A Scathing Report on Grant Writer’s Institute

Ok, this is not something I want to do. I like to believe in the good intentions of people. And I rarely feel the need to write an article solely for the purpose of exposing a business that acts in a way that I can only consider to be highly unethical.

Grant Writer’s Institute, which goes under several other names as well, has been promoting our grant to the people whom they are charging hundreds of dollars for something that is quite a bit less than they are encouraging people to believe that it is. They provide an information packet that supposedly contains information on grants that business owners can get to fund business expansion or startup. They have added us to their list, and we are being contacted regularly now by people who have been taken by this company. We have been contacted directly by three people, and have had applications submitted by others. The three people we were contacted by all reported how useless the information was that they were given, and that it was misleading and incomplete about the reality of actually GETTING a grant.

They operate on the fine edge of legality. They word their information carefully, so the eager applicant will THINK they are getting something they are not. They are not picky about the “grants” they recommend – some are actually contests, not grants (and there is a huge difference). Some require fees to apply. Ours is not money, and they represent it as such – it is clear they have never even read our site beyond the word “grant”.

We received an application, which some guy apparently paid them to prepare.

• Now, in the first place, our application can be prepared by ANY qualified candidate – if you can’t prepare your own grant application for our program, you are not qualified to operate a business!
• In the second place, the job this company did on preparing it was appalling.

It was obviously prepared by someone who did not speak English natively. To their credit, they did conceal it well, but there were inconsistent phrases which gave it away. This is something a professional company would have paid more attention to.

They did NOTHING to help this person to actually appear qualified. It was patently obvious that they just wrote down whatever he said – even the things that were redundant, and a bit rambling. They did not help him actually present his information in a way that would help him qualify for the grant. The information presented is in fact completely unsuitable, because there is nothing in it which even outlines a viable business concept. It is completely unoriginal, and the business, as outlined, would have no chance of succeeding.

This company is NOT a professional grant writing company! They lack the most basic skills in presenting grant application information in a way that will help an applicant actually GET an award. They take money while representing themselves as such, but the kind of work they did on this grant application suggests that they are not concerned about whether you actually get the grant. They do not appear to be concerned about learning what the requirements of the grant are – no one from their company has so much as ASKED us for any of the judging criteria (and a good grant writer would do that), and they clearly did NOT read the available information about our grant requirements, or they would have done a better job.

A real grant writer looks at many factors – the grant requirements, the likely judging criteria, the competition level for the grant, and the best way to present the information given so that it meets those requirements. They will recommend wording things in a way that presents them in their best light. They will outline the value and feasibility of a proposed project, and they will detail the greater good of the project.

There was no effort whatever in this application toward actually helping this person GET the grant. The job they did could have been done better by a high school student.

The information I am presenting here is documented, and can be legally proven in a court of law. I am not committing libel – I can prove what I say. We have the applications, we have the witnesses.

• Avoid this company, and all of their affiliations.
• Do not EVER pay more than the cost of an average priced book for ANY kind of grant listings. And be careful even with those!
• If you can afford to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for grant information, you can afford to bootstrap a business. It does not take much to do so, as long as you are willing to work and be creative.

I am sorry to have to write this. I’m sick of having to explain to people the reality of grants – and seeing a company like this just makes me ill. It will eventually catch up with them – you can’t do this much harm over and over without it eventually coming back at you.

Right now I’m torn – I can seek legal help in making these people stop using our grant in their listings. But if we do that, we lose the ability to build a potential case against them. We also lose our ability to advise the people they are harming on what possible redress they might seek. So I haven’t yet decided exactly what to do, other than publishing what I know, and sounding warnings far and near.

If any legal entity or reporter wishes to pursue this, we will cooperate fully, but we will not release applications, or contact names without permission of the applicants, or a court order, pursuant to our privacy terms.