In this video Tara Parker of The Templet House and StaPro Investments walks us through the process of Grant Writing 101 for Wedding Venue Owners in the video below. Tara Parker has successfully written over $500,000 in grants for the small businesses and organizations she works with in and around Nashville Tennessee. She also has direct wedding venue management knowledge with her work at The Templet House. When she started writing grants she just had to figure it out all on her own. Does this sound familiar, of course it does! This is not foreign to wedding venue owners and small business owners who have to find their way around unfamiliar tasks and duties all the time! One of my favorite sayings is, A naked woman learns to weave quickly! Yeehaw Y’all know I’m from Texas! Grant Writing 101, Wedding Venue Owners
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Step One: Find Grants Via Google Search, it can be that simple as you get started. Just use search terms like: small business grants, minority business grants, women owned business grants, veteran owned business grants, start up business grants. Use your city, state and search nationwide. You could search for Wedding Industry Grants, Hospitality Grants, Event Industry Grants, Agritourism Grants, Tourism Grants, Farm Grants, Historic Renovation Grants….I could keep going but you get the idea.
**If you have a food service or agriculture business you might find a grant on The Department of Agriculture (USDA) site.
**The Amber Grant, gives away $10,000 a month to women owned businesses
**Economic Development Administration
**Department of Education Grants
**National Institute of Standards and Technology Grants
**Grant Watch is a website that keeps you up to date on grants for veterans
Step Two: When you apply for the grant and you will get instructions from the organization offering the grant. Pay close attention to all the details. They want you to follow directions or it will likely get removed from the running.
Step Three: Know the facts about your business, if they need a tax ID number make sure you have it. If they need stats on your business, tax information, annual numbers, etc… make sure you know this and can provide detailed correct information. Make sure you have all the documentation to back up your claims and keep it in a secure place in case you are ever called upon to show proof.
Step Four: Seek out some help, if you can find out who won the grant before you might be able to reach out to that business to find out if they would be willing to share some information. MAYBE they would be willing to share the grant submission that won. Worst case is they say “no”, best case is that you get some very informative assistance and win that grant.
Step Five: Have some other trusted colleagues read your submission and look for grammar or spelling errors, maybe confusing information or things that seem off. Having another set of eyes to review your submission is imperative!
Step Six: Submit the grant BEFORE the deadline! Do not wait until the last minute. I don’t recommend submitting it too early either, there is nothing worse than hitting “submit” only to realize you left something out or thinking of a better worded outline after you sent in the grant submission. Take your time to review, review, review so that when you do submit your entry you have had plenty of time to feel confident in your submission and still submit it well before the deadline.
