Never pay for grant leads or lists of grants – all that information is free. Visit your local library and there are a ton of books with grant & scholarship info. Most colleges also carry listings of available monies to apply for or you can just do what many other people do – work & go to school at the same time. It does wonders for your resume & employers want experience with education.

It’s hard to really say based on your post. My experiences has been with grants that pertain to upgrades on our home projects.. but either way the best thing to do is get a grant package that can help you find the grants you are looking for

You can get a grant package from

I get Federal Pell Grants which pay for all my tuition and books. You have hope. Just apply soon so that you don’t miss the deadline for next year.

You can also visit your guidance counselor OR go to the college and meet with a financial aid counselor to get more information in person.

Good luck!!!

But if you are interested in finding out the exact results of the application, you will need to forward it to a school that you might be planning on attending, when I filled out my FAFSA, i called the Admission Office of this University and they gave me their school code, and a financial planner went over the plan with me.

I can refer you to the Admission Director that I was working with, give me a call and I can give you the direct contact info, my cell# is 412-961-2955

This should get you started…Good Luck!

Nonetheless, you can go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) http://www.cfda.gov and Grants.gov http://www.grants.gov – these are two sites created by the federal government to provide transparency and information on grants. Browse through the listings and see if you can find any grant that would support a for-profit venture.

Even if you buy books on "how to get grants" or list that supposedly has information on grants — all of them are mere rehash of what CFDA has, albeit packaged differently. But still the info is the same – hardly any grants for starting a for profit business.

Even SBA does NOT give out grants. From the SBA website http://www.sba.gov/expanding/grants.html

"The U.S. Small Business Administration does not offer grants to start or expand small businesses, although it does offer a wide variety of loan programs. (See http://www.sba.gov/financing for more information) While SBA does offer some grant programs, these are generally designed to expand and enhance organizations that provide small business management, technical, or financial assistance. These grants generally support non-profit organizations, intermediary lending institutions, and state and local governments."

Most of the federal grants are given to specific target groups with specific requirements (e.g. minority business owners involved in transportation related contracts emanating from DOT – Grant#20.905 Disadvantaged Business Enterprises Short Term Lending Program

Grants are also often given to non profit groups or organizations involved in training or other similar activities (grant 59.043 Women’s Business Ownership Assistance that are given to those who will create women’s business center that will train women entrepreneurs

For private grants, you may want to check the Foundation Center’s Foundation Grants for Individuals Online. It’s a subscription based website ($9.95 per month) but their opening blurb only says that the database is ideal for "students, artists, academic researchers, libraries and financial aid offices." Entrepreneurs are apparently not one of them, so I take it they also don’t have listings of private foundations who give grants to would-be entrepreneurs.