Up to $30,000 in Grants for Good Business Startups

• Author: Stephanie Willms
• Posted: 2024-09-03

Vermont is generally a very prosperous state, but it was really hit hard by COVID, like every other state. It lost hundreds of different businesses, and many have been unable to open up again. This has left a huge hole in the economy of the state, especially in towns like Woodstock. With everything going so digital now, and huge corporations moving in, there isn't much of a small business presence in Woodstock at all. This is why the town is offering grants up to $30,000 for entrepreneurs who have a great idea for a business but don't have the capital necessary to get up and running. The grants are coming from a private organization called Start Up Woodstock, with some help from the government.

Of course, like all grants programs, there are rules here. First and foremost, you have to be based in Woodstock, or your business will have to be based in Woodstock. It will have to be an actual brick and mortar business that caters to the community in some way; it cannot just be some online venture. It also needs to be a new idea. For instance, they're not just going to hand grant money over to someone whose idea is to open another restaurant or some bowling alley. The company is looking for some really good ideas here and they want people who are willing to take initiative with a new and exciting approach.

If anyone ends up receiving a grant, they will be rewarded $20,000 from private donations that were collected by Start Up Woodstock, and another $10,000 from the Woodstock Economic Development Commission. So this is a private-public partnership of sorts, but the private end is bearing most of the weight. Another stipulation is that applicants will be judged by an entire panel of judges, not just one person or one government official. So, basically, you're entering a contest here that only the best ideas will win.

 

Grants are Running Low for Businesses

You may have noticed over this past year that grants have pretty much dried up from the government. Around the time of COVID and a little after, billions in grants were being handed out for restaurants, salons, carpentry businesses, and so much more. These days, you can run a Google search and find few if any new grants in cities and states.

What happened to all of the money? For starters, the federal government wrapped up so many trillions of dollars in the infrastructure bill and in the Inflation Reduction Act, that the fact is there just isn't any money for grants. Instead of giving money directly to the people, the government decided that giving money directly to large corporations would somehow be more effective.

This is the same government that will claim Ronald Reagan's "trickle down" economics were the worst thing to ever happen to America, yet they're literally putting America trillions of dollars into debt by funding the same sort of scheme. At least when Reagan did it, he had a mind on small businesses and the average American, not the world's largest corporations.

Another reason Americans aren't seeing any new grants pop up for them is that the government is spending more in foreign aid now than at any other point in history. More money is being sent to nations like Ukraine today than was being used to fund the military for wars. There just isn't any money, and since America is right up against primary season for Congress, the government is not going to tap the Fed to print more money for average Americans, as they know that the injection of new money is what causes inflation.

The last thing the government wants going into the mid-term elections is for inflation to spike another 3%. They know they would all lose their jobs. So they're not going to offer any sort of grants.

At a state level, independent states are also very unlikely to offer grant programs to their citizens if they're not getting any federal backing. Most of the grants that were coming from states during COVID were still being paid for with CARES Act money from the federal government.



There aren't many new grants popping up to help individuals open small businesses, and that's why grants like the Start Up Woodstock initiative are so important now. They've become so rare that even in a relatively small town, they will likely be dealing with thousands of applicants.