How to Get a Grant for your Creative Business
Have you been wanting to invest in the Brand Strategy Bootcamp, or something else that would help you grow in your business, but just don’t have the funds for it yet? What if you could get those things paid for? With money you don’t have to pay back? I know, sounds crazy, but check this out...
Late last year, a new coaching client, Kimberly Lavon, received a grant that covered the entire amount of our Brand Strategy Bootcamp.
Grant = Free money you don’t have to pay back! 😱
She spent exactly $0 of her own money.
When I found out she got a grant to cover the cost of the program, I had to know more. Maybe this info can help others!
I quickly learned a few things after chatting with Kimberly:
Grants are a real thing that can help us business owners
They are more accessible than I was aware of
Kimberly is a grant-researching-and-writing wizard
Are you interested in learning more? Kimberly graciously offered to do a FREE Q&A to answer your questions about grants. Keep reading!
📌 Note: This Q&A is best for those who...
Are based in the US
Have their Articles of Incorporation (or will be filing them soon)
Have an EIN
Scroll down to read and/or watch the Q&A replay!
How to Get a Grant for Your Creative Business:
So Kimberly, what’s your story?
I started as a fine artist, a very long time ago, and was directed to apply for grant funding. It was needed but super competitive.
I filled out so much stuff and felt like it was a part of the process —I just sent out everything. Turned out I had banked over 15 grants, and I didn’t realize I’d done that many. It was a huge amount.
That was how I paid for Melinda’s Bootcamp, and that is where our conversation started. And how together we discovered my superpower: Grant writing, funding things—everything to do with the process.
The more we talk about it, the more I realized that I can use my superpower to help other creatives and I wanted to start with my own community of creative entrepreneurs.
What is a grant?
Grant funding is free money—completely free. What you have to do is prove your merit and craft a fantastic application and be matched with the right funder.
It sounds simple just stating the bullet points, but in reality it’s incredibly difficult to write the perfect proposal. This is where I come in to demystify your process and help you get everything you need to prep for the process—because just the prep alone takes a long time.
The funding comes from various sources.
It can be individual people who just have a lot of money and want to help others. It can be bank institutions because they have different funding and individual branching in the communities. Fellowships that reach globally, hospitals that have funding tracks that all you have to do is go to their website.
There are all kinds of different ways, but the best way to start is community.
Think of an apple tree and a bunch of apples on the ground. Each of those apples are community funding. You may find out about this from your physical bank, the banker in your community, or even online or in-person pitch competitions.
Later on, moving forward, you can try to get bigger grants, like city-wide funding, state-funding (look at state websites), and federal-funding (Government).
Those grants usually take up to 180 hours to complete, the simplest takes 8 hours to complete - and that’s only after you have around 45+ pages of documents prepared to then be able to apply for the grant, and after that you have to make sure you fit all the requirements (examples: you have to have 5 employees, it has to be owned by a woman, etc.).
It’s important that you check all the boxes and fit ALL the requirements. If you don’t read carefully, you might permanently damage your chances of being funded by that funder.
Do your homework on the requirements and do your homework on the funder. They have a mission statement already, they’ve been in business already. It’s important that their mission statement somewhat overlaps with what you want to do. Chances are they would be more supportive of businesses that are aligned to their vision, mission, and values.
As for the funds, expect a 3-6-month time between the time you get the grant to actually getting the funding and be prepared to prove that you spent every single dime on what you said to the funder you would spend the funds on.
They will ask for paperwork and receipts. This is all a part of managing the proposals and all the work that goes with it to submit a report to the funder.
There’s been an assumption that grants are only for non-profits. Now we know that grants are also available for businesses. Are there grants specific just for designers?
There are grants that are super broad, but there are also grants that are super specific—such as women-owned business directed grants (an example of the requirement would be the business must be 51% led by women).
But there are no grants that are specifically just for creative business.
Opt for a business specific grant instead of a grant for creatives.
Can grant money be used to cover the costs of hiring and training interns?
Yes. Grants can help anyone.
Anything you can think of, you can find a grant for it. It’s a matter of preparing for it, applying for it, and having merits—the competition is insanely fierce. But the option for grant is there.
Are grants taxable?
Some are, some are not. If they are, they will let you know.
When you get a grant, you will get an approval letter that outlines how you can spend the funds, how quickly, and who you need to contact to report about how you use the funds—and in that you will know whether you need to pay taxes or not.
Every funder is different so make sure that when you do get information from them you actually read it and understand it and you’re not asking redundant questions.
One of the most common complaints for funders is that they’ve done all this work to share this information and build this program, but then people call them to ask about things that have been explained in the resources that they share to the wide audience.
Make it easy for the funder and do your homework. Take interest in their process.
Have you ever applied to the same funder more than once?
Yes, I’ve worked with a funder who has given multiple grants.
You are encouraged to develop that relationship with them, and for some people to get multiple grants from the same funder is preferred.
I would suggest after a certain amount of time (3-4x), I would keep in mind how much more do you want to ask from them. You don’t want to run out of ‘welcome’ too.
There are $68 billion dollars available for grant funding globally, so go do that work and go to other people.
There are so many nuances to grant writing. Are there any good resources to keep track of new opportunities, like an aggregator?
If you don’t want to do your own research, you can go to any number of grants databases.
The easiest one: grants.gov - all the federal grants are there. For creative people specifically, there are several directories specifically for fine artists, there are directories specifically for women globally anywhere.
There’s one called instrumentl - it’s a huge massive database for every kind of grant. There are 10-15 massive databases available online, but they come with massive price tags (the biggest I’ve seen is $2500 a month).
I bypassed that and went with my own way to look for grants.
You can Google it, you can even find information from old books. The older the foundation, the better the chances of success of getting funding and them being legitimate. The news can be a source of information, as well as networking events.
You mentioned books. What type of books?
An example that I have is 2014 Artist’s and Graphic Designer’s Market.
In the very back there’s this section of resources that has information on a bunch of really old organizations—some of these organizations have a website and some don’t.
Any book on grant writing, self-help—these books will have information about grants here and there if you look closely.
In the resources section there will be links that can take you to the grants that you can potentially apply for.
What was the grant that funded you for the Brand Strategy Bootcamp? How did you get it?
It was called the EM County Sunrise Grant.
I live in Lansing, Michigan, and the state of Michigan was giving some sort of money to re-stimulate the economy. That money was given to the funder that made it possible for them to release this grant. I was made aware of this through business professionals in this city.
It was $5,000, the largest grant I’d ever applied for.
I was scared and wasn’t prepared to win the grant. Ended up I got the grant, they felt the story make sense and the ‘ask’ made sense. I had the website and social media to back up what I was saying and what I did. It was an easy ‘yes’. It was then that I saw perhaps I wasn’t bad at this.
I’ve never been given $5,000 for myself and when I did got it, I got a panic attack. I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I actually stopped myself from paying for the Bootcamp when I got the money in the bank because I was afraid of how awesome it would be. I was so beaten down by all these obstacles being a women in business and not having funding or help, and worried that it wouldn’t work.
But I’m glad I joined the Bootcamp and it changed my life, and here I am sharing about grants with all of you.
What did you use in your application that might help you get the ‘yes’?
When you write your grant application, try to make the readers feel something.
Try to make them feel like they’ve been on your journey with you the entire time. You reach your first obstacle, tell them how awful it feels. What does it do to you? What does it do to your family? What does it do to your work?
And then you survived, you’re still here and doing what you do.
Tell them how—how you overcame the obstacles.
How many obstacles you had to go through. Make them cry, make them empathize with your experience. Be human and take them on your journey. What you need is your ability to write a story that will make people feel something.
Could you talk a little bit about those who are not in the US, where can they start? Any suggestions for anyone who wants to start?
Start with your city.
Find websites and resources that talk about grant-funding and then from there there would usually be more people that could direct you to other things. Pitch competitions would be an option—this might be a different way to get funding aside from a grant.
The closer the physical location you are with the funder, the better the chances for you to get funding.
You can start with a simple Google search.
What are your recommendations for managing the workload after getting multiple grants simultaneously?
Open a separate Google account and email address with a separate Google calendar for each grant.
I like to set mine up for 4-5 days before the grant is actually due. I put the date that I need to apply by, the day that they let me know about the results, and I just make sure to set an alarm for them.
I set up a Google Drive that saves all the receipts, paperwork, and follow up information related to the grant, so you don’t have to think about it and they’re not lost.
The processes you already have in place that work for you (such as for managing client work and scheduling), use these processes for grants too. Plan to plan.
Are there grants for filmmakers?
If you are a filmmaker, I have a separate database with over 58 open grant applications for filmmakers.
Any useful tips you can share?
Set up Google alerts for organizations or websites with past-grants that you would qualify for so that you will get the latest information when new grant applications open.
Final thoughts?
When I started going to Art School, I learned about all the things we can do as creatives to pursue our goals. And applying for grants is always posed as something insanely hard with zero success. But that was bad advice.
I love doing this, I love the work around it, I love piecing all the things together—I get to help people!
If you’re having this feeling that you really want to do something and you’re passionate about it but people keep telling you it’s crazy, just do it.
Now that you know grants are available, you have no reason not to pursue what you want to do.
I’m here and I want to help you, that’s why I’m giving away a free workbook for everybody to get you started. Can’t wait to see you guys do your thing out there and thrive!
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Kimberly Lavon is the creator of Mint Maven, grant-funding services for female entrepreneurs who are in need of funding to support, grow, or scale their small business.
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About the author:
Melinda Livsey is a brand strategist and online educator who helps creatives become confident brand strategists so they can make a bigger impact with their work. Find her hanging out on Instagram and say hello!