4 hours for $20K? I must admit, it sounds too good to be true. And when I first heard about the Business Growth grant, I didn’t believe it either. But the crazy thing is, it really is true. Let me explain.
The Government wants to encourage small to medium businesses to invest in their growth, so it created a grant where the Government will match every $1 you spend on growth up to $40K. So if you invest $20K on your growth, the Government will match that spend with another $20K.
In the old days, the grant was not as attractive. Grant qualification criteria was much stricter; you had to get two or more competing quotes before you could spend funds and you could only spend funds on soft services such as strategy, consulting and training.
CHECK IF YOU QUALIFY by clicking on this link
However, things have changed drastically and the grant is MUCH more attractive today. Here are some reasons why:
- Grant qualification criteria is now much looser
- You don’t need to get quotes from providers other than the ones you want to use
- You can now spend funds on a much larger range of services including actual implementation (in addition to soft services). These include hard services such as website development, branding and graphic design, digital marketing, software development, CRM implementation, IT services, professional services and much more.
So how do you know if you qualify? Here are some key criteria:
- Your annual turnover or operating expenditure, in the current or one of the two past financial years, must be between $1.5 million and $100 million
- You must also be already operating in one or more specified growth sectors or have intent and ability to operate in a specified growth sector
- Provide enabling technologies or services to a specified growth sector.
There are 5 diverse growth sectors and it’s important to note that your business does not need to be in the growth sector itself in order to be eligible. You simply need to supply into one of the growth sectors OR intend to supply into one of those sectors.
So if the $20K grant was so easy to obtain, then why isn’t every eligible business doing it? Well, here are two reasons:
- Ignorance. As great as the grant is, most people simply haven’t heard of it.
- Laziness. Human nature is lazy. The idea of a $20K grant is great. But it’s amazing how many people get put off by the admin work of filling out a few application forms and having one or two meetings.
Now that you know about the grant, you just need to decide if you are willing to put in the ~4 hours of work (or less) to access $20K.
If you are, first CHECK THAT YOU QUALIFY by clicking on this link.
