Business Grants

fredjclaus

My wife and I are looking for Grant money to open a members Art Gallery in our home town. Does anyone have experience with applying for grants?

Art Scott

a lot of Universities have something like Wichita State University's Center for Community Support and Research ...When I worked for WSU they were very small and sort of just begining....but they held seminars on grant writing and such for the small business owner.......so maybe the University's in your area might have something....or does your town have a small business developement center ....or mabe your Chamber of Commerce has something also.....

Good Luck

fredjclaus

thanks again Art. I have been working with SCORE and the SBA but they are all about "loans". I kept saying grant and he kept saying LOAN. I do have an SBDC in my local community college. Maybe I'll take a drive over there and see what they have to say. Thanks I never thought to look there.

Art Scott

Under normal circumstances I probably would never have thought to look at the U's either,,,,,,but since they have tons of seminars and I used to run the sound and lighting for them I remembered that they existed........

Yeah the SBA only wants to handle loans and if you're really small you can't get as good a loan as say a company that employees 1500-3000 people.......I have even read of BOEING and CESSNA getting SBA loans and practically no interest.......it suckscry

GOOD LUCK!!


EDIT:::: Run a search for your states "ARTS COUNCIL"...........WSU's head of the Dance Dept (Nick Johnson) has gotten GRANTS from our states arts council for video recorders and several overseas trips for the ALITHEA MIME THEATER and for THE WICHITA CONTEMPOARY DANCE COMPANY .....all off shoots of his dance dept at the U.

Sam

Fred,

I am curious, what is your idea of a members art gallery?

What are you trying to accomplish?

Sam

fredjclaus

Well, let me see if I can explain it. The way it was convayed to me is like this;

The artists who want to show their work and possibly sell their work in my gallery would pay me a yearly membership fee. I could make it a fee such as $350.00 and they have the ability to send as many pieces through the gallery as they want. They would then pay me a flat commission of say 25% for each piece that sells. I was also advised to have multiple levels of membership and the higher the level the lower the commission fee.

Art Scott

We had one of those here and the owner even had large format printers and a rental studio.....I do not know what his fees were exactly as when I talked to him his prices had not been set in stone but he was figuring about $150 / mo .......he lasted less than 6 months........

Might want to check around and see if there are any successful galleries like that around......

Ofcourse if you can get a grant to run it.....then maybe the membership costs could be less as well as the commissions............SHOOT FOR A HUUUUUUUGE GRANT to operate from..............

fredjclaus

I'm doing research right now, so thanks for that information. It's good to know what other galleries are doing. We too were going to have studio rental space. In addition I was going to have special showings from time to time, as well as monthly and weekly art classes. No large format printers unless I have a need. I don't think there would be a need for that around here though since we have a few commercial printers in the area that I can get special pricing with.

fredjclaus

Art Scott wrote:

SHOOT FOR A HUUUUUUUGE GRANT to operate from..............

I would love one HUGE grant, or a bunch of smaller ones, but I'm trying to locate the right now. Seems most of the ones I found so far are strictly for the education side of the business.

I'm also thinking about having a "Membership" for my customers. They could help support the gallery on a yearly basis with a membership that will get them perks. While there is no admission fee to the gallery, they would get say 10% off all their purchases, advance knowlege of all classes, and other such perks I'm still working on.

Art Scott

fredjclaus wrote:

I'm doing research right now, so thanks for that information. It's good to know what other galleries are doing. We too were going to have studio rental space. In addition I was going to have special showings from time to time, as well as monthly and weekly art classes. No large format printers unless I have a need. I don't think there would be a need for that around here though since we have a few commercial printers in the area that I can get special pricing with.

I think that may have been this particular persons downfall....there is a printer less than a block away and a true PRO printer less than a mile and their prices were very comparable to his.....he needed to be 25% cheaper at least for his printers to bring in business. Plus he charged per hour for the use of the computers to print from........

fredjclaus

It also sounded like he was trying to dip his hands in too many pots. I wasn't thinking about any of that sort of thing in my gallery. I would be just showing selling and educating the public on art. Now if someone needed to rent studio space and they wanted to bring computers and printers into the gallery for their own use, that would be fine, but I'm not going to supply them. I have a friend who's a graphic designer and she said the large format printer would cost her at least 15,000.00. I wouldn't want to get into that big of an expense.

Sam

All righty now..............................

DISCLAIMER: I have some comments to make and want everyone to know this is not a personal attack on any one here, but a comment on today's society.

Now why would anyone think it's a fair idea for taxpayers or society in general to cough up money so someone else can start a business risk free?

If one wishes to start a business, then do it with your own money. If you don't have the money find investors, if your not willing to be at risk with your own money why should others provide free money?

If you can find a patron or business that wants to fund you, great but public monies for private business?

If it were a project that benefited some group in need then I could see a discussion of using public monies for this.

You want free money, someone else wants free money. hell I'll take some of that free money. Short term we are all good, but wait, sooner or later there ain't no more free money and the folks that gave you the free money are broke..................hold on that be us!

Sam

kres

Well Sam, let me say first that I agree with you on principle... however there is an overriding principle in play here, the "Can't Change Reality Principle."

There's a TON of free money out there - better or worse. It makes lots of things go round and round.

If "we" can give crooked bankers billions of bucks to continue to be crooked bankers, and if we can give lousy car companies billions of bucks to continue pumping out lousy cars, and if we can give farmers (collectively) billions of bucks to dump milk and use their crops as next years fertilizer, then why would a person flinch at giving a few thousand dollars away to start a biz that if it succeeds will generate more then that much tax revenue over its lifetime?

Small biz makes the economy go round - so I, with my meager readings in economics, would of thought that pumping billions in small biz grants (Not loans) would of been a lot smarter then the last few billion sunk into Chrysler. It coulda equated to tens of thousands of start ups. (A Billion is a massively big number) Funny, my congressman never read my letter on that - he lost it on the way to have lunch with the PPA lobbyist I employ with my membership fee. This concept is also part of the overriding principle mentioned above.

Pork, lobbys, government "bennies" and other somewhat distasteful bribes to the voter/tax payer make the current system go round. If that money is out there and YOUR not getting it, then the next guy (your competitor) is. While you might win, and therefore win on principle - you also might "lose" and lose your shirt in the process - thus risking everything that you had unnecessarily.

Don't get me wrong - IF we were in a forum to talk about the morals/politics of the issue, I'd be on your side. Roads, Defense, and not much else in will be all the Gov does when I rule the world. However, this is were we're at, and this is a tool that is out there to be used.

Until, well, everything about our capitalistic representative democracy changes - reality says that if you can find that sudo-free money and use it, you should. It makes good biz sense - even if you feel like taking a shower later.

(Your same disclaimer about this not being an attack applies to my response as well, btw; In essence I'm being a hypocrite - but one that hopes to be successful using every "fair," & legal tool that I can find.)

So, with that in mind, and my bar of soap handy ... fredjclaus, did you ever find any grant that fit your need? Your Gallery idea sounds pretty good to me.

fredjclaus

I have not pushed the issue of grants to far as of right now. Currently I'm working on getting the non-profit status so that I can branch out in my search.