Quite often, if you want to receive grants and funding, you will be asked to submit a grant proposal. How you structure it will depend upon what the grant funder requires and your own decisions on what’s best. Each request for proposals is unique, with varying degrees of how creative you can be. As usual, though, we’re going to follow our rule of doing exactly what the grant provider asks of you, to maximize your chances for grants and funding. To the extent you can, you should make your grant proposal tell a story.

Don’t fall prey to a grant scam! Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald, here are some helpful tips brought to you from the Australian government.

When searching for government grants for your business, it’s important to be careful of websites that promise that you will secure a grant in exchange for you paying a fee to release the funds.

How do you think a grant reviewer will see your proposal? Try putting yourself mentally in the place of the reviewer, keeping in mind that he or she has no emotional attachment to your idea, nor any prior background knowledge of why your project would be a good one.Here, we get some hints and insights from professional grant reviewers about what their preferences and pet peeves are (adapted from research by Purdue University).

The key to receiving grant funding is the grant proposal. The grant proposal is the way that you tell the grant funder who you are, show that you’re worthy of grant funding, and describe how you plan to carry out the activities required to get the grant funding. Grant proposal is a catch-all term, but there actually are several types of proposals.

Canada and Alberta student loans require a paper application for the first year, but online in subsequent years. Photo: University of Alberta. $748 million in Canada and Alberta student loans and grants were given out in 2012, and even more is expected to be allocated this year.

Samsung announced that the company has awarded 63 scholarships to New Jersey high school students to serve as Samsung Scholars at the Rutgers Summer Science Program in July, which provides participants with week-long science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) immersion sessions. Further, two former Summer Science Program attendees received the first Samsung STEM College Scholarship which grants $2,500 to New Jersey students pursuing undergraduate degrees in STEM fields.

There are many great reasons to volunteer. If you’re in the United States, there’s a central resource where you can check for opportunities to serve others. It’s www.serve.gov, which is the United We Serve website. The idea is that Americans can individually help the economic recovery and do their part to restore unity in the country.

In July, 2014, thirteen young Canadian entrepreneurs attended the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance (G20 YEA) Summit in Sydney, Australia. Rebecca Palmer, a Barrie, Ontario-based serial entrepreneur and founder of the Triigo Project, wrote this firsthand report of the key issues and initiatives that resulted.

“Our mission was to encourage the G20, B20 leaders, and the United Nations, to adopt strategies that facilitate youth entrepreneurship as a solution to high youth unemployment rates – 13.6 per cent in Canada – and reduce youth employment below 10 per cent globally by 2030.

Everyone wants to get the really big grants. However, if you focus exclusively on these, you may miss out on funding your project. A different approach is to seek several smaller grants, which are more commonly found and may have less competition. An effective way to do this is to divide your project into parts that function independently.

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.

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.

Who wouldn’t want to open their mailbox and find a government grant check, payable to you, waiting there? The bigger question is whether you can get sufficiently motivated to assess your situation, make plans, learn what you need to, and take steps to do what it takes to get that government grant. (If you’re already my student, you know that I get you a hand with many of those.)

I sometimes have students who are gung-ho to get a grant, any grant. They will inquire where to go to get the most money, the most quickly. I ask them what it is they are seeking to fund exactly, and they have no idea. This approach is not likely to succeed, for several reasons. First, grants exist for a purpose. The idea behind them is that the government wants to encourage positive social changes, such as job creation or home ownership,

Did you know that many local governments have grants that are not publicized? Some communities have funding set aside, but they don’t publicize it. Often, the only way to find out about available funding is to call or visit your government offices, find the resident grant expert, and inquire about available programs. The best example of this is someone from my own office who wanted a grant to help her with a down payment on a new house.

One thing that many entrepreneurs have in common is a dread and distaste for the thought of writing a business plan. I want to change your mind about that and tell you why a good business plan can be one of the best friends your current or future business could possibly have. One of the most important things that you can know about a business plan is that you most likely will not get any funding for your business without one,

The federal government denied two northwestern North Dakota after-school programs a grant due to a lack of clear and convincing writing.

Programs in North Dakota’s educationally strained oil patch and on the Fort Berthold reservation have been left scrambling without money from the federal government.

The people and organizations that provide grants and funding don’t like throwing their money away any more than you do. They want to know that they’re getting their money’s worth and that they’ve chosen the most deserving recipients. So how can they tell how well their grants and funding are working? The measuring stick for how much value has been derived from the funding is the

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: