctoral dissertation, I quickly learned that being a successful political scientist meant that I would have to get really good at working with small groups of people, highly skilled people. While my name was on the final product, I benefited from the assistance of a number of editors, proofreaders, research assistants, and mentors.

In a similar manner, I like to stress that grant writing is not a solitary exercise - it is in fact a team sport.

In my experience, it is not always the best charities or institutions that win the most lucrative grants. Instead, success goes to those folks who manage to pull together a broad range of information and produce a conforming document under the pressure of a tight deadline. In most cases, the grant writer is dependent on the accounting office for budget information, the executive director's office for goals and vision, the program administrators for day-to-day expertise, clients for practical insight, staff members for fresh versions of their resumes, and even the funder's own administrators regarding the details of the application.

In this context, I think the best grant writers have a knack for managing small, temporary workgroups. One of my secrets of success is to pay attention to the temperaments of the people involved in the process.

In Lao Tzu's book, The Art of War, the author writes there is a place for everybody when you are planning a military campaign.  He says that those who are impulsive and full of courage should be given the honor of leading the charge. He says that those who are naturally cautious and careful are better employed at logistics and planning. The challenge is to size up your group and make intelligent assignments quickly.

At the start of the grant writing process, I like to leverage the excitement and enthusiasm of the most outspoken proponents of the grant. I encourage them by rapidly creating a complete A-Z grant application that puts their biggest and best ideas into a rational, conforming framework.  I encourage them to shoot for the stars, apply the latest research, and compile their most inspirational wish list.

As I near completion of the project, however, I like to encourage the voices of the project pessimists, the ones who may have been indifferent, or actively opposed, to writing the grant in the first place. Frequently, I have found that those who were most resistant to even trying for the grant can be quite helpful in polishing up and perfecting it at the end of the process. I like to leverage the naysayers by encouraging their criticism, asking for their harshest observations, and implementing their most realistic perspectives.

One of the advantages of this approach, by the way, is that the most aggressive grant optimists have, in all probability, lost interest in the project and are moving on to fresh endeavors.

Accordingly, I think it is important to stress that grant writing is more of a team sport than a form of solitary contemplation. There is a lot of money to be made by paying attention to your team's personalities, strengths, and weaknesses.  

Never Rewrite Anything the Same Day You Write It

One of the most important techniques I use to produce grants quickly...and to generate copy for the Drew & Associates newsletter...is to follow the rule of never rewriting anything the same day I write it. When I was an undergraduate student, I used to spend hours writing and rewriting the first sentence of my term paper until it was perfect. Then I would spend hours and hours writing and rewriting the first paragraph. This process was especially painful because I was using a typewriter to compose my document and a bottle of quick-drying correction fluid to cover up my mistakes. Then, I would write the rest of the five-page paper in about four hours - right before it was due. Looking back on my youth, I am amazed I had the strength and perseverance to pull this off. When I went to graduate school, however, I got better tips on writing and my productivity shot up. As you may know, I won an award from the American Political Science Association for my doctoral dissertation. I completed my dissertation more quickly than my fellow graduate students, in large measure, due to the principle of never rewriting on the same day that I first drafted a page or two of a chapter. Today, I speed up the writing process even more by using voice recognition software. Today, however, I'm taking this principle to a new level. One of my current rules is to start articles and grant applications by using voice recognition software. This software allows me to produce the first draft about three times faster than typing it out by hand. Although it is tempting to go back and repeat what I've just dictated in a slightly different fashion, I resist this temptation. (This can be difficult, by the way, because I usually have a better idea of what I really think after I've had a chance to vocalize my ideas.) Although my first drafts are wordy and repetitive, I can clean up these mistakes as I do the second draft...or after the staff of the agency has had a chance to help me improve the quality and realism of the proposal. Even if you are uncomfortable with this technique at first, even if you think it is impossible to dictate your thoughts verbally, please do not let these presuppositions hold you back from applying this advice and benefiting from it. Over time, you will eventually get more comfortable with dictation and you will find it hard to imagine producing documents in a slower, less efficient fashion. If you want to order voice recognition software, then please check out the following link: Link to Dragon Naturally Speaking Software As always, I don't make any money from recommending voice recognition software to you. My payment is your satisfaction with your improved productivity.

Setting Up a Grantsmanship Library to Speed Up the Application Process

The process of grant writing quickly exposes you and your charity to a "survival of the fittest" environment.  Ironically, you will be harming yourself and your charity if you spend too much time grant writing, get too perfectionistic, or drag out the process too long. Thus, one of the most important secrets of grant writing is to recognize that you are in a dangerous spot and to get through it as quickly as possible.  One of the biggest problems I see in the field of grant writing is that very few people are timing how long it takes them to write a grant.  If more of us - me included - did a better job measuring the length of time needed to produce a full-proposal, then I think we would be more likely to look for new technology, short-cuts, and other tricks of the trade to speed up our grant writing.  In my case, for example, I found a lot of practical wisdom in the traditional tenets of the grant writing literature...but only after I reinterpreted these recommendations as tools for saving time.  One of the most important techniques I use as a grant writing consultant is to create a "grantsmanship" library for each client.  In this library, I collect - ahead of time - the key documents that will be needed as part of a hard-copy or on-line grant application.  These documents include copies of the agency's 501 ( c ) 3 determination letter, their IRS 990 form, a list of their Board members, their annual audit, and resumes for the Executive Director and key program officers.  I put these items in files, agency by agency, and then place them in a filing cabinet that is within easy reach. My rule is that the more often I use something, the closer I store it next to me.  As I like to demonstrate in the Grant Writing Fundamentals class, I want to see the grant writer's chair right next to the grantsmanship library.  Below, I'm including an excerpt from my, "A Really Great Booklet on Grant Writing," which indicates the elements of a grantsmanship library: Link to List of Elements for Your Grantsmanship Library Your ability to move quickly in a crisis - to act decisively - will be favorably influenced by this simple practice of organizing your key materials ahead of time.  If you do not yet have a grantsmanship library, please do yourself a favor and get started on it now.  I think you'll be glad you did.

How to Reduce Your Grant Campaign Risks By Becoming a High Speed Grant Writer

What are the advantages of assigning the first draft to the high speed grant writer?

You can produce more grants, you can provide your team with more time to perfect the grant applications, like a race car driver your own attention is focused more completely under high speed grant writing, high speed means the final document will most likely reflect a natural consistency based on your current state of mind, you can move quickly when money becomes available, you can reduce risks by addressing the reasonable challenges and potentially unwarranted fears which might keep you from even attempting to produce a grant application.

Moreover, it is more fun and less of a chore. You'll be able to take advantage of the full capacity of your brain's intuition, memory, associations and your innate artistic sensibility. In my view, the challenge of high-speed grant writing is all the more interesting and easier to teach because it becomes a physical and not and intellectual skill.

Secrets of High Speed Grant Writing: Use Voice Recognition Software

I want to introduce you to the incredible power of voice recognition software is a key tool for speeding up the grant writing process. It is very difficult to do this sort of work on a high-speed basis if you are not able to dictate what you're doing, or to record your dictation and quickly download it into print. I write like I'm in the middle of a hurricane to gain sharper focus and urgency.

Secrets of High Speed Grant Writing: Start at the Beginning and Produce an A to Z First Draft

Once you have your voice recognition software in place, I think it is helpful to create a first draft of the entire grant application from A to Z - in that order. Save time by starting at the beginning each time.

Secrets of High Speed Grant Writing: Write First, Then Do Your Research

I'm a little rough in the first draft. I create dummy numbers. I fill in all the blanks with the expectation that the staff will refine the document with the exactly correct numbers based on their experience. My technique is to do my writing first and then doing my research afterwards. This speeds up things by allowing me to research only the information that is relevant to the grant. In this sense, I think it pays to create a quick first rough draft because it forces you to digest the grant application requirements from A to Z. This process of actively answering the questions forces you to read all the questions and to get up to speed on the realistic requirements for a more polished grant application.

Secrets of High Speed Grant Writing: Write for an Overwhelmed Reader

In my workshops, for example, I explain that I'm writing for the hung over intern who is facing severe emotional problems. You can assume the reader is overwhelmed by late night hours, crushed by too much to read even as the reviewer is comforted by too much to drink. I write very clearly simply and cleanly. I point out the obvious connections between my answers and the written questions I'm responding to. It is essential to initiate work on the budget concurrently with the grant application. The tired grant reader may simply not read the proposal and just jump to the budget.

Secrets of High Speed Grant Writing: Apply the Golden Rule to Your Own Grant Writing

Ultimately, the high speed grant writer needs to write what makes sense to the high speed grant writer. If you are not sold on the grant, then it is likely the funder will not be sold on the grant either. You know you are on the right track when you get the feeling that you know why they have to fund your grant application.   There is not enough time to go back and forth and interview your team and ask them what they think. There is not enough time in the world for the team to debate and decide every issue. There are too many unknowns. Ultimately, the best thing to do is to trust yourself. That is to trust your intuition and to deliver product that makes sense to you. The Golden Rule works because it is a decision-making tool in a world of constrained rationality. It is a rule that will allow you to gain greater decisiveness over time.

Your Opportunity to Shine: Meeting with the Foundation Officer Face-to-Face

In general, if the funder asks to meet with you, then you are virtually certain to win a grant from them. In my experience, you chance of winning something after a site visit from a funder is about 90%.

  

All in all, I think these site visits are a good idea for everyone involved in the grant winning, grant giving process. The funders are surprisingly fearful of new organizations and concerned about being embarrassed about making a bad decision. A quick face-to-face visit is often all they need to determine that you and your charity are genuine and capable of implementing a grant effectively to serve clients. Consequently, the time funders spend meeting with you is quite valuable to both parties.

Visiting Think & Do in Cairo, Egypt

Accordingly, I have a couple of tips for managing these brief moments a charity shares with a funding organization.Ideally, your first meeting with the funder should be an exciting time of discovery. Here are my tips for how to handle this precious moment:

1. Reread the Grant: Definitely ask your Executive Director, Program Director to reread the grant proposal. In my experience, the funder will often ask you to repeat the evidence and program details contained in your original grant application. You will look foolish and/or out-of-touch if you have not refreshed your memory about these specific details.

2. Use Your Winning Slogan: Train everyone to implement your winning line-of-the-day during the visit. This means everyone who comes in contact with the funder's representative should know the winning slogan that advantages your charity against the competitor charities who are also seeking funding - often from this same representative.

3. Clean Up the Office: It is amazing to me that I can tell an awful lot about an organization from a quick glance at their office space. As I take in what I see, I quickly get a feeling for their mission, their resolve, their level of energy, their sense of synergy and a lot of other things which are not readily apparent in an on-line or paper grant application. Assuming that the funders are as quick to pick up on these details as I am, I like to prepare for their visit by tiding up the little details in the office including the plants and the artwork. If a charity is neglecting its plants, I assume they are also neglecting their clients. If the pictures are crooked, I assume they lack empathy about everything else. For these reasons, I like to take the brown leaves off the plants and straighten the art work so that it is not crooked looking to a viewer.  

4. Make Sure You Offer Refreshments: Ironically, one of the things that a funder will remember the most about their visit to your charity is your hospitality. Do not be afraid to go over a little board and offer them coffee, tea, water and so on.