WANTED: Someone with common interests, compatible viewpoints, a sense of generosity, honest communication, who is smart and sensible. The goal is a good future together, in a long-term, mutually satisfying relationship. I’m of course talking about the match between you and a potential grant funder. One of the most important aspects of getting grant money is having a good match between the funder’s priorities and your needs.

TORONTO – Premier Kathleen Wynne is promising $2.5 billion in grants to businesses over the next decade aimed at attracting and keeping companies in Ontario, a move the Progressive Conservatives denounced as corporate welfare.

Canada dishes out some of the most extreme climate conditions on the planet, so we certainly have an incentive to get the whole housing and energy efficiency thing right. Energy efficiency grants are often available to help.

In a previous article, I told you how some questionable companies may try to convince you that you have automatically been awarded a grant, even though you hadn’t applied for one. Some people were interested to find out more, including what to watch out for and who might be targeted. We’ll take a look at what some of the possible signs are that tell you to beware, and also see whether you may be vulnerable to being targeted.

A $45 million government grant called the Ontario Music Fund has been allocated to help out the music industry in the province. As reported in the Toronto Star, the three-year government grant plan will help support the production, promotion, and distribution of Ontario-made music across the country and around the world. The proposal also aims to focus on promoting performance in the province. The project carries the slogan Music Makes Jobs.

Are you looking for a job or need skills training? If you are unemployed or would like to transition into a different career, the Canadian government offers a number of programs to help you succeed. You can get help deciding on a career, finding a part-time or full-time job, upgrading your skills through training and education, or even learning how to run your own business.

Another article, A Good Grant Proposal Tells a Story, describes the benefits of creating an interesting narrative in your grant proposal. Briefly, you get a grant more easily if your proposal tells a story. Most of us are not born storytellers, so we need to learn the elements of a good story, the order to present them, the purpose of each, and how to convey them all in the most effective way.

Grant funding can sometimes seem like an impersonal process. You find the grant funding you’re interested in, read the guidelines, submit your proposal, then receive notification of whether you’ve gotten the grant funding. After you get the grant funding, you will possibly submit periodic reports on how you’re using the money. It’s entirely possible to do this on an impersonal, faceless basis, but not necessarily desirable.

The Needs Assessment is a crucial part of your grant proposal because that’s where you make the case that there’s a legitimate reason that you’re asking for grant money. As I often point out, grant money exists to bridge the gap between a need and a solution (or at least to lessen the need that exists). The job of the person writing the grant proposal is to explain that a need really does exist and provide evidence of it.

Do you wonder how startups start building their customer bases? Even companies that are well-known today struggled to gain traction, and some employed clever ideas to build momentum.

You may be able to use some of these ideas for your own (for-now) small business.

You may have heard of agricultural government grants and figured that they are for the giant conglomerates and huge corporate farms. This is true in some cases, but sometimes there are also government grants for beginning farmers or for small farms to expand. This type of government grant is often available because it (like veterans’ benefits) is something that the lawmakers do not want to defund, due to public sentiment

Most of us want to live in the kind of world where other people have the same good character traits as we do. We expect honesty, mutual respect, and ethics. There are lots of people who live up to these standards, but some who will fall short. Especially in business and real estate dealings, it’s smart to have cordial, professional working relationships, but to also protect your own interests at the same time.

There may come a time in your life when you find that it’s necessary or desirable to train for a second career, so it’s good to know that there are often government grants that will help you learn a new trade. In past times, workers typically stayed in their chosen career from the time after school, until retirement. In our changing economy, though, that’s becoming less common.

College scholarships for sports are plentiful yet competitive. Talented athletes from all across the country pin their hopes on getting a full ride or least a generous scholarship to the school of their choice. This can happen, but a more common scenario is partial scholarships, at least in schools that don’t revolve around the athletic programs. You might be familiar with the stereotype of

One popular misconception about getting grants is that they are awarded to those who are most in need. You may be familiar with an old television show called “Queen for a Day” that was broadcast in the US in the early 1960s. The premise of the show was that contestants would take turns telling their hard-luck stories, usually involving financial and emotional difficulties.

One of the key parts of a grant proposal is its budget. Some of my students have a little trouble knowing where to begin with it and knowing whether they have done it correctly. I have some ideas for you to make the process a little less intimidating.

First, here are some general rules. Be sure that your budget is:

Picture the typical college or university student. You probably envisioned a teenage or twenty-ish kid who’s living it up at college, Animal House-style. Well, it may be time to rethink that. The average age of the college students has been rising, mostly due to adults returning to school. What are called “non-traditional” or “mature” students are becoming more the norm now.

Do you have a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for your child? Remember the age 15 deadline if you have not yet opened an RESP for your child. If your child was born in 1999, this is the year to open an RESP and deposit $2,000 before Dec. 31. You will be rewarded with a $500 matching federal government grant for 2014.

For a newly opened RESP with a 15-year-old beneficiary, you must deposit at least $2,000 in 2014 to qualify for grants in 2015 and 2016. By making optimum catch-up RESP deposits of $5,000 in each of the following two years, you can earn up to $2,000 of federal grants.

If you do nothing in 2014, then in 2015, when your child turns 16, you’d be too late for a government grant for a first-time RESP deposit.