Kit Lancaster ⋅ Chicago , IL GCG Financial ⋅ 5 years experience

Brentnol,
There are many ways to fund a business. Do you have prior business experence? Do you have any co-founders? If you have time, I recommend reaching out to The Bunker, a non-profit founded by Navy veteran Todd Conner. They have several locations around the country and specialize in helping veteran business launch. Feel free to shoot me a line if you need a contact. Becsure to tell them I said hello.

Kit Lancaster

James Watters ⋅ Norman , OK Business Consultant, retired ⋅ 17 years experience

Generally, grants are only for nonprofit organizations. So unless your business will be nonprofit, grants are not the way to go. For profit companies use equity and debt to fund their businesses until revenue and net income take over. How much money will you need to "open the doors" and how much will you need each month before profit kicks in. For the latter, figure the money needs per month times the number of months. For example, let's you need $10,000 to open the doors and $7,000 a month for operating expenses for eight months. During those 7 months how much income, equity and debt do you need?

Emanuel Carpenter ⋅ Alpharetta , GA SDR Master Class ⋅ 20 years experience

Brentnol:

The Foundation Center is going to be your best resource. They provide courses and books on grant proposal writing. Here is the page: http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/learnabout/proposalwriting.html

If you've never written a grant before, I suggest you ask an experienced grant writer to show you the ropes. Or you could simply pay an experienced grant writer to write the grant for you.

You might also try getting free counseling from SCORE (www.score.org).

Good luck.

Monica Shin ⋅ Cypress , TX Hewlett Packard ⋅ 3 years experience

After finding <or while you are trying to find> which grant you want to apply for, I suggest you write a business plan. No doubt any grant for a new business will require a demonstrated understanding of the market, the plan to find customers and your financials - probably your expect results over 3 years. Each grant will have specific requirements, so knowing which ones you are going to apply for will help you understand how to need to prepare.