Navigating the Grant Maze for Small Businesses with Grant Writer Joel Dulin

Ready to fuel your next big idea? In this episode, we’re sitting down with Joel Dulin, founder of Jozana Grant Services, to break down how you can tap into grant funding to supercharge your business. Joel’s been where you are — juggling everything from marketing to operations — and he knows firsthand what it takes to turn ambition into action.

We’ll dig into the grant process, giving you clear, actionable steps on how to find the right opportunities, prepare a strong application, and build relationships that open doors. Joel shares what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to getting the funding you need to bring your vision to life.

This episode isn’t just about learning the ropes of grant writing; it’s about empowering you to take control of your business journey. Whether you’re just starting out or leveling up, you’ll walk away with the knowledge and confidence to make moves. Join us and learn how to secure the resources that can help you — and your community — thrive.

Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Sprocket Podcast! If you’re ready to dive into the world of startups and innovation, visit us online at Sprocket WKY to learn more about our mission and how we support entrepreneurs like you.

Ready to check out the space? Book a tour with Tiffany, our Community Coordinator!

Got a business idea? Apply for a mentorship session with one of our experienced mentors!

Stay connected and join our growing community on Instagram for the latest updates, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes looks at what’s happening at Sprocket.

Let’s turn your ideas into reality—together!

Sprocket is proud to be supported by Team Kentucky, the Commonwealth's Cabinet for Economic Development. Learn more about their initiatives and resources at ced.ky.gov.

Transcript

0:47

Well, Joel, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to join us and speak some life and wisdom into our participants today. So we wanted to interview you because we know you have a wealth of knowledge and we would love to help have your help for budding entrepreneurs who are considering business grant opportunities, and how they might go about finding grants. So, before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and your how you got into the sector of grant writing. Sure, well, before I was, I jumped into the grant world. I headed up the marketing efforts for machinery manufacturer up in Indianapolis. When I started, there is a real small business. Less than 20 people got to have my hands on everything going on there from business development to jump on the forklift and helping out on the on the factory floor. So, that gave me a great base for starting my own business. Launched Jozana Grant Services last year. I've always wanted to start and run my own business. Always had the, the, the entrepreneurial itch and, you know, my background before even, even doing marketing was in editing and, and writing. So this gave me, grant writing in this space gave me a great opportunity to combine the knowledge that I had learned working for the manufacturer and my love for, for writing. What is it about grant writing that you particularly are passionate about? What I wanted to accomplish when I started, Josanna was. Primarily I wanted to help people and being able to provide grants or help help people apply for receive grant funding. It facilitates the good that they're accomplishing you know, whether it's a, it's a nonprofit and they're helping people or helping the environment. I get to partake in what they're doing. You know, if it's a company. And they're passionate about, about their, their business and they're helping people, you know, I get to, I get to take part in that. And that's really exciting. So when should a business consider looking at a grant? What are some good projects or initiatives that make it more likely for them to receive grant funding? Sure, well, for businesses, they have to keep mind there. There's not as many grants available as there are for non nonprofits. With that being said, there's still there is grant money available. It's, it's just going to be a little more tailored to the economic side of things. So, some of the things they have to consider you know, You know, versus the end impact of what they're what they're doing. You know, is there a very clear social tie in? You know, what's their environmental impact? Are they doing something with cutting edge technology and research? You know, are they building a business in a rural or economically depressed area? So that's one thing they have to consider partnerships or another that's going to open up a lot of grant funding opportunities, depending on who they're working with. They should also, you know, consider, are they really ready to even be looking for grants? You know, do they have a project defined? Do they know the location, the general, having a general idea of cost? Do they have a timeline? And You know, how quickly can they get the specifics once they actually go to apply for a grant? I mean, they'll want exact costs, quotes, contracts in place, milestones. So it sounds like that process is also a good, like, reflection process for the business owner, too. It helps you reflect on what good are you out to do in the world. So it helps us refine our mission statements and understand our vision. And then it sounds like, You also have to know how you're going to take action so that you can apply for these grants and tell them here's exactly my plan, how I'm going to make change in the world. It sounds like it's a beneficial I guess business therapy process as well. It is you have to know your, your business well and you have to have your, your ducks in a row when you're applying for for grants. What are the typical types of grants that are available for businesses? How do they differ in terms of eligibility and requirements? Yeah, there's all sorts of grants available for for businesses. You know, just some general categories. You know, there are research grants. For, for those in the technology space, or even some you know, if you're working with an association or industry co op or a trade association, you know, they, they sometimes give out grants for research or marketing efforts that will lift lift the tide of that whole industry or market. How do you even approach researching and finding the right grants? You said that there's really not a whole lot for small businesses. So how do you go about tracking the right ones down? Sure. You know, when, when you're looking for, for grants, I mean, the first thing To consider is, you know, what, what is you want to do? You know, you can get into trouble when you start looking for grants 1st and then try and develop a program or a project around that because for, especially for businesses, because you're never going to fund your entire project with grant with grant money in the for profit world. That's just, that's just, you know, Not what you're not what grants are going to going to accomplish. So you really got again, you got to have that clear vision. You got to have that project defined beforehand, you know, and then you got to think through, you know, like I said, what's what's the outcome? What's the benefit? Who benefits the budget location? The timeline once you have All that in place, you know, and you have a good picture of what it is you're doing and going to accomplish. Then you can start looking for those grants and you can find them and all sorts of places, you know, Google you know, it's, it's such a powerful search tool. You can find a whole bunch of grants there. There are grant databases like grant watch dot com. It's pretty, pretty cheap. There's some others as well. Grants. gov. It's going to give you an idea of federal grants, you know, and then you can look up on your state websites or individual associations. No, there's just this late legwork that that goes into it. You can find out about grants that you might have might be applicable to you as a grant, you know, and then I always encourage people to go to. Eyes go to economic development corporations, go to your local chamber of commerce. You know, it's these relationships that you form. You're going to learn about different opportunities. That might not even be on online. so with with qualifying, I mean, that's going to be spelled out in the specific or the you know, it's like the instructions that the funder put puts out when they start accepting grant applications, you know, and that's going to explain what the specific qualifications are. And it's the main 1, you know, about 4 profits are going to have to look at is whether it's just for nonprofits or whether it's for a government entity. You know, that that that's going to tell them right right there. Whether it's something that's worth pursuing or not you know, you can go into looking at. You know, a funders geography, you know, they may say, oh, we give grants to anywhere in the country, but you look up their history and they're only giving grants out in California, you know, okay, it's not worth. You know, sending them in an application, you know, look at the award amounts, the award history. Have they even given stuff out in recent years? But really, I mean, you just, you need to be honest with whether your project fits what they're looking for. It's it's too easy to convince yourself that. Okay. I can make my project sound like it's what they want. You know, just to say you can save yourself a lot of trouble just by being really honest reading the instructions and going off of what they explicitly say, what is the behind the scenes look like of the grant writing or the grant application process? The behind behind the scenes is is a lot of paperwork and project management. So, you know, the general process of what it looks like and applying for a grant sometimes funders still want a letter of intent. So it's going to be like an introduction, you know, giving a, a real kind of high level overview of your project. You know, maybe maybe a budget, they're almost never going to hold you to to that number at that point, but it just gives them an idea of who you are, what you're doing. And it gives them that initial filter to, you know, maybe weed out some of the less strong applications. Other times they don't require that. I still, I encourage people to reach out to the funder and get their blessing before you apply. And that way, you know, they'll be looking for your application. You know, after after that, you know, you've kind of had, you've caught, you've meet the qualifications, you know, you look deeply into that eligibility, you know, you read the instructions very, very carefully to make sure you have everything that they want and that you are, And You're not going to be disqualified looking at things like their scoring and priorities that they emphasize that give you an idea of kind of how to word your application. You know, after that, all that prep work, you know, you write you edit. You get everyone's approval on each part of your team, and then he'd submit it. So it, I mean, you know, 75 percent of, of this is preparing to, to write and to do that, that application. What makes a strong application? A strong application is going to address the concerns of the funder. You know, it's common for organizations to have a way that they may like to work things or, you know, points that they may like to bring up. But when you're writing these, it's, it's, it's. It's less about that and more about giving the using the language the funders want to hear. So you've got to tailor it to to their, their interests and their, their priorities. Probably the biggest mistake I see organizations have when they applies that they don't read the instructions carefully. You know, so many end up getting rejected because they either don't actually qualify. Or they don't include some of the required documentation. I mean, these, these funders, I mean, sometimes they get hundreds or thousands of applications depending on the program. And if you're used the wrong font, for example, like yours is out, you know, it might seem silly, but it's really important to follow the directions. Poorly written grants, you know, with language that isn't very strong with grammatical errors, you know, that can reflect poorly on the application as a whole. And then I mentioned before, you know, just the pitfall of finding a grant and then kind of defining a program around it instead of finding grants that fit and already defined program. So it sounds like a lot of these pitfalls can just be avoided by proper research and really taking the time to pour through the FOA. So once a grant is actually awarded, what are the responsibilities of the grantee in terms of making sure they're properly reporting and in compliance? Sure, again, that's different with with every single grant and that's something that's that should be spelled out and the FOA, the funding opportunity announcement. Although sometimes even in that, they're kind of broadly defined until after you receive the word. I mean, just so it kind of adds a rule of thumb, you know, the less money. The grant is offering and the smaller the funding organization, the less reporting is going to be required. And on the other side, the more money and the larger the funding organization, the more reporting there's going to be so for, like, a federal research grant, you might have to do monthly reporting. That's going to be quite detailed as opposed to a local foundation. Mitch, which may want like, you know, a yearly update or something like that. What advice would you give to businesses who are watching this and there are listening and they're looking to build relationships with grant giving organizations or they want to improve their chances of securing a grant in the future. Sure. Yeah, they, they'll want to introduce themselves to the, to the funders before they, they apply. A lot of federal and state agencies, they have coordinators that you can reach out to and just provide a face to your, your name. And that's also good too, because you can get their, their feedback, you know, excuse me. Explain your, your project. You know, they, they can give you advice sometimes on even how you might want to word it or the angle that you'll want to go at when, when writing your, your application. Even if the letter of intent isn't required you know, it's good to get their blessing on on your application. Before you send that you send that in and this is especially important with smaller organizations. You know, I've spoken to some funders and who sometimes they just they don't like receiving applications out of out of the blue. They want to know ahead time what's coming. So they know what to expect. In terms of applying my only advice would just be to use the best person for, for the job. You're going to want someone who's detail oriented who is, has strong writing skills and who is very well organized. And if you don't have someone in house, who's like that just hire someone because it's really going to increase your chances of winning an award. What is working with a grant writer like? What would a client experience when they work with you? Well, hopefully they'll experience, you know, someone who's very professional. They're going to know what questions to ask. And they're, they're going to be able to, you know, keep you on on task, you know, a good grant writer. You know, they're, they're going to be honest about what the, the funders want. And they're, they're gonna make sure that, you know, everything comes in as strong as, as possible. So, basically, their role is to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible and that nothing is, is forgotten. So, a weight off their shoulders as well, knowing that they don't have to. Be the one to keep all these moving pieces in line. Because it's a lot. I mean, people don't don't expect how much work these grants require. Sometimes, you know, even a small grant for, like, a foundation, you know, if it's your 1st time writing 1 of those, like, it could take 20 hours of your of your week. And that's just for something really short. You know, do you have 20 hours in your week to dedicate to this? And if you're doing, like, a federal grant. You know, it's, it's not uncommon. You're spending over 100 hours, right? Writing these things. So, yeah, that can really become common issue and you know, make sure you either have someone in house who has that time or hire someone who can bridge that gap for you. So, if people want to, people watching this want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, the best way would probably be to email me. That's it's J D U L I N at josannagrants. com. All right. All right, Joel, thank you so much for gifting your time and your expertise today. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Yeah.