This episode is a two-part series talking about the ins-and-outs of grants. We speak with the CEO and Founder of GrantReady, Adrian Spencer – a pioneer in grant space. In addition to developing various grant strategies, he has also secured over $500 million in grants and funding and has been a government advisor on grant-making.
In this first half, we talk about the opportunities for SME businesses to access more funding, growth and investment without relying on revenue to do so. Then, we drill into some of the grants that are available at the moment for SMEs. Adrian also shares with us the common pitfalls when it comes to Grant applications and shares some tips on best practices to avoid them, as well as two very handy platforms that can help you (or your clients) identify relevant grants as they are released.
Episode Highlights:
- The opportunity in grants for SMEs post-COVID
- Grants relating to rebates for new employees
- Best practice when applying for grants
- Common mistakes when applying for grants
Connect with Adrian Spencer:
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Adrian and the team at Grant Guru have been kind enough to extend a bonus offer to Talking Law listeners – 20% off all annual subscriptions to GrantGuru-Essentials. This platform is exactly what any small business owner will need to hone in on finding grants that match their business/industry throughout the year.
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GrantGuru provides the only comprehensive and up-to-date list of funding programs for businesses in Australia. It’s searchable, updated daily and easy to understand. Click here for Grant Guru’s Pro product for Accountants.
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Transcript below!
Note: This has been automatically transcribed so will be full of errors! We are not providing it to you as a word-perfect version of the podcast but just as an easy way to provide you with a different way to be able to scan for information that might be relevant to you.
Joanna:
Hi, it’s Joanna Oakey here. And welcome back to Talking Law, a podcast proudly brought to you by our commercial legal practice Aspect Legal. Now today we’ve got a really exciting show as we speak with the CEO and founder of GrantReady and Grant Guru, Adrian Spencer, who has more than 18 years of experience in the Grant Space, Adrian has prior need grant strategies and better access to funding and he has also secured more than $500 million in grants and funding, and was an adviser to the government on grant making, and who doesn’t love a discussion about free money. That’s what we’re talking about today, as we drill into this first part of our informative two part series, talking all about this area of grants. Now in this first half of the two part series, we talk about the opportunity for businesses to access more funding to support growth and investment. We then drill into what grants are available at the moment for SMEs across Australia. And Adrian then also shares with us the common pitfalls, when it comes to grant applications and tips on best practices to avoid them. This is such a valuable lesson for all Australian businesses and their advisors. So sit back and here we go with our discussion with Adrian.
Joanna:
Adrian, a just want to say a huge thank you for coming onto the show today.
Adrian:
Thanks. I really appreciate it. I always love to talk about grants and get the grants message out there.
Joanna:
Oh, do you know what I love this topic? I mean, what a fabulous topic. were we talking about the opportunity for businesses to access more funding for growth, for investment, without having to sell more to their clients? I mean, you know what a space, you must love being in this day in day out and you know, sharing the magic with your clients.
Adrian:
Yeah, it’s often overlooked. We think of ourselves as dream enablers. Because we really do get that privilege of coming in getting to understand what people are doing, seeing their passion, and helping their business go to the next level. And sometimes the funding can be the catalyst for them to break into a new market, get the growth they need, or just take a step towards where they’re headed.
Joanna:
Love it. Absolutely love it. Okay, well, look, let’s, let’s get started. Actually, before we get started, why don’t you tell us very quickly about the two different types of services that you have so that our audience can understand the perspective that you’re coming from, because I think these are great, great that the grant Guru is a fabulous application, but maybe just explain that first so that everyone’s got context. And then we’ll get into digging into what grants are around at the moment for our listeners.
Adrian:
Well we started as grant writers, so GrantReady was our initial business. It’s a consulting business, we’ve raised over $700 million for our clients through grant funding, which is quite extraordinary. There was a gap in the market, though, when we realized the challenge was not just writing grants, it was finding the right grants. So we built a product called Grant Guru, which is a one stop shop. comprehensive list of all of the funding programs exist in Australia, there’s over 2600 for business four and more than half a thousand for profits. total funding is about $100 billion. A grant Guru is a self use self serve tool, where people can go and find the grants, there’s about 30 new grants opening every week, and 30. Closing every week, people can just sign up to get email alerts that match the areas of interest that they’re working in. And that’s really the key starting point. Once people are finding the right grants, they can then choose which ones do they want to apply for. And then they can work on increasing their chances of success. It’s it’s not a guaranteed thing. Most grants are competitive. The current industry success rate about one in five. So we say to people, if you don’t get your first grant, don’t be put off. It’s like sales. And we say it’s like Kissing Frogs. You know, you just got to get out there and do it. And eventually you will get a grant and as you get grants, you get much better at doing them as well.
Joanna:
Fabulous. Okay, wonderful. Well, so now maybe give us a bit of an overview, what’s around for SMEs at the moment post COVID in grant world,
Adrian:
And I think that’s the key COVID has really put people’s radar up to grants And in the past, you know, look over the last 1015 20 years we’ve been working in the space. A lot of the grants were very industry specific. But now they’re becoming more generic. And because of COVID, people have had a bit of a taste of grants. And they’ve gone “Oh, that’s interesting, what can I get?” And in the past, I would have said there was never much for retail, and there was never much for services. And the COVID started to change that. So when we look at grants, we look at industry sectors. And at the moment, there’s a lot of emerging funding for manufacturing. There’s a lot of funding for agriculture. And there’s a lot of support for supply chain. So I think COVID highlighted that we’re very reliant on global supply chains. And when they’re problematic, we’ve got problems. The new federal government has announced they want to set up a $15 billion dollar fund to support manufacturing, there’s already one and a half billion that was announced and released by the last government, plus another 500 million that was budgeted. So things like the modern manufacturing initiative, we’re going to see a lot of that funding go out not just in the cities, but to the regions, to anyone that’s in manufacturing, I think it’s a really good time to be able to tap into funding, the growth center funding a lot of these international programs, we’re starting to notice the states are getting on board as well. So they’ve all just released their state budgets, Queensland’s got a real focus on manufacturing funding through the advanced Queensland umbrella of grants. And there’s been about 25 grant programs under that initiative. They’ve also got the made in Queensland, which is really for SME manufacturers. Victoria has focusing a lot on innovation. So they’ve just released the breakthrough Victoria Fund, which is a billion dollar investment fund. And they’ve got four different strains under that New South Wales, again, is jumping in, they want to support not just the cities, but the regional areas. The other thing trend that we’re noticing as well as support for export, pretty much all of the state as well as federal government have got export support initiatives. The leading program is the export market development grant, I was
Joanna:
Oh I was going to throw in a note about that, because you know, I know lots of businesses who who rave about that grant. So maybe talk very briefly about that grant.
Adrian:
In simple terms, export market development grant refunds 50% of your marketing expenses for taking products or services overseas, not New Zealand and not North Korea. But the program is great, it’s, it’s having a little bit of flux at the moment. So the program is just being reviewed and been tweaked. It went from being a retrospective to a prospective program. But at the moment, it’s looking like you’ll apply in advance, and you’ll probably receive your funding at the end of the year. It covers things like flights, overseas, overseas representatives, marketing consultants, it covers some of your legal costs, if you have to protect IP, around on trademarks, and that sort of thing overseas, which is really, really valuable and can be quite expensive. Also covers your marketing costs or advertising on Facebook or literature, going to trade shows and all that sort of thing as well. I think it’s a fantastic program, it’s been around for over four years, the only problem at the moment, there’s been a bit of a cap on the funding. So nobody has been getting the full amount that they’re entitled to. And I think that’s really important to be aware of that what you’re entitled to get. And what you actually get depends on how much money is in the bucket, because it just gets shared around. But program that you just absolutely have to know about. I think what people don’t know about is a lot of the state governments have some really good support programs, they’re not always cash. But I think if a state government is going to incur money on your behalf, provide market research set you up with contacts overseas. To me, a lot of that is put as cash. And so I really recommend that people get in touch with the state government and find out what support whether it’s trade missions, whether it’s grants or whether it’s services they provide, a lot of that is the best kept secret. So export manufacturing a big, we’re still noticing that governments are trying to help businesses get back to normal after COVID, especially if they’re in the services and retail industry. So we are finding that there is funding especially for tourism, and tourism grants. And, for example, you know, the wine industry has Selador funding. But there’s also a lot of other funding to attract people back into the regions and to events and that sort of thing. And I’m not trying to be vague, but with two and a half thousand grants for businesses, sometimes I forget the names, I have to jump into my own product to remember the names of all of these programs, and I get my email alerts every day. And I’ll often look at it and go wow, I didn’t know there’s a funding program for this or for that. A lot of it is based on industry or activity. And so what I say to people as well is there is there is pretty much a grant for everyone. Not necessarily right now. And that’s why We say to people, you need to track these grants, you need to get on our get on the mailing list or subscribe to services like ours, so that when those grants pop up, you know about it, and they will pop up, we say to people, you shouldn’t have to wait more than six or 12 months to find a grant program that you’ll be able to tap into. We’ve even done it ourselves, you know, we, we tap into the funding that’s out there. I think in the last three years, we’ve picked up eight grant programs for our own organizations. Sometimes that’s as small as $1,000, just to get some funding to implement an IT solution on our online shop, or we’ve picked up funding for to build online training courses. We’ve picked up funding to go and do research. It’s just amazing what’s out there.
Joanna:
Love it. Um, one of the one of the grants that I’ve heard about recently relates to the rebates for new employees, where you have new employees on the taking training programs can talk our listeners through a little bit of the detail of that, what is that program? who’s eligible? how does it work?
Adrian:
There’s actually a whole packet of them, and they existed federal and state levels. Generally, the wage subsidy programs often that we call that, or employment training or employment support programs. They have different criteria, but essentially, the crux of it is, they will require you to hire someone that fits into a certain category, and that category where they’ve either been unemployed, or they’re moving from part time to full time, or they’re receiving some training to skill up. So for example, we’ve used the digital the Victorian government’s Digital Skills Program. And the digital skills program requires us to put a person on for three months, who is skilling up and changing from one industry to a new industry, changing into digital jobs. We’ve hired a software developer, we’ve hired a marketing comms person. And those people, what they do is they provide you with a up to sort of 30% rebate for the three months, and then it’s up to essentially an internship for them. And then if you want to keep them on after that you can, that’s a state government program, I’ve found that one to be really good and really useful. at a federal level, the wage support programs are higher, you can get up to, he’s about $28,000. If you employ someone for 12 months, and they fit the right criteria, the challenges are sometimes you need to go to the training providers who are training those people up and placing them, that can be good and bad, that it can be good, because they’ve got the people ready to go and you know that you’ll get the funding. But if they’re not skilled or trained in the area you want, then often it’s better to approach the federal government through their skills, training programs, especially if you’ve got you know, a large member of staff 20,30,40,50, they might come out and do an assessment for you and say, We will connect you into these programs. So the other challenges in this space is these programs sort of get changed every three or four years. And so we expect with a new federal government, they’ll go back there really look at them a little essentially be the same programs, but they’ll have a different name. And I’ll have a few different criteria. I think it’s important just to be aware of them, when you’re aware of them, then you can jump on and get the information you need talk to people and go, am I eligible? Is this going to suit me and I think there’s a probably a pre qualifier, quick note of caution, we should say here is that grants aren’t a free bucket of money. And we see some people who put grants above everything. And they’ll say to us, tell me whatever I need to do to get the funding. And we’ll say no, that’s not how grant should work. Grant should support what you’re doing. Grants are designed to support an initiative or a project or an employment approach. So if there’s a fit, great, go for it. If there’s not a fit, don’t try too hard to put that square peg into a round hole, where it’s just going to waste your time and effort and money. And so we just say to people get that right. And that’s about don’t just fill in a form as soon as you see it, get yourself educated, find out what that program is going to do and make sure it’s going to help you and not hinder you.
Joanna:
Brilliant, just fabulous information here, Adrian, just such good information. And and I guess just, you know, before we round out here, maybe if you could just talk about some quick common pitfalls. So what do people do wrong in in applying for grants, although bear in mind, we are going to have another podcast soon talking about the top strategies for finding and securing grants. So we’ll talk about those in in another episode, but just today, you know, what are the things to be aware of? And of course, you’ve already pointed one out which is, you know, be careful not to make getting the grant the priority above running the business and making sensible decisions within the business.
Adrian:
Yeah, and just on that we see so many people that are so pleased to find a grant or an application for All might just fill in the form straightaway. And we say take a step back. Make sure you’ve got all your eligibility criteria correct programs such as the r&d tax incentive, which is a fabulous program, for companies doing scientific or engineering research, you need to be generally a PTI limited company, if your trust or other sorts of a sole trader, you’re not eligible. So we see people starting to apply for these programs and just wasting a monumental amount of time, because they’re not going to get over the first hurdle. So make sure you fit the eligibility criteria, make sure that your project fits with what the grant makers trying to achieve. And on that point, grants fund projects, they don’t fund businesses. So you have to have a very clearly defined project that you want supported. And you might need three or four or five grants to fund what you want to do across your business. So be very clearly able to articulate what’s the project that you want funding the old elevator pitch, if you can be very clear, and you can explain what it is, you’ll be in a good position to fill in the application form. And also be aware that grants come with strings attached, read the contract, the contract will invariably be provided on the website up front. And when people don’t read those contracts, before they start an application form, it can turn around and bite them in the butt. And we’ve had an organization come to us. And they said, they told us this story, they said we were offered a $5 million grant. At that point, we gave the contract to our in house legal team, they looked at it and said, Actually, we can’t accept this, because of the contractual terms. Now, they could have known that at the start, but they put in months of work months of waiting, this huge amount of effort, and they had to turn down the $5 million. Because they just didn’t worry to see what the terms were devastating.
Joanna:
Well, just um, I mean, you know, we’re always harping on about prevention is better than the cure. He’s, you know, you know, getting ahead and understanding the terms before you waste all these time in the application. You know, seems obvious, but But it’s so I can, you know, I can say it’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of this some free money coming in that you, you maybe forget to dot the i’s and cross the T’s right from the very beginning. Really, really good advice. Adrian, look, I just want to say a huge thank you for coming onto the show. We have more podcasts coming up with you, where we’re going to talk more about tips and traps in creating your your grant strategy and finding and securing grants. But until then, Adrian, how is it that our listeners can find out more about grants? How can they interact with your products and and get on that newsletter? How good does that sound?
Adrian:
Yeah, look, if people want to get some assistance with grant writing, especially around R&D, or NVG, they can come to a grant really services. But what we recommend people do is they go to our grantguru.com.au and that’s really a self help where we give them the knowledge, the tools and the information that they need. So they can then decide which grants they want to apply for and not miss out on one as well.
Joanna:
Absolutely Fabulous. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and sharing such useful information with me and our listeners.
Adrian:
Thanks Jo, really lovely speaking with you today. Appreciate it.
Joanna:
Well, that’s it for this episode of talking law with our guest Grant garoun Grant readies Adrian Spencer. Now, this was the first half of a wonderful two part series all about grants. So tune into our next episode, the second half, which will be all about the top strategies for finding and securing grants. Now just as a reminder, as Adrian referred to in our discussion today, the devil is in the detail. So you have to ensure that you have a great legal team on your side who are ready to read the contract before you apply for funding who can make sense of the complex details you come across. We also assist with IP protection and many other elements of ensuring that you have the correct legal approach when you’re considering getting funding on board. If you’d like to talk to our Legal Eagles, head over to our show notes to find out how to book a free call to discuss this and in our show notes as well. You can also find links about how to find Adrian, Grant guru and GrantReady so as part of this podcast episode with Grant guru Adrian and his team have been kind enough to extend a bonus offer to our listeners. In the show notes there’s a discounted offer to Grant Guru which lasts for as long as you have your services. This tool is exactly what any small business owner will need to really hone in on finding grants throughout the year you’ll just need to apply the coupon code aspectlegal during checkout to take advantage of this offer. Now we’ve also included a link to grant gurus pro product for accountants consult tints and other business advisors knowing they’re going to be some of you who are interested in offering a grant search service to your clients a great way to extend the value of what you’re offering. You want to book a demo to see the power of this inaction for your clients. And there’s a link to do this in our show notes. And of course, if you’d like more information about this topic, head over to our website at talkinglaw.com.au where you’ll be able to download a transcript of this podcast episode if you’d like to read any more detail well that’s it I hope you enjoyed what you heard today. You’ve been listening to Joanna Oakey and talking law a podcast proudly brought to you by our commercial legal practice Aspect Legal See you next time.
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