The Federal Government spends billions of dollars on grant programs to small businesses and home based entrepreneurs every year. There are also hundreds of millions of dollars of state grant aid available, and grants and contests hosted by the Small Business Development Corporation. While there are several sources for grant money for your small business, this article will focus on Federal Grants, as they are the mostly widely available. Once you have found a potentially interesting grant proposal (or a dozen), contact the agency and find out if your proposal or project proposal meets their funding requirements, and if they still have funds available for disbursement, or any other questions you might have. Assuming everything matches up, its time to fill out a Form 424, called the Application for Federal Assistance. This is the generalized grant application form for most Federal development grants; it is considered a baseline form. Some agencies may have other forms you will need to fill out as well. The CFDA has extensive help files on writing grant proposals and the proper forms and what needs to go into them to make them work. In addition to the CDFA site, you should also check out Grants. gov. This is another search engine of federal grant opportunities; while theres some overlap in grants in both databases, theres an awful lot thats in one that isnt in the other. There are also private directories that list federal grant opportunities; Matthew Lesko (mentioned above) is the largest public marketer of these directories.