Who doesn’t want a grant? It is so valuable for businesses to know what funding options are available - and this is an open opportunity for you as an advisor to step up and support your clients.
The most common reasons that business owners give when we ask why they have not accessed grants are:
- I don’t know where to begin
- There’s nothing available to my business
- I don’t have time to go looking for them
Our partner Swoop’s Grant Finder tool currently shows more than 450 open grants, you can utilise this to filter what is relevant to your clients by their sector and location. This is an opportunity for advisors to step up and provide value to business owners.
Discovery
Being proactive about what funding is available to your clients is a great way of building a stronger relationship with them, which can help with retention and referrals. Offering funding advice, particularly around grants, is a big USP for an advisor and when clients are deciding who to work with, it could be a deciding factor.
Grant applications
Once you’ve located a grant your client can apply for, you can help them with their application form. Often time is of the essence, and it is important to start the application process as soon as possible, as some grants are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.
If you are working with anyone who has a highly innovative project coming up this process is highly competitive and will require a lot of work from the client. Our partner Swoop works with a panel of grant writing specialists with expertise in different industries who can help write the entire application, or they may offer a review service, to make sure nothing vital is missing.
Additional Funding
An important thing to take into consideration is that often grants are paid retrospectively, so your client has to carry out the work before they invoice the grant provider. It is also often the case that grant funding may need to be ‘matched’ by funding from another source.
In cases where your client faces a shortage of the initial capital necessary to initiate work covered by a grant, they can look at additional funding. This is another way you can add value as an advisor.
Such products include:
- Grant advance funding, which provides a percentage of the value of the grant upfront to the client to get started on their project.
- VAT finance can smooth out the peaks and troughs of VAT allowing your client to keep hold of capital for longer periods.
- Asset finance can boost your client’s spending power if the purchase of new equipment is part of their plan.
- Invoice finance to support the cash flow of the business throughout the project.
Conclusion:
Business grants give advisors a unique opportunity to assist clients in business growth, strengthen client relationships, and earn commissions on financial products required to complete grant-funded projects. In a landscape where accountants and advisors face increasing pressure to demonstrate their value to clients, helping clients navigate the grant process is a powerful way to answer the question, "What do I get from this relationship?"
Learn more about accessing Grants for your clients with Swoop here.