Grants 101: Trivia ?’s (and Answers) For The Beginner

I was reading a few questions and requests I have gotten on grants and decided to make PERFECTLY CLEAR the basic facts about grants.

These are from the most common questions list. Answers are beneath each question. If you want the questions without answers first, click here. That way you get to think about your answers before you read them. If you want to take a trivia test on U.S. Women In Business , click here.

Here we go. Grants 101 Trivia Test

A) Are there income requirements?
Do you have to qualify like you do for a loan , NO.
Do some grants get earmarked just for low – income, YES.
Can/Do people making more than $100,000/year get grants? Yes, they can and they do.

B) How much is available to be given away each?
Hundreds of Billions of dollars.

C) What percent went unclaimed last year?
Well over 50%.

D) If you took the total amount set aside by the government and divided it up amongst US citizens, what amount would there be set aside per citizen (for a given year)?

Over $11,000.

E) How much does it cost to get a grant?
Nothing. The cost you put into your grant is up to you (e.g. grant writer, research, paper, stamps..)

F) Is there less money available for grants because of the bearish stock market or the bad economy?
The bad economy, housing crunch, or stock market do not have bearing on government grants.

G) Do you have to have good credit to qualify for a grant?
No. Nope. No.

H) When are government grants disbursed? What day of the year?
No. Government grants do not all get handed out on one day – like April 15 is tax day. NO, grants each have deadlines, and dates they get funded, all year round.
Put it this way, grant funds are being handed out every day.

I) What does it take to be eligible for a government grant?
You must be a US citizen or resident and you must live in the US, and for most of them you must be 18. There are exceptions: I found out yesterday that International non-profits serving in the US can receive grant funding.

J) Is there a GOVERNMENT GRANT that can HELP WITH CHILD CARE? Yes, for low income families and especially for tribal or migrant families.They are usually disbursed through State programs or County or Township programs – so that is where I would go and look. Also, there are churches that are funded by government grants to help care for your child; though this does not mean YOU get the grant, it DOES mean you benefiting from it.
Child Care Aware gets military personnel child care costs funding. HeadStart, for example, (they have a HUGE national budget) though not an outright baby sitting service, has pre-school educational programs that some may consider childcare. They are proven to get every child up to par for Kindergarten. (They also help with health care (pre/neo-natal) and immunizations).
There are also

K) Do you get taxed on the grant income?
When individuals are funded, this is taxable income, yes.

L) Do You have to account for how you spend the funds?
Individual grants, usually, no.
Most of them, YOU BET!
For the most part, as an organization, in your proposal for the grant you explain how the funds will be used, and once you get funded, you are to use them that way. At the end of the term, you are generally required to report findings to demonstrate you have used the funds as agreed and to show the results of your work.

M) Do you/When do you have to pay the grant back?
YOU DO NOT PAY GRANTS BACK. YOU GET TO USE THE MONEY. I ought to have written this question first as this is the most common question I get.

N) Are there certain people at a greater advantage than others to probably qualify for a government grant?
YES, THERE SURE ARE.
Briefly: the government wants to help the under-served and indigent with these funds. There are funds for tribal people in the US that a non-tribal person could not get. There are funds set aside for women that men could not get. There are low income services funded that middle income and above families could not qualify for. (This is not to say there aren’t things out there for everyone. )

0) Do you work for the government once you qualify for government grants?
Uh… no. If you are getting a government CONTRACT, you are serving a government need and must comply to their standards and job details, but no, not even then are you “employed by the government”. Students getting Pell Grants for college are not working for the government. Non-profit dance companies funded to teach the under-served local youth to dance, are not working for the government.

P) Is there a cap on how much money they can give to one person?
Not that I know of.

Q) How many times can I apply for government grants?
As often as you want.

R) What are pass-through grants?
Sometimes the government funds you (or your organization) directly, sometimes the government sends the funds to the 50 States and asks them to oversee the disbursement of the funds and decide how to go about it. These are the pass-through grants. The advantage here, is that the applicant is not requesting funds in the face of all the people in the while country wanting the same thing; they are only “competing” with other local applicants, thus making it more likely to get funded.

S) Once I have applied and been turned down, can I apply again?
Yes you can.

T) IS there a better way to approach getting a grant than just applying for it?
BIG TIP: if you want to get funded and you find a wide variety of possible funders, you can write a one page letter of inquiry. Here you write who you are and why you seek the funds and how you propose using the funds to reach your stated goal. Of the possible grantors, the ones interested will reply encouraging you to move forward with your application. Good to know you are not wasting your time.

U) Is the federal government the only place that you can apply for grants?
Indeed not, though they may be called different things, like fellowships, awards, scholarships..

V) What’s the difference between a scholarship and a grant?
A scholarship is funds for furthering education, and are always given to an individual. No reporting necessary.
A grant is technically a cooperative agreement when a government program worker is directly working with the project. A grant is called a grant when the applicant is the sole deliverer of the services. Grants usually require reports of how funds were used and the results of the work.

W) What are private sector funders?
These I will loosely refer to as the kind of funders that have a “no strings attached” policy. Private sector of course refers to organizations that are not government bodies ( like foundations and corporations..)

X) Can international organizations get government grant funding?
Yes, oddly enough, if they are a 501 (c) (3), or if they provide extremely specific services (say epidemiology research) the government will fund non-US citizens/organizations to deliver the services it needs (aka NGO’s).

Y) What’s the difference between a government grant and a government contract?
A grant is explained above.
A contract is a legal instrument for one entity (public or private) to get something done by another (private) entity. Like this: you know those guys repairing the bridge on the highway near your house? They are a private company, not a branch of the government. But the work they are doing is work the government needs done. So the government hires them to inspect and fix the bridge. The private company “bids” for the contract, just like roofers bid for the contract to re-roof your house. You pick one of the roofers and they get the contract – you pay them. They fulfill the contract. Similarly, the government (the bid-letting agency in this example) seeks to purchase services (or in some cases goods) from the bridge fixing company – ( the offeror in this example).

Z) Private or public, what are the different kinds of funding out there?
Hmhh, how to answer that…? I’d say, heck!…. whadya need? I’m not kidding.

I get this question a lot. OK: there are so many programs and so much work/study/research the government, foundations, institutions, corporations want to fund.. I cannot fit it in here. There are entire encyclopedia-sized books answering that question. I would start with getting clear on what you are looking for and go from federal to state to local to corporate to foundations to institutions.. and see what they’ve got to offer you. either that or see what they are offering, and decide if you want to undertake it.

So there you are: the questions and answers of the A to Z grants 101 Trivia Test.
I bet you didn’t realize how much you know about grants.
Or how much you never even considered.

In all seriousness, people need more info re: grants before they move into looking into them. SO we start here.
Good job getting through it.

Your reward: If you want to smile, watch this Mom of the Year Video (you can personalize and send your own) … or enjoy a doodle moment and a Love Challenge.. Either way.. enjoy all that is good in your life. You want to get your own Peace Impact Meter, (you don’t even have to donate), go here. Enjoy.

Website of the Day:
For info on scholarships, I like this one.. but you have to have your info ready to go…
http://www.fastweb.com/