Grant Writing Is a Project Management Problem
Every year, startups and small businesses leave serious money on the table because they assume government grants are too complicated to bother with. The applications are long, the requirements are specific, and the portals are, frankly, a pain to navigate. So the grant sits on the to-do list, never quite rising to the top.
Here's the reframe that changes things: grant writing is not primarily a writing problem. It's a project management problem. Submitting a competitive grant requires understanding the requirements, tracking the deadlines, gathering the right documentation, and knowing what each agency actually wants to see. That's where most applicants get stuck, and that's exactly the kind of work I do.
What Makes Government Grants Hard
It's not that the requirements are unreasonable. It's that they're buried. Each program has its own portal, eligibility criteria, formatting expectations, and timeline. Miss a requirement, and your application is disqualified before anyone reads a word of it. Submit something that doesn't map clearly to the agency's priorities, and you lose on merit.
The programs I work with most often include SBIR and STTR grants in the US, NRC IRAP in Canada, and NSERC funding programs. Each of these is a technical grant designed for businesses doing real innovation. They're also each a system you have to learn before you can win.
Navigating the System
SBIR and STTR grants are federal funding programs administered across multiple US agencies, each with its own solicitations and evaluation criteria. Knowing which agency is a fit for your work, which solicitation to apply to, and how to frame your technical narrative for that specific reviewer takes time to figure out. The budget requirements alone can trip people up.
None of this is unknowable. But learning it from scratch while running a business is the part that doesn't happen.
Where I Come In
My job is to make the application a project, not a mystery. That means reading the requirements carefully and mapping them to what you actually do. It means identifying what documentation you'll need and building a timeline that accounts for the parts that take longer than expected. It means keeping the whole thing moving so you don't get to the deadline and realize you're missing something.
I also help with writing, but within the requirements. A technically strong application that doesn't answer the right questions in the right order doesn't score well. The structure matters as much as the content.
Grant Applications Are Projects
Founders who apply for government grants consistently say the same thing afterward: it wasn't as hard as they thought it would be, but they couldn't have done it without help. That help is usually from a person who has done it before and knows where the friction is.
If you have a project that could qualify for government funding and you've been putting off the application because it feels like too much to figure out, that's exactly the kind of stuck I can help with.
If this sounds like your situation, I'd be happy to take a look.