Small Business Grants in Wisconsin

This one is open to businesses as well as towns. The Brownfields grant pays to clean up contamination on an abandoned, idle or run down industrial or commercial site. Councils, villages, towns, counties, individuals, Tribal bodies and companies can all apply. You need finished Phase I and Phase II environmental reports, and they have to be less than five years old when you apply. There is one more gate. Whoever caused the mess must be unknown, impossible to find or unable to pay for the clean up.

These pay for the writing, not the research. The Center for Technology Commercialization runs them for WEDC, and they help a small business build the business plan and the proposal it needs to chase a federal SBIR or STTR grant. It is a small amount of money aimed at a much larger one, so treat it as the step before Phase I rather than funding in its own right.

A Wisconsin business can apply for this one directly, if it is a co-op or on its way to being one. WEDC pays up to $50,000 for the professional help you need before a big investment. That covers business planning, a feasibility study, legal work or accounting. It will not pay salaries or supplies. You must be an existing Wisconsin co-op, a business converting to one, or a group working toward legal co-op status. Your application needs a written quote from the consultant, on their letterhead, and no relative of yours can do the work. You pay first and claim it back. WEDC has set aside $200,000 a year for two years.

This pays a town, not a business. CDI funds downtown building and street projects that lift jobs and property values, and the buildings it improves may be the ones you trade from. A city, county or Tribal body applies, or a private developer the town names, for up to $250,000. The catch is the match. The applicant puts in three dollars for every one it gets. That drops to one for one in rural or hard pressed places, Opportunity Zones and WEDC Main Street districts.

This seeds a fund, and the fund is what you pitch. Capital Catalyst pays organisations and communities to set up investment programmes for startups and young companies, and they then back local firms. WEDC puts in $250,000 to $2 million and the recipient matches it dollar for dollar with private money. Most of the funding now comes from the federal State Small Business Credit Initiative rather than the state itself.

WEDC funds nonprofit organisations that provide financing, training or technical assistance to minority, women, LGBT and veteran owned businesses. A business gets help from a partner, not a cheque from WEDC. The programme page publishes no award figure, no window and no application.

This is a slice of the CDI grant and it pays a community, not a firm. Vibrant Spaces funds a public gathering place meant to bring people onto the street, which is worth something to any shop or cafe nearby. Applicants match the grant dollar for dollar. That match drops to 25 percent for hard pressed communities and for any town under 5,000 people. WEDC caps the programme at 15 grants in FY27.