In this age of recession small business grants are required and needed more than ever.

The U.S. federal, state and city financial institutions are offering very attempting and affordable grants to non profit organizations and small businesses. But, before you apply for this kind of program for your small business financing, you might need some extra information in order to spare some time and not get disappointed later on.

A federal grant is an award of financial assistance from a federal agency to a recipient to carry out a public purpose of support or stimulation authorized by a law of the United States. That is not referred to the federal assistance or loans to individuals.

Keep in mind that grants from the federal government are mostly available to non-commercial organizations, non-profits organizations and educational institutions (e.g. education, medicine, scientific research…). Some of the federal grants are available for you but not directly- there are award grants that federal government provide to state and local governments in order to help them with economic development, and these are the grants you might be able to take advantage of in financing your small business.

State grants provide grants for expanding child care centers, developing marketing campaign for tourism or creating energy efficient technology. Often, these grants are not free money and need to be combined with loans or other financial sources.

Even though there are no direct grants for small business available from the federal government, many state development agencies offer direct small business grants and other types of small business assistance designed to help small companies owners to start and expand their business.

The federal government programs called small business grants don’t exist, but that doesn’t mean you should be discouraged. However U.S. Government agencies do award hundreds of millions dollars in grants for specific services, research and programs such as housing, transportation, energy, education etc. There are also some federal grants which target businesses owned and performed by women or minorities.

Grants.gov is official government website (and organization), where you can find all the information about this and see (and fill in) the application form. It was established as a governmental resource named the E-Grants Initiative, part of the President’s 2002 Fiscal Year Management Agenda to improve government services to the public.

They offer over 1,000 grant programs and provide access to approximately $500 billion in annual awards. More than 1,000 grant programs are offered by the 26 federal grant-making agencies, and these programs fall into 21 categories (agriculture, arts, business and commerce, community development, health, education, regional development etc), few of them are available to individuals and none of them are available for personal financial assistance.

Still, lately grants.gov programs had much success helping individuals. They have surpassed 300,000 submissions for fiscal year 2009. Submissions have grown by nearly 50 percent over fiscal year 2008. In fiscal year 2008 there were a total of 202,366 application submissions for the entire fiscal year. Much of the growth experienced this year may be attributed to the Recovery Act, which resulted in increased overall website traffic and application submissions.

Due to the rapid influx of traffic and subsequent strain placed on the system, many challenges were presented this year. Grants.gov however have maintained the single electronic entry-point for accessing grants from all 26 federal grant-making agencies, providing a unified and streamlined process for finding and applying for all federal grant opportunities.

For more info visit www.grants.gov