How to Find Small Business Grants
Before You Start
Before searching for grants, you need a clear picture of what makes your business eligible for funding. Grant programs filter applicants by business type (for-profit, nonprofit, sole proprietorship, LLC, corporation), location (state, county, city, rural vs. urban, enterprise zones), industry (technology, agriculture, manufacturing, retail, services), demographics (woman-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned, disability-owned), business stage (startup, early-stage, established), and project purpose (job creation, equipment purchase, technology adoption, export development, research). Write down every characteristic of your business that might match a grant criterion. This eligibility profile becomes your search filter and saves hours of reading through programs you cannot apply for.
You should also have basic business documentation ready before you start applying: your EIN, business registration documents, most recent tax returns, a current business plan, financial statements for the past two years (or since inception for newer businesses), and any relevant certifications (woman-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned, HUBZone). Many grant applications require these documents, and having them ready means you can submit applications quickly when deadlines are tight.
Step-by-Step: Building Your Grant Search Process
Create a document listing every potentially qualifying characteristic of your business. Include your legal structure, state and county of registration, industry NAICS code, number of employees, annual revenue, years in business, owner demographics, any certifications you hold, and the specific projects or goals you would use grant funding to accomplish. A woman-owned ecommerce business in a rural Ohio county has a dramatically different eligibility profile than a veteran-owned technology startup in Austin, and the grants each qualifies for barely overlap. Being precise about your profile prevents you from wasting time on programs designed for businesses nothing like yours.
Go to Grants.gov and create a free account. Use the search function to find grants matching your industry, business type, and location. The site lists over 1,000 active federal grant opportunities at any given time. Most are for nonprofits, universities, and government entities, so filter by eligibility to narrow results to programs open to for-profit small businesses. Set up email alerts for keywords matching your industry and project goals so you receive automatic notifications when new opportunities post. Also search the SBIR/STTR databases at sbir.gov if your business involves technology development or innovation, as these programs award billions annually to small businesses. Our federal grants guide covers the specific programs most relevant to ecommerce and online business owners.
Every state has an economic development agency that administers business grant and incentive programs. Visit your state agency's website and look for sections labeled "Business Incentives," "Grants," "Business Development," or "Economic Development Programs." The information online is often incomplete or outdated, so call the agency directly. Ask to speak with a business development specialist and explain your business type, location, and goals. These specialists know about programs that have not been posted online yet, upcoming application windows, and eligibility nuances that the program descriptions leave out. They exist to match businesses with funding, and most are happy to spend 20 minutes pointing you toward relevant programs. Our state grants guide provides the starting point for every state.
City and county governments, regional planning commissions, and Chambers of Commerce all administer grant programs that receive far fewer applications than federal or state programs because they are poorly publicized. Check your city government's economic development department website. Call your county's planning or development office. Contact your local Chamber of Commerce and ask about business grant programs, pitch competitions, and small business awards. Many cities offer microgrants of $500 to $5,000 for businesses in specific neighborhoods or industries, and the competition is often limited to a few dozen applicants rather than the thousands that national programs attract. Our local grants guide covers how to find these hyper-local programs.
Major corporations run grant programs as part of their corporate social responsibility initiatives. FedEx awards $250,000 annually through its Small Business Grant Contest. The Visa Everywhere Initiative provides grants to startups in the payments and commerce space. Amazon offers grants to sellers on its platform. Google for Startups provides grants and equity-free funding to underrepresented founders. The Hello Alice platform aggregates corporate grants from multiple companies and matches them to your business profile. The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) awards growth grants quarterly to members. Search for "[your industry] small business grant" and "[your demographic] business grant" to find additional programs. Our corporate grants guide lists the major programs and application strategies.
Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) exist in every state and provide free one-on-one business counseling, including grant identification and application assistance. Find your nearest SBDC at americassbdc.org. SCORE provides free mentoring from experienced business professionals, many of whom have grant-writing and fundraising experience. Find a SCORE mentor at score.org. These organizations know the local and regional grant landscape intimately because they work with the same economic development agencies that administer the programs. A 30-minute meeting with an SBDC counselor will often surface three or four programs you would never find through online searching alone.
Create a spreadsheet with columns for: grant program name, administering organization, award amount range, eligibility requirements, application deadline, required documents, application status, and notes. Add every program you identify, even if the current application window is closed, because most grants recur annually. Set calendar reminders 60 days before each deadline to give yourself time to prepare a strong application. Track which applications you have submitted, their status, and the outcome so you can refine your approach over time. Businesses that treat grant-seeking as an ongoing process with a maintained pipeline consistently win more grants than those who search sporadically. Our grant tracking guide provides a complete system for managing your grant pipeline.
Where Most People Go Wrong
The biggest mistake is searching Google for "small business grants" and clicking on the first few results. Most top-ranking pages are either lead generation sites that collect your contact information and sell it to lenders, paid services that charge fees for freely available information, or aggregator sites with outdated listings. The legitimate grant sources, Grants.gov, state agency websites, SBDC offices, and direct corporate program pages, do not rank as well because they spend nothing on SEO or paid advertising. Always go directly to the source rather than through intermediary websites.
The second mistake is applying only to grants that perfectly match your business. Many grants have broad eligibility criteria that you might qualify for even if the program title does not sound like an obvious fit. A "rural business development grant" might fund an ecommerce business that operates from a rural area, even though the business sells nationally online. A "technology adoption grant" might fund the purchase of inventory management software for a retail business. Read the full eligibility requirements rather than filtering based on the program name alone.
The third mistake is giving up after one or two rejections. Grant success rates are low even for strong applicants. If you submitted a solid application and were not funded, it usually means the program had more qualified applicants than funding available, not that your business is unworthy. Ask for feedback from the granting organization (many will provide it), incorporate the feedback, and reapply in the next cycle. Persistence is the single strongest predictor of eventual grant success.
What Comes Next
Once you have identified programs you qualify for, the next step is preparing strong applications. Our grant application guide covers how to write compelling proposals that address reviewers' evaluation criteria directly. You should also understand the difference between grants and loans so you can decide which funding sources to pursue for each business need. And be sure to review our grant scams guide so you can recognize and avoid the fraudulent programs that waste your time and money.