Grants for Food and Beverage Guidebook
How to apply for Food & Beverage grants

Summary

• The most common grant submission methods are portals, emails, and webforms. 
• Review the applicant guide for steps and instructions on how to submit. This will include the required file type of documents if applicable. 
• Apply for funding as early as possible. Portal crashes happen often at grant submission deadlines due to an overflow of internet traffic. 

Are you finished with all the preparation of your grant application and finally ready to submit? Before you hit that “submit” button, it’s important to make sure that you’ve checked all the boxes in terms of your submission. Once submitted, the application is out of your hands. So you know what to expect in a submission process, let’s have a look at the different types of submission methods.

Portal Submission

Most provincial or federal government grant programs use a secure portal for Food & Beverage grant submissions. There will be a link to this portal on the program website. Usually, you will first need to set up an account and be authenticated by the program. This process can take up to 10 business days, so make you initialize your account well before the deadline. Once you are able to access the portal, have a look through all the sections and pages that it uses for submission processes. This will help you get a good idea of what to expect when it comes time to submit.

When filling out sections and pages on a submission portal, some will allow you to save your progress and log out of your account, while others will not. Make sure to test the portal to be certain that your progress will not be lost if you log out. Additionally, text boxes in secure portals can be inconvenient to type into. We suggest that you have a cloud-saved version of your application so you can copy and paste it into the portal. 

Remember to submit your application as early as possible to avoid website traffic overflow at the grant submission deadline.

Email Submission

This submission process is just how it sounds. In an email submission, applicants are made to send their applications to a designated point of contact via email. Instructions for how to send this email and what address to send it to will be provided in the applicant guide. Be sure to check for correct file formats when submitting your application and supporting documents. 

Webform Submission

Webforms are becoming less common in the grant world, but there are still a number of programs that accept applications via webform. In a webform submission, applicants will fill out different sections of the application on a single webpage before hitting submit. There is usually a single URL attached to a webform submission page. We see webform submissions when applying for training or hiring grants that do not require lengthy proposals or market research. When you make a submission over a webform, you will receive an automated confirmation email that your application was received. 

If you’re ever unsure about your grant application, know that there are plenty of resources available to help you. When in doubt, contact a program officer, or one of your friendly neighbourhood Grant Angels at Granted Consulting.