Canadian Government Business Grants Made Easy
Canadian Government Business Grants Made Easy
Imagine getting $75,000 to expand your business into a new market? Or would you like another $12,000 to hire a professional young employee to help execute those business projects you never had time to get to. Even better, you don’t have to pay back a dime of that money! What kind of impact would this have on your business revenue?
Federal and provincial governments invest over 26 billion dollars in grant funding and tax credits a year. But less than 10% of companies are accessing this money! Because we’ve worked with more than 750 companies in over 20 industries, we have a pretty good idea why most businesses don’t bother applying for Canadian government funding or don’t succeed in receiving the grants.
Small businesses often face even more challenges because they lack the human power to keep track of all of the details and see the grant through. Whether you run a small or medium-sized company, we’ll show you how you can leverage our GetGranted system to stay ahead of your competition by securing grants efficiently.
Why are there so many Canadian government grants for businesses?
Government grants show the kind of activities the funders want to see like:
- Creating job opportunities
- Reducing negative impacts on the environment
- Promoting Canadian products internationally
- Developing innovative products
Different provinces will have different levels of funding for projects depending on their priorities. So if you want to know how to get government funding, don’t underestimate the importance of understanding the government’s intentions. It may seem like a minor detail, but we’ve seen many companies miss the mark in articulating how their projects support the government’s grant goals.
For example, the Business Innovation component of the Canada Periodical Fund provides funding to small and mid-sized printed magazines and digital periodical publishers. While all of the details of the grant application is on the website, it is worth making the effort to have a deeper understanding of the funding goals. On other parts of the website, it says that the grants are designed to provide support to produce and distribute high-quality Canadian editorial content for Canadian readers.
So when you are describing your project for the grant application, clearly explain how your business activities will support the goal of distributing great Canadian content for Canadian readers.
The pros and cons of business grants Canada
Of course the most obvious benefit of Canadian business grants is getting money to support your business activities and not needing to pay it back! But these are the most common barriers to successfully completing small business grant applications and funding for medium-sized businesses:
- The government grant details and criteria are constantly changing and companies don’t have the resources to keep up with all of the updates
- Grants close without notice and many applicants are left in the dark about their status
- Companies won’t receive money back for their projects if they don’t submit the required information by the grant deadlines, even if they have been approved for the funding
We’ll talk about how businesses can overcome these common problems with our automated GetGranted system.
Government grants for business Canada: DIY grants vs. hiring Granted Consulting
Our team of grant gurus have personally secured over 15 million dollars in grants for businesses since 2011. While many companies are not yet in a position to leverage our team’s expertise, we kept hearing a strong demand for people who wanted to know how to secure Canadian business grants themselves.
That’s why we developed GetGranted so businesses could efficiently manage the grant application process, overcome the common challenges to winning government grants and maximize their chances of securing funding.
Here are the main differences between securing Canadian business grants through our innovative GetGranted and Granted Consulting services:
How to effectively apply for DIY medium and small business grants Canada
When you are putting together medium or small business grant applications, these are the best practices that you can implement based on our experience of completing over 6,000 grants:
- Outline your key business objectives over the next year or 18 months so you can apply for funding programs that support those activities
- Speak with the funding program’s advisor to get more information and have a better understanding of the government grant
- Keep the application guide by you the entire time you are working on the application
- Provide accurate grant reporting details
You can learn about these Canadian government business grant strategies in more depth from our previous post.
Canadian government business grants made easy with GetGranted
Applying for grants can be such a confusing and frustrating process. Important information is often kept in different places on a website and it’s hard to put all of the pieces together. With GetGranted, everything you need to successfully apply for a grant is summarized in an easy-to-read format.
If your company has been in business for at least 1 to 2 years and looking to hire, train, or expand to foreign markets, then GetGranted is the perfect solution to access funding. Below are the main ways GetGranted can help take your company to the next level!
We provide automatic updates on government grants for business
One of the top reasons why business owners don’t apply for grants is the lack of time. If someone in your company was going to try to manually search for a grant that matches your business profile, this can take hours of precious time before the application process even begins!
With GetGranted, our system works for you 24/7. All you have to do is take a few minutes to fill out your business profile when you first sign up. Then the system continuously matches your company to eligible federal and provincial grants based on the information you provided. This saves you a ton of time from sifting endlessly through hundreds of pages of government documents just to find out what you’re eligible for.
With GetGranted, you can see the highest value grants and their application deadlines. If you’re a small business with limited resources, our system is so easy to use, you can easily assign someone in your company to efficiently monitor the funding programs and start filling out medium and small business grant applications.
Secure business grants in Canada before your competitors
Usually grants are open until all of the available funding is allocated. If you wait to hear about Canadian government business grants through word of mouth, you can easily miss out on a lot of money for your company.
GetGranted helps you be among the first to hear about funding opportunities and increase your chances of getting approved. Every week, you will get an email with a list of Canadian business grants that match your business profile and updates about grants that you save on your dashboard. Because grants aren’t static, important information like the eligibility and deadlines often change. Our weekly email will notify you about these kinds of details:
- Newly launched Canadian government business grants
- Government grant program changes
- Filled grants that are fully allocated
Instead of signing up for multiple newsletters and flooding your inbox with grants that you don’t qualify for, we tailor the updates specifically for your business.
Our dashboard tracks the status of Canadian government grants for businesses
One of the biggest frustrations with Canadian government business grants is that they often close without notice even if there is a specific deadline because many of the government grants are awarded on a first come, first served basis. That’s why it’s crucial to start applying as soon as you can so you don’t miss out on at least thousands of dollars of funding!
The GetGranted dashboard allows you to:
1. Have transparency in the process
We often hear about businesses applying for grants but never hearing back about their status. Many times, they don’t hear back because the grant actually closed. By saving the grant you applied to your GetGranted dashboard, we’ll notify you about these updates so you always stay in the loop.
2. Grant tracking system keeps you accountable to deadlines
People often think that once they get grant approval, that’s where the work ends. But in reality, that is just a fraction of the work done to fulfill the funding requirements. After you get approved for small business grants, Canada’s companies have to submit the required paperwork by the assigned deadlines. Even if you get approved for a grant and miss the deadlines to submit project receipts or paperwork, you may not get reimbursed for those activities.
The GetGranted dashboard helps you track the approved grant applications as well the required documents so you don’t miss a deadline. It will keep you accountable throughout the entire grant process.
3. Count your dollars and celebrate your business grant Canada funding!
Once you’ve been approved, mark it on your dashboard so you can tally up how much money you’ve been awarded throughout the year.
Easy-to-read grant information
Our grant gurus continuously compile helpful resources to maximize your chances of securing grants. Here is how they provide the essential information all in one place that is easy to read:
1. Summaries
Instead of reading through endless pages on government websites to understand if a grant is suitable for your business, GetGranted gives a quick summary of the most important information to save you time.
2. Best Practices for each Canadian business grant
Based on our extensive government grant experience and submitting thousands of applications, we’ve compiled best practices such as important details to watch out for, common mistakes to avoid and the best times to plan your business activities to align the grant’s funding period.
3. Helpful videos
We have videos to walk you through the basics of how to get government funding and an overview of some of the featured grants.
4. Monthly webinars
Every month, we host a webinar for all of the insider tips and must-dos for our subscribers so you’re always up to date on the most current best practices.
We do all of the research for you to find medium and small business grants Canada
We have a dedicated research team of government grant experts who continuously update the funding details on GetGranted. You’ll be surprised how often grant details change every year.
If someone misses an important change, they could be leaving money on the table with a rejected application. But you don’t have to worry about missing key details because it’s our job to stay on top of all of these updates and we’ll simply notify you through GetGranted.
FAQs about Canadian government grants for businesses on GetGranted
As more companies use GetGranted, these are the most common questions we get:
1. Why am I seeing Canadian government business grants in other regions?
GetGranted is tailored to your province but not tailored to a specific region such as Vancouver because we didn’t want to make assumptions about your business. We’ve seen how companies have leveraged grants to expand to areas that they would have never thought of.
2. Why don’t I qualify for market expansion grants?
There could be many reasons why a business doesn’t qualify for market expansion grants. One of the most common reasons is that a business doesn’t make the minimum revenue that the government requires.
While market expansion grants have a higher dollar amount (as high as $75,000) and are very attractive grants for many business owners, the government needs to make sure that companies have the capacity to support the market expansion activities and they typically look at the revenue to indicate that.
Usually with business expansion grants, companies pay all of the upfront costs and will receive reimbursement afterwards. As we mentioned earlier, getting approved for a Canadian business grant is just about 20% of the work required. Companies need to have the financial and human resources to execute the business projects that the grant approved.
Conclusion
The federal and provincial governments invest billions of dollars ever year in grant funding and tax credits, but only a small percentage of companies are accessing this money. After helping over 750 companies access over 15 million dollars in Canadian government business grants, we learned that these are the most common barriers:
- Grant details are always changing
- Grants often close without notice
- Companies may not be reimbursed for projects if they don’t submit all of the required documents even if the grant has been approved
Our GetGranted system helps small and medium-sized companies efficiently apply for government grants and manage entire grant process. The system works for you 24/7 by matching you with all of the grants you qualify for based on your business profile, sends you automated updates and helps keep you accountable to the grant deadlines.
