Getting Govt Grants for a small business

mustangsaguaro

Songster
12 Years
Nov 30, 2007
684
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San Martin, Ca
Recently I attended a poultry seminar on sustainable poultry. The speaker some of you may know was Jim Adkins who is the founder of Center for Poultry and is advocating sustainable poultry and concentrating on heritage breed poultry. Well, after attending this seminar and tasting the chicken that was served to us for lunch I never want to eat a grocery store chicken again if I half too. However starting this up for a business I'm going to need incubators, hatchers, breeding flock of heritage birds, coops built, etc. Needless to say this cost money. Money which my husband and I do not have. I was thinking if I could get a govt. grant to start us out but I don't know where to look. The one place in which I did look appeared I did not qualify for any of there grants. Has anyone done this before and successful at getting a grant? If so where did you go. Any links would be greatly appreciated. I am pretty much starting from scratch. My husband and I do have the acreage to get this going it's just now finding the grant/grants we might qualify for to actually get it off the ground and running. If you can help or point me in the right direction it would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
I think grants go mostly to charities and universities, towns, that sort of thing. I have looked for grants before, but realized real quick that I was not a "chosen" one. You might qualify for a small business loan, but that must be paid back and the amount of money you are looking to invest might have higher payments that you would make. Not to sound discouraging, but if there really was all this free money laying around for people wanting to get in the chicken business, don't you think we all would be on that bandwagon?
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Maybe you and your husband could start with a small flock of chickens, look for deals on craigslist and build some loyal customers. Start small and build your business.
 
There should be some grants you can dig up. If you incorporate sustainable energy or water collecting, you may find some for that. In TX, they are trying to encourage young people to farm, so there is a grant for them. There may be grants for raising heritage breeds. I will try to see what I can find for your area. You often have to match grant money, especially for start up costs. Don't forget to write off business costs for your taxes.
 
I am 99% certain that there are no government grants for start up businesses of any sort. The only government grants that are available to any small businesses are those where the company has an operating history and the business is such that the government considers it to be vital to the welfare of the country in general. The only thing that I can think of that could be of help are small business loans.
 
Not on the federal level no, but yes on the state and local level. Also, there are many private grants.

Found lots of heritage breed grants, but none for your state. Not done looking, but in the meantime:
http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/farmers/awa-grants-past/
offers some examples of the type of projects and goals that obtained grants of an agricultural nature

Incorporating water conservation is again something that will pull up grants for your particular state, in this case, a state gov grant:
http://www.grantsloans.water.ca.gov/

Ah, nevermind, that one is limited to organizations. Try checking out your local Slow Foods chapter, and see if they offer grants (specify that you would be raising heritage chickens in a sustainable manner. Rotational pastures would be a good thing to incorporate).

http://microecofarming.com/wordpress/?p=584 offers some more examples to get you thinking. Incorporating educational aspects (particularly education programs geared at inner-city youth) will also probably open up some grant opportunities for you while at the same time spreading an important topic and knowledge to current and future generations.
 
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Punk-a-doddle thanks for all that good info. I will be definately be checking it out over the next few days. It sounds like you have applied for grants in the past.

In your last post you mentioned one thing of checking out local Slow Foods chapter to see what they offer. What is a Slow Food chapter? I have never heard of them.

Thanks again
 
Go find a grant writer. Volunteer fire departments should be able to point you to one. A grant writer will know what is out there an how to get it. Yes it costs money to get them to write one but I have never seen someone get a grant without the help of a grant writer.
 
Go find a grant writer. Volunteer fire departments should be able to point you to one. A grant writer will know what is out there an how to get it. Yes it costs money to get them to write one but I have never seen someone get a grant without the help of a grant writer.



Well, the lucky thing is my father in law used to write grants for research he used to do. He worked and still does for the Univ. of Hawaii. No longer does the research. His grants were a bit different than what I'm looking for, but I am sure he could help me w/ writing the grant.
 
No problem Mustang, sustainable farming is a deep passion of mine, and I would personally love to see you get the start you need, whether it is by a grant, several grants patch worked together, or another way entirely. I'm still working on the acreage part myself. ;)

Mainly, I've just have been looking into grants quite a bit lately myself for future plans. My husband has applied for grants in the area of research, both for small and large institutions, and I work in animal research, so do have some exposure to the process through that. It is not uncommon to have grad students apply for the necessary lab grants. The way small colleges pursue grants is closer to what you'd need, but the types and sources of grants you will be looking for will still probably vary more often than not. Your father-in-law sounds like an incredibly valuable resource, and his university connection will help. Mainly, the person who does the actual paperwork will need strong writing skills, must be able to follow guidelines, and really needs to be able to 'sell'/market your work and goals tailor made for the specific grant giver. Kind of similar to writing a solid résumé in many ways.

On Slow Foods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Food
That is broken down to Slow Foods USA, and then state groups, then local chapters. I have not personally had much experience with them, so as always, carefully research the group and see where their money actually goes,
 
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