Small Business Grants

financing your small business with government or other grants
Looking for a grant? Search amongst the states. Use our table of links to state business resources in all fifty states, at the bottom of this page, to begin your search. This is an evolving resource and we will be adding more helpful material here constantly. If you know of any grant sources that would be helpful to enterpreneurs email them to us at grants@afrocenter.com. We will add them to this resource.

A key resource for any new or growing small businesses is capital. Sooner or later the enterpreneur runs up against capital constraints, whether it is in the startup phase or in the expansion phase capital can make the difference between success or failure.

As an enterpreneur you have a variety of funding options available. Ranging through personal savings, bank loans, loans from friends and family, angel investors, credit cards and even grants.

To a cash strapped investor the possibility of obtaining a grant, "free money", can be very attractive indeed. This page lists some of the possible sources of such financing for small businesses. Needless to say if it was easy to obtain grant money, every small business would be funded by grants.

Having said that, small business grants are available through various sources, though they should neither be considered free nor easy. There are criteria to be met and work to be done before the deal is done. But then running a small business takes hard work and you knew that.

The Federal Government is often seen as a possible source of small business grants, however the Federal Government does not directly provide grants for small business. A more promising source of small business grant money are the various state governments and their economic development agencies.

The Small Business Administration (SBA): The SBA has a variety of funding options available from it. However, it does not provide grants. Among the options are various types of loans including microloans.

State Sources

In the USA perhaps the best governmental source for grant money are the states. Every state has a business/economic development office and/or a department of commerce. You should familiarize yourself with these valuable resources so as to keep tabs on the various state business assistance and grant programs.
View our table of links to small business resources in all fifty states here.