Here’s what we cover:
- The four key types of funders making grants available in Australia
- How and why you need to begin with strategy to boost your chances of securing funding both short and long term
- The importance of understanding your funding ‘sweet spot’
- The 3-step process essential to your funding application
Links and resources:
- To find out more about Janine head to her website here
- To join the Grant’d Facebook Group here
- Follow Grant’d on LinkedIn here
- Follow Grant’d on Instagram here
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- If you’re keen for more head over to my other podcast One Wild Ride for a listen
- Ready to launch & leverage your own gig? Download my free guide to starting and scaling your business over at theownerscollective.com/startandscale
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Full Transcript
Pru Chapman:
Hey, Janine, and welcome to the show.
Janine Owen:
Hi, Pru. Thanks so much for having me.
Pru Chapman:
I’m absolutely thrilled that you’re here because we are going to talk about a topic today that I know small business owners are so interested in, and medium business owners and big business, actually, because we’re talking about securing grant funding. I feel like this is a topic that so many small business owners are really curious about, but they really have nowhere, no idea where to start. Now, of course, you’re the founder of Grant’d, an agency that helps people secure funding. And you do that both as a done-for-you service and you also help people secure their own grant funding. You educate them to do that. So I was hoping that we could kick off, if you could give us a bit of a background into how you got into the funding space.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, cool. Yep. So, as you can imagine, the funding world has been really hot the last few months. So, it is really great timing to be having this conversation today. But I guess my journey into the funding world really began back in the early 2000s. And when I say that, I am definitely showing my age. But I had kick-started my career after school in public relations and in event management. I was working predominantly in the entertainment and the hospitality industry and having a lot of fun at the same time. Then it got to the early 2000s and I really felt like I wanted to do something a little bit more meaningful and be in a job where I was helping.
Janine Owen:
So, I went back to uni and I completed a four year degree in social work. And by about year two or three, I remember talking to my mum on the phone and saying, “I don’t actually want to be a social worker.” But I really just wanted to see the degree through and knew that I had it under my belt. So, I finished the degree and got to the end of that in 2004 and registered with a social work agency, waiting to try and get myself a job. They contacted me with a contract that was a very unique contract and said that it suited my set of skills really well. It was a three month contract working with a charity in Sydney and organizing their end of year Christmas party for all of the kids. They were an out-of-home care organization. It was organizing their largest ever Christmas party.
Janine Owen:
So, I went on for that three months and delivered a fantastic event. And during that time, I got my first real experience of what it meant to actually have a career in fundraising and marketing and working in the not-for-profit sector, not as a social worker, but actually as a fundraiser. And it really was the perfect marriage of my skill set as a PR and marketer and then a social worker. And so, that was in 2004, and that really kick-started my now… What? … 16, nearly 17 year journey in fundraising and marketing for some incredible Australia based not-for-profits and organizations.
Pru Chapman:
Incredible, incredible. And you’ve got a real passion for social impact businesses, don’t you?
Janine Owen:
Yeah, 100%. So, look, it’s been really interesting to be in this space for so long because I’ve seen the changes in the landscape from where we used to go to meetings. And so, a big part of my background has been corporate partnerships. So, I’ve worked with almost every single corporate or brand in Australia that we know and love. I’ve sat in a room with them at some point and tried to negotiate a partnership or successfully managed a partnership. And I remember maybe about eight years ago when you used to tell people you work for a charity or you used to ring up to try and secure a partnership and people used to go, “Oh, that’s so nice.” And they always had this kind of tone in their voice, like as if I was just giving my time for free and doing this really nice thing on the side.
Janine Owen:
What we’ve seen over the last kind of, I would say, five to six to seven years, is this real shift, and as businesses have really started to take, and people in general, much more of a responsible and active a role in social impact. It’s moved from being checkbook philanthropy to really being a very sophisticated and a very integrated, I guess, process and value system. We’ve really seen this rise of social impact. And so, now we’re seeing it across the board. And so, it’s really exciting for me because it’s been something I’ve been passionate about for so long and something that I’ve done every single day. And now we’re seeing this push where so many people are doing it. So, I’m incredibly passionate about it because I’ve seen firsthand the real impact and the benefit that an individual and a business that exists for the greater good can have on communities. And so, now it’s something that I really love talking to businesses about on a daily basis.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, it’s incredible. I’m glad that you’ve mentioned that because there has been an incredible shift from that kind of more charity mindset. It’s kind of charity is the organization style, but it’s also a charity mindset. Whereas, now it’s becoming much more integrated, isn’t it? Into business and good business, which I talk a lot about, I mean, here, and of course on my other podcast, One Wild Ride, a lot about good business. And as you say, it’s much more sophisticated now and it’s coming from this real desire. I think as humans we’re making more conscious decisions around the companies that we want to be affiliated with, or that we want to work for, or that we want to buy from. And so, we are seeing much more sophistication around this area.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, 100%. And we’re really seeing it, I think there’s a couple of things, so we’re seeing a huge rise in social enterprise. And people often say to me, “Well, what’s a social enterprise?” Or they might come to me and say, “Look, I’m setting up a business and I don’t know, do I set it up as a charity or a social enterprise?” And at the most simplest form, I tend to describe a social enterprise to people as the middle ground between a charity and a for-profit business. So it’s a business that is essentially for-profit, but the profits or the purpose and the objective of the business is for some kind of social change or social good.
Janine Owen:
I think what we’re seeing in recent years is the rise of a social enterprise business model. And so, with that comes a huge level of sophistication and a huge commitment to businesses to want to do better. I think on the flip side of that, we’re really seeing so many incredible movements. And right now we’re living through this fantastic movement of Black Lives Matter and where it really is power to the people. And so, we’ve seen it in the fashion industry with who makes your clothes and the fashion revolution and now we’re seeing it with regards to Black Life Matters. So, I think when we start to think about the power of the people, and we are connected through social media now, and we can have a voice and we can have an opinion, we can choose to spend money on brands that do good. We can choose to have jobs with people that do good. And a lot of this has been driven by the generations that are coming through below us.
Janine Owen:
And so, I think it’s happening at the top and it’s happening at the bottom and what’s happening is we’re starting to meet in the middle. And so, the lines that used to be really clearly defined between a for-profit and a not-for-profit have suddenly become really opened up. And I don’t want to say blurred in a bad way, but I want to say kind of immeshed and merged because we’re starting to see that those kind of really clear boundaries and parameters don’t exist anymore. And now, people just want to have a business and they’re like, “Well, actually, we want to do good.”
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, I totally agree. And it is business being used as a force for good. I feel like I’ve been in this game now for, in this, it must be more than 10 years. And I’ve always said like, “Business can change the world.” 10 years ago that sounded really kind of crazy and it was all about commercialism or something like that. And it’s like, no, no, no. There’s a lot of decision makers, big business. It moves fast, it will change the world. I think exactly what you’re saying here, that’s what we’re seeing happen. And it’s coming from the top and from the bottom simultaneously.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, 100%. That’s right. I think this used to be like maybe a little bit of woo-woo or you used to be a little bit like seen as a bit of a, “Oh, you’re a really amazing person.” Or, I think it just felt really unattainable for most people. I know for corporates, and I’m talking huge brands, like global brands, you’d sit there and they would always want to do something, but it never really had buy-in from the top because they were always thinking about, “Well, what’s the ROI? How are we going to get benefit? How are we going to have more sales, more customers?” or what have you. And that was from the very top down. Then you had the person sitting at that table who was just an individual in the business who wanted to drive something forward because they were really passionate about it.
Janine Owen:
It’s really hard to demonstrate social good as an ROI. And certainly, it was five or six or seven years ago when we didn’t have this demand from consumers and from new employees and from society, essentially, to demonstrate business is good. And so, what we’re seeing now is people are really starting to, I guess, really see impact as a real measurement tool for success in business. And so it’s not about profit, but it’s actually around, “Well, how much good are we making and how are we changing people’s lives?” So, yeah. So, that’s the exciting part about what’s happening right now.
Pru Chapman:
It’s super exciting and I feel like you’re right in the thick of it and you have been for a little while. I know that when you launched Grant’d not too long ago, it has just gone from strength to strength, hasn’t it? I mean, I guess I’d ask you, why has it gone from strength to strength? Why is now the time that businesses are really paying attention to some of this funding that’s out there?
Janine Owen:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. And actually, I’ve known you, Pru, for a few years, and I’m really excited to say that Grant’d was actually born through some work that we did together, which is really exciting. But Grant’d came off the back of my first business, which was Raised Collective, and that was a fully integrated fundraising and marketing consultancy. I ran that for about 18 months and it was during the second part of that, that I was working with so many organizations. And I strategically placed myself in the small and medium sized space because I really felt that there was so many incredible organizations with such strong visions and they were making so much impact at a really grassroots level, but they just weren’t visible and they weren’t connecting to funds. So, even though I had come from some very big organizations like Lifeline and Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation and Melanoma Institute, I really placed myself in that space because I really wanted to be able to help.
Janine Owen:
And so, what started to happen was that they just weren’t able to mobilize and to be able to sustain campaigns and fundraising that needed to be outsourced, but that really heavily relied on internal resources to kind of keep it ticking over and make it successful year after year. So more and more organizations started to turn to grant funding because it was a very untapped area of funding. And so, by the end I was working with a number, I think it was about six organizations, and all of those organizations, I was managing their grants. And so I started to think, “Well, hang on, there’s a real gap in the market here. It’s a huge need.” In fact, there’s between 80 to $90 billion each year in grant funding distributed, which is $80 billion dollars-
Pru Chapman:
Wow.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, huge. It actually is an incredible part of the Australian economy, but so many people don’t know about it. Number one and number two, they don’t know how to access the funds. So, being the type of person that gets really excited by a challenge, but also I love creating things, I decided to launch Grant’d as a sister company to Raised Collective. And yeah, it’s kind of taken over everything that I do now because it really is resonating with so many people because people have amazing ideas and they have incredible ability to deliver, but they just lack the funding and the resources to be able to do what they want to do. And so, I think that is why we have really taken off and also because there’s just a gap in the market. There isn’t a lot of accessible and I would say kind of fully integrated services out there that are working in the way we work.
Janine Owen:
That’s the experience that I bring as someone with a full background in fundraising and marketing, and as we talked about, that passion for making social impact and social change businesses really successful as well as the team that come with the Grant’d story, and they’re incredible experts in there, right from strategy through to grant writing. So, yeah. So we have been really, and I’m very grateful that we’ve really grown and I think it just goes to show that there’s just a need for businesses and for government to fund really good ideas and good causes to help them to make an impact.
Pru Chapman:
I couldn’t agree more. I’ve said that a few times now on this episode, but 80 to $90 billion, I think everyone’s sitting up and listening now. And that’s, I know even from, I’ve worked with a lot of businesses in my time, it’s just when you’re a small or a medium business owner, which is exactly where you sit, there’s just so much to do that you’ve got a sense that there’s funding out there, like you know someone that got this or got that, but just to actually have the time or the headspace to even know where to start, I think it overwhelms so many businesses.
Pru Chapman:
So, I mean, you’ve just mentioned 80 to 90 billion. Everyone’s listening. I know they’ve pulled over the car, they’ve turned up the volume, they’ve given their kid a screen, so that they can really pay attention to this. Can you tell us, if you could give our listeners sort of the lay of the land? And I mean, just let us know, what types of funding opportunities are out there and, I guess, why should business owners be paying attention to them now as well?
Janine Owen:
Yeah. Okay, cool. So, look, there are four, I guess you could say core types of funding or funders. So we’ve got government funding, which most businesses would be or should be aware of. So if you are a business it’s, I would say, fairly likely that your funding is going to come from a government source, and that’s state government and that’s federal government funding. Then we have corporate giving. And I think as I talked about earlier about partnerships, this is a really exciting space.
Janine Owen:
So, one of the biggest challenges that small businesses and small not-for-profits, or social enterprises, or anyone starting out, one of the biggest problems you have with connecting to any type of funding source, whether it’s a customer, or whether it’s a brand affiliation, or whether it’s a grant funder, is visibility. So, you can’t get access to funds if no one knows who you are or they can’t find you. And so, when we used to rely heavily on corporates for partnerships or sponsorships, it was really a case of the brands that were kind of big enough to get a foot in the door, or they had a connection or something, could get funding. And so, it really meant that a lot of the people starting out weren’t able to access funding.
Janine Owen:
And so, what we’ve seen over recent years is that corporates are really changing the way they give and moving from a traditional partnership to more having grants and using a grants process to be able to distribute their funds. And so, that’s really exciting for small businesses. And it’s really exciting, especially for small charities and social enterprises, because they’re able to put themselves in, they’re able to kind of throw their hat in the ring and put themselves in the process to be considered for funding. So, corporate funding is another big area of grants. We also have private giving and that’s usually our trusts and our foundations, and they’re driven by families or they’re driven by family trusts or sometimes corporate trusts. And so, that’s another big area of giving is private, and that’s probably more relevant to a charity, or not-for-profit, or to a social enterprise.
Janine Owen:
Then we have community, which is our local grants and local grants actually make up more than 90% of the giving. So, it’s really, they’re very big for small businesses and for small organizations to really tap into the local community. So, they’re the four types of funders. And I guess why people should be paying attention is because I think sometimes, and I guess you’d see this all the time, Pru, is we can get really carried away with ourselves and we can get so swept away with we’re wanting really big. So, we’re wanting to kind of start off really big and get big dollars and make big movements. And when we pull it right back down and we kind of start to really truncate what it is we want to achieve and we really start to develop, and this is going to lead into what we’re going to talk about later on is strategy, what we realize is we may not always need really big bits of money, but we actually need small bits.
Janine Owen:
I think being successful in business is by having lots of small steps one after the other, after the other. And I think why it’s important for people to listen now is because funding and grant funding can play a really important role in helping you to power or enable some of the parts of your business that you might not have funding for. And so, when we talk about small business, we’re talking about things like marketing. So, you might just get a grant for $5,000 to help you to be able to create a marketing strategy, or it’s for leadership coaching, or for digital. Or you might be able to get funding to help with some infrastructure costs.
Janine Owen:
So, it’s sometimes the small things that we might take for granted, but having a little injection of funds is going to just go, “Oh, cool. I get to move a little bit further here in my business.” So, people should really be taking notice because it’s a really important part of building out your funding pillars, building out the ways that money comes to you. And it just takes some pressure off having to be so reliant on sales, also reliant on other forms of donations to be able to kind of sustain.
Pru Chapman:
That’s an incredible amount of information there. I’m taking copious notes myself.
Janine Owen:
Oh, sorry!
Pru Chapman:
I mean, let’s be honest, I love these podcasts, I always learn so much. I mean, I’m sure everyone sitting back there in their cars now pulled over, having a snack with their child in front of a screen is asking like, “Is it easy to get grant funding? I mean, is it worth my time? If I’m going to invest a certain amount of time to get this over the line, is it going to be closed doors in my face?” I mean, what’s your kind of sense of it, Janine? Are most people successful when they go for grant funding? Does it just depend on how competitive that particular grant is? I mean, is it worth it? Are people getting a good return on investment if they’re going after grants?
Janine Owen:
Yeah, that’s such a good question. I wish it was an easy answer and it’s kind of a bit of a yes and a no. So, there’s no doubt that you’re not going to get every grant you go for and I just think it’s good to say that upfront. But yes, absolutely, there is a really good ROI. And we always say that, and this is more and more we’re finding this, and this is almost the first conversation that I have with anyone, is you have to have a strategic approach to grant funding. And that is really, without blowing our own trumpet, that’s what makes us different, is we don’t just write a grant for someone, we will take them through a strategic process.
Janine Owen:
When we talk about strategy, we’re really just talking about the thinking. So, you have to have a really clear sense of what you want in your business, where you want to go, what you need funding for, why it’s important, what’s your timeline to delivery? How much funding do you need? And when you can actually do that, then what happens is you’re able to start to find and do what we call the eligibility and the alignment piece. You’re able to start to find grants that where… We have a wonderful diagram and we have a process we take people through, and it’s finding the sweet spot, which is essentially your ask.
Janine Owen:
If you imagine an incredible Venn diagram and on one side you have all your funding needs and you’ve gone through that process and you understand exactly what it is you want. And then on the other side, you have a funding body’s needs and what their eligibility is and their criteria and their priorities and all the rest of it. Now, if you can match that, then you have this incredible spot in the middle, which is the sweet spot, and that’s where you can have a lot of… You can just really put forward so much of a stronger application because you’ve done that kind of piece in the beginning.
Janine Owen:
So we think that if you can come at it from a strategic perspective, then it absolutely increases your chances of grant funding. I think something that’s really interesting to say here as well, because people get really turned off when they don’t get the first grant or the second grant. But data actually shows that the most successful people at grant funding are the people that have been having programs for five years or more. And what that tells us is that grant funding is not an overnight kind of a solution, it generally is a long-term. It takes time to build and you really need to stick at it.
Janine Owen:
And probably, you talk to business owners all the time, and I know we’ve spoken about before, same with business. Having a successful business is not an overnight story. It’s actually something that takes time and you have to chip away and chip away and chip away. It’s the same with a grants program. But if you can establish the foundations and you can get all of those elements right, then you should absolutely have grants as a really core part of your funding moving forward from startup through to scale up.
Janine Owen:
We see grant funding, you can map it against the journey of a business, and we work with businesses across every stage of that journey. And what’s relevant to a business as a startup is going to change once you’re three or four years into your business and you start looking for funding to scale up, and then you’re going to have funding beyond that. So, to answer your question, yes, it is a very powerful part of a business strategy, but you have to do that thinking upfront, otherwise you may as well just go out there and just shoot in the street and see what comes back at you.
Pru Chapman:
That’s great advice and I think across the whole of the business sphere, but particularly around grants, because I think it can be a little bit of that bright, shiny object syndrome or a bit like, “Oh, I’ll go for that one. If I don’t get that one, then I forget about it and never go back.” But actually, approaching it with strategy and with a long-term approach. A great business, as you say, definitely isn’t built overnight. So, I mean, Janine, do you have an example for us of someone, perhaps even that you’ve helped, that has gotten funding right, that’s really made a big difference to them?
Janine Owen:
Yeah. So, I mean, even just recent, a very recent example that I’d love to share with you because we just recently launched our first ever boot camp. It was born out of COVID because we were delivering in real life workshops. And then obviously with COVID, we have to stop that. So, we developed a 28 Days to Launching Your Grants or Nailing Your Grants program. And we’re now working with 15 incredible businesses, all in that kind of startup or early startup stage. And one of the guys there, Chris, who is just so fantastic, he’s a sound engineer and has worked with so many incredible producers and media outlets throughout Australia. But of course, the arts industry was hit so bad and one of the first industries to be hit with COVID. So, he first came to me saying that he had an idea for a project and he wanted to understand how grant funding could fit into it.
Janine Owen:
And so, he joined the bootcamp and we did, as one of the exercises, that sweet spot project or process. He actually had come into that with a grant and he had come into it thinking that this is everything he was going to put forward for his grant. He went through this process and he actually changed everything about it. And he wrote. He then went on to write in, honestly, less than a day, the most incredible grant application. And he put forward this project that he’s just submitted that last week. So, we have all got our fingers crossed it gets across the line because it’s a fantastic project.
Janine Owen:
But by going through that process and really putting on a strategic lens, he actually changed everything that he was asking for. He even changed what the project was that he wanted to run, so not only what he wanted to put in funding for, but how he was going to run his business. So, I think the power of really bringing a strategic lens to your grant allows you to bring a strategic lens to your business and it allows you to start to really hone in on what are you going to do and what are you going to deliver? And then usually the funding follows.
Pru Chapman:
Right, perfect. And that’s definitely an area close to home, I mean, in my home, with Fernando being a musician. The poor entertainment industry have been incredibly hard hit and I know that there are a lot of grants coming out for them. So, yeah, I hope that everyone is paying attention to that.
Pru Chapman:
I guess then, well, I mean, let’s get right down to it. I know that you have quite a specific process that you take people through and I was kind of hoping just to high level that for our listeners. If you could take us or discuss with us what those three steps are that you do take people through, both your clients and also, well, your kind of larger scale clients, but also in the program as well. What are those three big milestones that people need to hit?
Janine Owen:
Yeah, so we have developed a three step process and that is strategy, data, and story. You’ll hear me banging on about strategy all the time and that’s because that’s the part of the business that I really drive forward. But also, I think everything starts with a really good strategy. And sometimes that can scare people, but we’re not talking about going down the path of a 50 page strategy. I explain in the most simplest form that the strategy is the thinking. So you do that process up front, and I’ve spoken about it a few times with that sweet spot.
Janine Owen:
Then the data. So I think data can be a bit overwhelming for people, especially if you don’t feel like you’re technically minded. But data is just really having some bits of information, both external, so I talked about $80 billion of grant funding, for example, so what is external that is really relevant to your business and to your market and to your product? And internal, so what are the case studies or the testimonials, or what’s some of the impact that you’ve created? Put that together in a fast facts or a sheet, maybe with 10 pieces of data that is most relevant for your business and for your market.
Janine Owen:
And then, for us, story is the third element and we say that story is the intersection between strategy and data. It’s being able to take your strategy and take your data and weave it into a really engaging and a compelling story that actually answers the questions within any grant application. I think it’s important here to note that it’s kind of a really kind of stale, a bit of a sterile process. Anyone who’s written the grant will know it’s far from an exciting thing. It’s actually a really time-consuming and a laborious task. And especially because you’ve just got a SmartForm and there’s nothing that kills creativity like a SmartForm. But on the other side of that SmartForm is a human. And so, you need to be able to put it forward in a way where you’re going to get someone’s attention and they’re going to want to keep reading. So, story is really important in terms of how you’re putting your funding need, or your funding ask, or your project across to someone to grab their attention and make them go, “Heck, yeah, I want to keep reading.”
Pru Chapman:
Perfect. I love that. So strategy, data, and story. And story being the intersection of strategy and data. I think it’s so nice to actually just hear a clear three step process and sort of what you need to put in there and what you need to be considering in that grant process as well. Because, like I said, so many small business owners and medium business owners that I’ve spoken to have been really interested. They hear about the grants, but they feel so elusive. They’re a little bit far away and they just don’t know. They do get overwhelmed and because it can be that laborious process, they kind of don’t tend to bother. But I think if you can kind of bring it to life with story as well and do some storytelling in there, it does at least make it a bit more interesting for you and definitely the person on the other side.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, 100%. And I think also, it’s like anything, if you leave anything to the last minute or you try and do it… So, often people will find a grant and they’ll find it when it’s due either the next day or the next week. And they’re like-
Pru Chapman:
Always.
Janine Owen:
… “All right, I can’t think. How am I going to do it?” And you’re under all this pressure and then suddenly you submit it and you’re like, “Why didn’t I think of this? That would have been perfect.” And I think that’s why, again, the strategy piece is try and do this thinking upfront. Don’t actually wait until you find a grant that you want to apply for. Hop off this podcast and just sit down and go, “God, what within my business is fundable? What? Or where do I want to go? What do I want to achieve? How much money do I need? What would it look like in the next 12 months? And what are some bits of information that are relevant for me?” And if you can start that process, then when you find a grant, you’re going to be like, “Oh, I’m on the front foot,” and it’s suddenly not going to be so overwhelming.
Janine Owen:
I think that’s the really important piece, is try and do some of this thinking upfront. And just kind of have it in the back of your mind, so when a grant does come across your desk or pops into your inbox, you feel like you’re not on the back foot. You feel like you’ve actually gone, “Oh, my head’s a little bit in the game and, yeah, I can actually deal with this.” So, I think that’s really important is don’t wait till you’re in it to have to try and respond.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Good advice. Good advice. Okay. So, I guess we’ll wrap up shortly, Janine, but I wanted to ask you, I mean, we’re in the, I don’t want to say coming out of COVID because we don’t know if we’re really coming out yet, but we are definitely seeing the restrictions easing, so at the time of this recording, everyone, it is sort of mid-June. What’s hot in the funding space right now? Where could people be paying a lot of attention or potentially where are your clients kind of looking right now?
Janine Owen:
Yeah. Well, look, it’s a really interesting time of year because we’re coming up to the end of financial year. So, look, a lot of the grants that were open and are going to make decisions before 30th of June or issue funds before then have now closed. So, with COVID, we saw, oh my God, it was really exciting times because so many of the rounds that were open or were due to open actually changed or closed. We’ve seen so much funding come up in response to COVID. So, we’ve actually had more funding available now than what we would have had at this time normally. A lot of that has now closed.
Janine Owen:
So, I think people have been really having their eyes on government funding, from a local level and your local council all the way up through to federal government, and what support and what packages have been available to help people respond to COVID. So, that’s been a really crucial part of people and what they’re accessing at the moment. We’re also seeing people really looking, I guess, at the corporate funding space, because again, there are still some things open now before the end of financial year, but they’ll start to kick off again towards the end of the year.
Janine Owen:
And private funding is another one. I think, keeping your eye on a lot of the foundations, because a lot of them did change the way they’re doing their funding as a result of COVID. And so they’ve postponed their rounds, which means I think what we’re going to see towards the back half of this year, and as things start to hopefully kind of stabilize and we start to rebuild from COVID, we’re going to start to see some of these rounds open. So, I think keeping your eye on some private foundations as well is really important at this time.
Pru Chapman:
Awesome. Awesome. Well, listeners, it sounds like there’s plenty of cash out there, 80 to 90 billion. I mean, that is a big amount of money. I think everyone, really, I mean, I’m certainly paying attention. So I mean, Janine, how can people connect with you? I mean, I know that you and your team, you put out a lot of resources. I know that you help people right from if they’re just kind of listening to this podcast and thinking, “Oh, what grants might be from me?” right through to helping educate people. And then, of course, doing it for them. So, I mean, how can people best connect?
Janine Owen:
Yeah, cool. Well, look, people can connect with us through our website or through social media, grantd.agency are our social handles for Instagram and Facebook. But actually, during COVID we established a pop-up Facebook Group and it is COVID Grants and Funding Support. That has grown in about now… What? … six weeks to over 700 people. We are popping grants in there every week. We’re putting up to about five or seven grant opportunities. We’re doing tips and tricks. We’re going in there with Facebook Lives. And we’re really trying to respond to people’s, I don’t want to say desperation, but people’s real genuine need to access funding right now. We’re trying to do as much as we can to provide that and provide value to them.
Janine Owen:
So, I think jumping into our Facebook Group is a really good place to start as well, as well as obviously joining our mailing list. So, as Pru said, we really try and give a lot of value by giving a lot of information and providing a lot of resources. So, I think our email list or our Facebook Group are the two best places to get access to that.
Pru Chapman:
Awesome. Awesome. And can you just let everyone know what that Facebook Group was again for me, Janine? Just so everyone’s got their pens ready now, I’m sure.
Janine Owen:
Yeah, it is COVID Grant and Funding Support, so you can Google that. But actually, we are going to be changing the name of it soon because, as Pru mentioned, we’re starting to move forward and we really want to move our business and move people forward from being in the kind of COVID bubble to start to think about what’s next. So, head to our Facebook page, grantd.agency, and you will find the link on our page. So if it does change names, I’m not sending you on a wild goose chase.
Pru Chapman:
Good one. Good one. All right, grantd.agency, everyone head there. Janine, thank you so much for your time today. I think that stat has blown mine and everyone else’s mind. And also, just your real insight into your simple three step process, but also breaking down the different types of funding. I’ve never heard it broken down like that into those four categories. So, even that to get our heads around and also the timing of what’s happening now, that’s been super, super helpful.
Pru Chapman:
I’m sure that everyone listening, now that they actually know where to go to get some help, so instead of fishing around out there for one grant at a time, they can head your way and do that strategy piece, and have a good think about, “Okay, what are our funding needs and what could we get funding? Where can we actually get a little bit of help?” Like you said, so people aren’t as dependent on sales. I mean, there’s money out there. If you legitimately have a good pitch to get it, then I think why not? So, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with us today.
Janine Owen:
Oh, you’re welcome, Pru. Thank you so much. It’s been awesome.
Pru Chapman:
Awesome. Thanks, Janine.
Janine Owen:
See you.
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