The Small Business Grants Study

205 of the 398 published programmes (51.5 percent) are grants a business can apply for and keep. The other 172 are something else. Loans, tax credits, equity deals, advisory services, or money that only a city, a university or a nonprofit can apply for.

Then there is the second cut. Of the 205 grants, 72 are expired, paused or point at a dead link. Another 41 we could not confirm either way. That leaves 92 programmes that are both a grant and confirmed open.

So out of 398 entries, 92 are a live grant a business can actually apply for. That is our own data, audited against ourselves.

Every published programme, grouped by what kind of money it is. We did not audit anyone else''s list. We audited ours, because it is the one we can prove.

The status split across the 205 programmes that are grants. Dead means expired, paused, or the application link no longer resolves. Unconfirmed means we could not establish either way at the last check, and we count those separately rather than assuming they are open.

Our rule is one question. Can a small business apply for this and receive money it does not pay back? If yes it is a grant. If the money is repaid it is a loan, including loan guarantees. If the programme takes a stake it is an equity investment. If it reduces a tax bill rather than paying money out it is a tax credit. If it buys advice, training or consulting rather than handing over funds it is technical assistance.

The last category surprises people. A programme is not business facing when the applicant is a city, a county, a tribe, a university, a nonprofit or an economic development body, even where a small business benefits in the end. The test is who signs the form, not who benefits.

Two judgement calls are worth stating plainly because they move the number. A forgivable loan counts as a grant only where forgiveness is automatic on conditions the applicant controls. If forgiveness is discretionary or decided later, we call it a loan. Calling a loan a grant is the error that makes a founder take on debt they did not expect, so we take the safer side. A matching grant is still a grant. The applicant contributes their own money, but the awarded part is not repaid.

Some programmes do not fit any rule. We leave those unclassified rather than guess, and we count them in the total rather than dropping them. Dropping them would flatter the percentage. There are 21 of them, and they fall into three groups. Programmes that bundle a loan, an equity fund and an advisory service into one listing, where no single label is honest. Programmes whose own page has gone and cannot be read. And programmes where the source contradicts itself, naming businesses as eligible in one place and barring them in another.

Anyone checking this study against our own state pages will find a bigger open number there, and the difference is deliberate. A state page counts a programme as open unless we know it is closed. This study is stricter. It separates the ones we have confirmed open from the ones we simply could not confirm, and only counts the confirmed ones in the headline. Both numbers come from the same predicate in the same code, so they cannot drift apart. The gap between them is the size of what we do not know.

You can check any state yourself. The state grant pages list every programme we hold for that state with its own status, and our grants guide covers how to apply for the ones that are open.

Every figure on this page is computed from the live table each time the page loads, so it moves when the data moves. Nothing is typed in by hand. A verifier rechecks programme status continuously and the classification improves as programmes are re read, which means the numbers here have moved before and will move again.

Nothing on this page is a recommendation and nothing here earns us a commission. There are no partner links on it by design.