I have been recieving alot of emails saying that I may be eligible for free grants and to just send $50 and they will process my request. Of course it’s a scam, but I wonder how much truth it contains. Can average citizens get grants? How?
DaLovin’ Dj
Sure, if they find someone that gives them out and puts together a good proposal. The e-mail scammers probably just send you a list of where to look for grants and leave the work to you.
But you need to propose something that’s considered worthy. “I need the bucks,” isn’t good enough.
Who do you have to convince and where do you find them?
Teachers as “ordinary citizens” apply for grants all the time. For example, my wife is a music teacher who occasionally applies for grants for equipment and training to supplement her underfunded music program. The foundations that offer grants ask those applying to fill out a questionnaire and perhaps write a short essay about why they think they deserve the grant and how it will benefit their programs. There are lots of organizations out there offering grants of one sort or another, but they’re usually for small amounts of money and only available to a narrow subset of the population. You might find out about them through colleagues or in trade journals.
Well,
If you want to start your own small business, and right off the bat have a contract to work on, try the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant program. They have all kinds of good stuff.
http://www.sbirworld.com (click search at the top and use the second search window on the page to search by key word)
You can also check out the Foundation Center which provides links to all kinds of folks who provide grants:
Then of course, there is always the military. You can go to a site like Fedbizopps.gov and look for BAAs (broad agency announcements) which has all kinds of things. Search by key words of skills you have and see what pops up. BAAs usually have a long response date (i.e. accepting application until 2006 and other such stuff) - you send them an interesting proposal related to their topic of interest and away you go if you get approval…
None of these are ‘free’ per se because you have to invest your time to write a good proposal of what you hope to accomplish and how you will go about it, plus come up with a budget that justifies how you will spend their money. If it was that easy…everyone would be doing it, right? Writing these proposals is no easy task in most cases.
As far as who you have to convince, well that is usually a committee that evaluates your proposal, made up of staff from the agency/ organization that is giving out the money. Often times they’ll even tell you what their evaluation criteria are (i.e. proposals are rated on a scale of 100 with 20 points for idea, 10 points for budget…etc.) Write the proposal around the evaluation criteria focusing more attention on those areas where more points are given.
That’s about it. If you go to your local library, just like they have books on writing a ‘winning’ resume, they will have books on writing winning grants. For that matter, the reference desk of many larger libraries (especially in universities) will have something like a ‘grantmakers directory’ which will provide you an endless list of grantmaking bodies who dole out money based on topic.
My advise, go for something obscure that you are very good at because if it’s generic every other Tom, Dick, and Harry will have also submitted a proposal which just creates more competition.
I should add, by the way, that if you are any kind of minority (woman and/or veteren and/or non-caucasian) the government LOVES that and will preferentially look at your application over others. You’ll already have an advantage right off the bat anyway because if you go into business for yourself, you are automatically a ‘small business’ which they also love to hear…
Thanks for the advice. By the way, here is the site that the email links to.
DaLovin’ Dj
Looking at the site, you have to pay with a credit card. On a non-secure page. What a bunch of amateur asshats :mad:
The $50 probably is probably the least of the scam. Identity theft and credit card fraud are probably the real goals here. Now that I think about it, perhaps I shouldn’t have posted the link. To be clear, I in no way reccomend nor trust that website. The offer was sent to me as illegal spam, and as Tapioca Dextrin points out, the transaction is hardly safe. Please do not trust that site, and if you do, do so at your own risk.
Folks have been warned. Mods if you think the link should be disabled, feel free. Not sure if linking to spam is against the rules here.
DaLovin’ Dj
dalovindj You do realize that the link you’ve supplied almost certainly contains a unique identifier that links back to your email address? Everyone using it is confirming your address to them ensuring you get more spam.
Everything after the ? in the link is unnecessary, you can see the same page even if you delete it. I’d ask a mod to remove the entire link if I were you.
As for the site. I seriously question some of the awards and certifications it claims on it. The fact it’s an unsecure page that requests credit card details… draw your own conclusions. Also note that the bit that urges you to apply by a certain closing date is calculated. It’s always going to be midnight tonight.
Totally 100% scam and spam.