I Called The Government For Funding And They Said…

Just about a thousand times a week we here at CanadaStartup get e-mails, phone calls or text messages from readers like you (small business owners, entrepreneurs, business individuals). Those who always seem to say the exact same thing about government and funding!

I called the government for funding and they said…

We don’t have any funding…
There is no government funding…
Government funding doesn’t exist…
We don’t fund that kind of business…

So at that time, these same readers come back to us and say what the f is going on here. You guys (CanadaStartups) is lying to us about government funding, about the availability of funding, you are nothing but liars.

On the other hand, we have hundreds of other messages, calls and members contacting us daily, leaving their positive reviews, sharing their success stories, sending us pictures of them with government cheques, funding approval letters and telling us how without our platform and our funding database they would be lost.

We had a chance to sit down with a bunch of small business owners (who tried to get funding and failed), and also a bunch of entrepreneurs (who were thinking of searching for funding). This “bunch” represents 120 unique individuals across the country who were willing to participate – and were all who said “I called the government for funding…”

As you may know, a major component of our Small Business Startup Portal is the Funding Database; in which we provide our members with access to every single government funding program available. This means all available funding programs offered by the Canadian government are researched, compiled and listed by our in-house team into our funding database. The criteria is clearly listed, the qualifications, benefits and contact details for each program are noted, along with deadlines and potential funding amounts.

Why do we do this?

We do this so that we can help small business owners across the country locate funding for their small businesses. Not because the government does a “bad job” at promoting it’s funding programs, but because the government isn’t just one government and there is a TON of data. We try to help and put it all into one place, along with many other tools and resources.

So back to our “bunch” and what we called a true funding search test.

We asked every single business owner to write out their experiences of dealing with the government and how they heard the big fat NO, funding doesn’t exist. Once this was done, we put it together and tallied it all up. Here are the results of those findings;

68 unique individuals said: Government said no funding exists

32 unique individuals said: There isn’t funding for that

12 unique individuals said: Government told me to go to the bank

8 unique individuals said: They couldn’t figure it out

Pretty interesting findings. Seems like there really is no funding available from the government.

Right?

Wrong!!!

Unless hundreds of government agencies across the country and over 900 individual funding programs are just made up by the individual governments?

The next step; we turned to our own in-house funding database to do a search for each individual in our group. Based on our preliminary search, out of the 120 people, 120 people seemed to be able to find at least one funding program which may be available for them.

This didn’t mean that they qualify for the funding, nor will they get it – but it means that the program based on the initial criteria seems to be “right” for them. Looking at the basic criteria such as location of the business, the industry and funding needs is what was looked at first.

One thing to keep in mind is that funding searches depend on a number of factors; as each funding agency and funding program is different, all of these factors and more have to be considered.

Here are some of those factors:

• Location of the business
• Business industry
• Funding needs
• How much funding
• Your investment
• Business plan
• Credit score
• Time of year you apply
• …etc

Our group of 120 was shocked and in disbelief to find that they all could potentially qualify for some sort of funding. We decided to take it to the next level.

We took a random individual from within the group (from Ontario) who needed funding to help him hire employees, to purchase a few tools and equipment and to improve cash flow. Without telling him much we asked him to do exactly what he did when previously when he called “the government”.

This was done live.

To no surprise to us, this individual called “Service Ontario” and spoke to “Service Person 1”; who transferred us to “Service Person 2”, and then to “Service Person 3”, and then to “Service Person 4” and after 30 minutes of trying to explain “I need funding for my business, who do I need to speak with?”, finally a manager came on the phone and said “No, there isn’t funding available for you to start your business in Ontario”. After a brief conversation and explaining to our business individual that he should to go a bank for a loan, he hung up.

So what happened?

The “government” said no funding exists.

It was at this point that our bunch of business owners realized what the problem was.

1. Why did we call Service Ontario?
2. Why didn’t we say what we need funding for versus only saying “business funding”
3. How knowledgeable was that “service manager”?

It was a bit easier to understand and see these things after we’ve been through our funding database already and that we know what exists.

Basically what happened is that the business owner called the “one government” that he knew about. In this case, Service Ontario.

The problem is that there are so many different government agencies, government departments and government programs – that a single person wouldn’t know exactly where to go. Unless they had spent a lot of time trying to figure it out – like we have (with a full 40 hours per week team).

You can call your local government, your provincial government or the federal government for business funding. But how you know who to call and for what?

You may get lucky and call a “funding agency” in your city; but it’s possible that the funding agency you call only provides money for certain industries.

So we gave our group access to our funding database, and our tools and sent them home with a plan to contact the appropriate funding agencies and request funding based on their needs.

Within a few weeks of the initial meeting. we started hearing back from our group. A few individuals said that they were successful at obtaining funding; while other said they are waiting for a government response; some said they were denied and some said they weren’t able to find programs for their specific needs – but everybody has a chance to speak to a funding agency or advisor.

What does all of this mean?

It’s simple; if you are looking for funding be sure you are asking the right questions, of the right agency and for the right thing. Keep in mind that not every single agency knows about every other agency and be sure to break your funding search down to the bone. Search for funding specific to your location, to your specific funding need and for the specific industry – your odds will greatly increase.