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If you are a student who consistently worries about how you are gonna pay off your college debts or a single mother who consistently struggles with her daily bills,some grants provided by the government can help you.The problem is not everyone can have a grant and they are difficult to come by.But that shouldn’t discourage you from applying considering the chances you might land one.One thing you must be extremely cautious about is that people may call you on the pretext of being from the government and claim to offer you grants.Beware of sharing your credit card details as this would result in someone gaining access to your account. So how are you gonna get that free grant?

1)Search for eligible grants.

There are thousands of federal grants available to search for on-line, but most of them are designed for organizations and governmental agencies. You should not waste time applying for these as an individual because you will be quickly deemed ineligible.

2)Make a list of eligible grants.

Because the grants are often very specific in nature, it is unlikely you will be a good fit for more than one. But you should still keep a list of the grants you plan to apply to so you can stay organized during the application process.

• You should keep this list in an accessible place, like a notebook that you use frequently or save this list on your computer. Consider backing up your documents in cloud space like Dropbox or Google Cloud.

3)Read the descriptions of each grant.

Many federal grants for individuals are specific in scope. They may be designed to help an individual conduct research or help complete a project at a federal institution (like the Department of Energy). They are also often designed to help strengthen relationships between the federal government and an international population living in the United States.

You should be clear as to why you want to apply as said before there are thouosands of applicants and only a few are selected.

Before you fill out the grant application, you should draft a practice section in which you explain 1) how you will use the grant and 2) how it will benefit the broader community (not just yourself).Write a clear “thesis statement” for your mission. What will this grant help you to achieve? Will you conduct important research with it, will you use it to enrich a local school, community center, or park? Try to write this in a sentence of 50 words of less. Revise and rewrite this sentence again and again until you make it crystal clear.Obsessively proofread. Your grant will be quickly dismissed if it includes any errors such as typos, grammatical errors or other technical problems. Show the committee you pay attention to detail and thoroughly edit your application. Include visuals. If you have graphs, charts or other visual metrics that will help convey the necessity of your project, then you should prepare to include these as well. These visuals will give the committee an idea of how you plan to measure your results once you implement the grant.Structure your paragraphs properly. If you are writing multiple paragraphs, then make sure each one starts with a topic sentence that offers a new piece of information.

So how does one actually apply for a grant?

Step 1) Register for an account. You will need to include the Funding Opportunity Number (or FON) of the grant you want to apply for. You can copy the FON number from the description of the grant, which is the upper right hand of the grant synopsis.Highlight the number and then right click on it. Select the “copy” option from the drop down men. Then go to the registration page. Right click again and select the “paste” option. This will put the FON number into the box and hit the “Submit” button.Fill out the registration page according to its instructions. You will then be prompted to create a username and password. Be sure to write these down in a place where you can access them again.Getting an approved, registered account can take 1-3 weeks, so be sure to budget in this time when you are applying for a grant.

Step 2) Download the application for the grant. Depending on your project, you will need to choose either the multi-project application PDF or the single-project application pdf. Each option includes instructions specific to the government agency administering the grant, along with application forms designed to be filled in offline. Mandatory fields to fill in are highlighted in yellow and include an asterisk.

Make sure that your version of Adobe Reader is compatible with the grants.gov web site.You can test to see if your Adobe Reader will properly download the grant here

If you wish to print out the forms in an application package, you must open each form individually and print it out. There is currently no provision for batch printing the entire package.Fill out the application. The different components of the application will vary with each grant, but you will need to be prepared to write a proposal for your project or research idea. You will need to clearly explain how the funding will help you put your ideas into practice for the particular agency.

Complete the SF-424 form first. This form will automatically populate information on other areas of the application, so be sure to finish this first as it will save you time.

Be sure to save frequently. If you are filling out the application on a computer as opposed to manually, you will need to hit the “save” button frequently to preserve your work.

Keep an eye on the file size. There is a file size limit of 200mb on grants.gov. Individual attachments should also be less than 100mb. Find ways to concisely convey your mission and goals so your application can take up less space.

Attachment file names are restricted to 50 characters in length and should not include the special characters &, -, *, /, #, or periods, accent marks or blank spaces. You may separate words in file names with underscores (example: Application_Attachment_File.pdf).

To speed application processing, Grants.gov requires that no 2 files in an application package have the same name. If you have working files with the same name, you’ll need to rename them before attaching them to your application.

Video (.mpeg, .mov, .avi), graphic image (.gif, .jpg, .tif) and audio (.aif, .au, .wav) files should be compressed before being attached, according to the standards of the government agency administering the grant you’re applying for.

Check for errors. Your application must be error free before you can successfully submit it. Click the “Check Package for Errors” button on the application to make sure your application is correct.

Save and submit. The final step in the application process entails hitting the Save & Submit button. This will become available once all of the errors are corrected.

Step 3)

Keep your tracking number. Once you have successfully submitted your grant, you will be sent to a confirmation page on-line. The confirmation page will give you a tracking number that you can use to look up the status of your application.

Step 4)

Follow up on your submission. During the next 2 business days after your submission, Grants.gov will notify you twice by e-mail, first to notify you they have received it and then to notify you that it has either been validated or rejected for technical errors.

If your application been validated, you will receive a third e-mail from Grants.gov notifying you that the agency administering the grant has received your application, which may followed by another e-mail to notify you that the grantor agency has assigned its own tracking number to your application.

Before the grantor agency replies, you can follow up with Grants.gov by clicking “Track My Application” on the website’s left navigation bar. Enter the tracking numbers for the applications you want to check on; you can enter up to five. To check on a larger number than this, log in to Grants.gov and use the Check Application Status link.

So start applying for your free grant today!!!