You know what it is? That's right. It's time to talk money with your money nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings and open those ears. It's the Money Talk with Tiff podcast. Hey everyone. I'm so excited because I have grant expert Stormi Banks here and she's here to talk to us about grants and what are some things business owners can do in order to prepare to receive some. So. Hey Stormi, how are you? I'm doing good. Thanks so much for having me. It is my pleasure.
Thank you for coming. So let's just hop right in. What, what is one thing that business owners can start doing today to make sure that they're prepared to get grants in the future? Yeah, getting grant ready.
I think the first thing that you should definitely do is have a registered nonprofit or for profit business, meaning that you register with your Secretary of state, you have all of your documentation and paperwork because this will allow you to be accessible to more grant opportunities that are available on the market. Gotcha. So with registering their business, is it, you know, do they favor llc, sole proprietorships, nonprofits, does it matter?
So it's pretty evenly distributed amongst LLC or S Corp, C Corp and non profits. It's not so much favored to be a sole proprietorship. You'll lack a lot of the opportunities that are available for small business as you wouldn't be categorized in that. So making sure that you actually have either an LLC or a S Corp or a C corp or a non. Profit entity for the most grant opportunities. Correct. Gotcha.
Okay. And then once they have their business registration, what else could they be doing to get grant ready? Yeah, once your business registration is complete, at that point you'll want to set up kind of the foundations of the business. It's like a social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
You're also going to want to create a website, even if it's just a landing page, just a place where they can be able to see who you are, what's your mission, what your business does and who you serve, and then of course, adding your contact information there. And then once you get that done, I would definitely say getting a grant proposal.
This is different from a business plan because a grant proposal is more of like a narrative storytelling about the business facts and data of the industry that you're in. So those would be the next steps that I would take after I got my business registered. Gotcha. Gotcha. So a couple questions here. So first, when you are referring to a narrative, can you give us more about what that means. Yeah. So a narrative essentially is the way that you're telling the story.
So there's a lot of different ways to focus a business. For instance, we're a for profit grant writing consultancy company, but sometimes we change our narrative to showcase that we're education based or we change our narrative to showcase who we serve, which is women of color or we change our narrative based on if we're hosting an event.
So there's different ways to focus your business entirely into little subsection of narratives that will be able to align you with different funders and their mission and vision that they have so that you can make sure that you become what we call at pink print, the obvious choice for the grant opportunities. Gotcha. Gotcha. So it reminds me of like resume building. Right, because you tweak your resume, tweak your cover letter to make sure it matches what you're going for.
Yeah, that's exactly right. Okay, perfect. So that's, that's good information to know. And the other point I wanted to hit on with what you said previously was the website social media presence because I know some small business owners, they're like, look, I don't like social media and, or I don't want to have a website. So how important are these things and is it preferable to have like a website versus social media? Like what does that look like? The digital marketing side?
Yeah, you definitely want to have both. The reason being is a lot of grantors these days are relying on your digital footprint to be able to get more of information about you and to credit see that you have the credibility as a business as well. And so it's going to be really important to have both. And on social media we're not looking for a follower count or how many posts that you have, but we are looking for activeness.
We're looking for to see that you're actively posting about what your business has going on, what it's doing, what it's selling, new offerings or just things you're doing in the community so we can get more of a well rounded scope of who the business is. That makes complete sense. And you know, that's something that I used to teach my students when it came to having an online presence, like when you're looking for a job.
Because really the same way if they can't find you, then it's like what's going on here? Exactly. Perfect. So what is another thing that our small business owners can do to get grant ready? Yeah, I think it's really Important to have a business bank account with grants. They're only going to do like an ACH transfer or a check made out to the actual business.
And so if you're an individual and if you're a business, but you only have like an individual personal account, they're not going to put the money into your personal account. So it's going to be important to set up a business banking account. And this can be with any local bank or, you know, any kind of like maybe federal or any big large national bank. It just depends on what your preferences are and what your budget is based on the fees that the banks have.
But you're definitely going to want to have to set up a business bank account for sure. I am so glad you brought that up. And I know you are probably real loud to some of my listeners right now because I know there's some people out there that's like, I don't want a business bank account. I don't want Uncle Sam knowing what I got going on, you know, whatever the case may be. But it is super important to have one set up for these reasons.
Now when it comes to grantors, what type, like, what type of grants are out there? Like dollar amount wise? Like is it small grants, big grants? What is a small grant? What is a big grant? Yeah, typically if you're just getting started, you're going to have grants from like, you know, $500 to 5,000. But typically the grants that our organization is applying for are grants from 5,000 to $500,000. And this comes from like corporations like Venmo or McDonald's or FedEx has a grant out.
Or it also can look like private foundations, nonprofit organizations who are hosting grants. And then of course, your state, local entities and the federal government also are giving out grant funding. So I would say depending on where your business is in terms of how many employees or how much revenue or how long you've been registered, those things can play into factor of like how much you'll be able to actually go for.
But anyone just starting out can definitely go for micro grants from 500 to 5,000 for sure. Perfect, perfect. And I'm glad you brought up, you know, state and federal government grants because I've heard of like different certifications and things like that. Do you think it's beneficial to get those like minority certifications for grant purposes too? So it could be if you have the. In your budget to pay, there's typically an annual fee and registration fee to get started with those.
We used to be registered as A woman owned small business. I didn't see that it made a drastic difference. So we didn't continue with our certifications. But there are some unique programs that will be specifically for like women owned small business or economically depressed owned business.
Those things can put you in a different category to access grants that are only available for those which can lessen the competition because not many people are certified as they are, as there is people who aren't certified. But I don't think that it will deter you from being able to get started or to win grants. Gotcha. Gotcha. Perfect. So here's one more question for you.
One I feel like it might be a misconception is that all grant applications are long and most people don't have the time to do it. Is that true? No. There's a grant out right now for $4,250. It's called the Galaxy of Stars grant. And it's literally put your information in. It's two multiple choice questions and then you hit submit and they choose a winner every month. And so, you know, there's a lot of applications that can get really intricate.
That's when you should definitely hire an expert grant writer as Pink Print. But there's also grants that you can definitely do on your own. And you might just want to take like a get grant ready seminar that we have available where you can be able to just learn how the process works and kind of how to change that narrative up per grant application as we talked about earlier. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, so we've talked about Pink Print a couple of times now. So what is Pink Print?
Yeah, Pinkprint Firm is a full service grant writing agency and I am the founder. We launched in 2021 really as an educational based platform just giving out the tools and resources on how to get non dilutive debt free funding. As a small business owner from those classes, we kept getting people like, well, can you guys write these grants for us? Can you do it for us? And we were like, yeah, we can. And so we developed a team of all certified grant writers.
Myself got certified and started doing program development budget. And since we've been able to raise $18 million in grant funding with an 88% success rate. And so Pink Print is really just here to make sure that small business owners can access funding that doesn't add additional burdens or bills to their business so they can grow sustainably. Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, when someone's looking to hire a grant writer, what does that look like? Like, is it paid per grant? Per hour.
What does that fee structure look like for small businesses? Yeah, that's a great question. So it's going to be pretty straightforward when they're certified or professionals, because no one can take a commission off of the actual grant that you win. That's actually very unethical and sometimes it will get denied by federal and state entities that are hosting grant opportunities.
So what we do is just charge a flat upfront fee that can range from 900 to $3,900, which would include that we're actually finding and applying to the grants on your behalf as well within our service offerings. And so essentially, when you're hiring a gr, you're looking for a success rate. You're looking that they work within your industry or your type of business or your state area. You're looking to see that they're ethical and holding up the morals.
And you're also looking to see just their experience that they've had over the course of however long they've been working to compare that to what price they're charging. But that's kind of what you should be looking for in terms of getting a grant writer. And they should help you write the proposal, find opportunities. And some may apply and some don't. But we do apply for you as well. Awesome. Awesome. I love that turnkey service child, because I'm like, that would be awesome.
But thank you so much for coming on the show today. Now, if people were interested in learning more about grants or more about Pink Print or more about Stormy, where could they find you? Absolutely. So you can visit our website, which is www.pinkprint firm.com. we're across all socials as Pink Print Firm as well. And you can also shoot us an email at [email protected] Perfect. Perfect.
And I'll make sure I have all of that information in the show notes, so don't worry if you're doing something else. Just check out the show notes. It'll all be there. And thank you so much, Stormy, for coming on the show today. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, bye. Thank you for listening, joining, and being a part of the Money Talk with Tiff podcast this week.
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