Grant Writing Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs

Governments at all levels regularly provide grant opportunities to small businesses, these grants occur throughout the year and are designed to support small businesses in a variety of ways including, for example, with their training and development needs.

Female business owners, both new and experienced, sometimes hesitate to apply for grant opportunities due to a lack of experience or confidence with the process.

This 90-minute workshop is designed to build capacity for grant writing within the small business sector, specifically those owned by women. It will introduce owners, managers and staff to a variety of strategies and skills which will increase their comfort and confidence with grant writing.

Each of these strategies can be easily translated into concrete steps and action items. This seminar will increase participant’s readiness to engage with grant writing on behalf of their agencies and businesses.

Goals for this workshop include:

* To increase understanding of why it is important to be strategic with grant writing

* To clearly define long term and short-term grant writing strategies

* To increase familiarity with the marketing and business elements of a grant writing strategy

* To introduce participants to narrative elements in part of grant writing

* To introduce participants to a 3-stage model of grant writing

NOTE: A Zoom link to the session will be emailed to attendees 2 days prior to the event.

The WE-CAN Project is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. Please email kerry.ramsay@queensu.ca if you have accessibility requirements as soon as possible as advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER:

Donna Forster, has 20 years of grant writing experience through her academic work at Queen’s University, bidding for new and existing contracts as part of operating a Family Service Employee Assistance Program, competing locally for community foundation grants, completing annual United Way funding requests as well as applications to Ontario Trillium Foundation for specific projects at Cancer Care Ontario and Resolve Counselling Services Canada.

ABOUT THE WE-CAN PROJECT:

The WE-CAN Project is led by Queen’s University and supported by the Government of Canada. Its mission is to inspire and empower existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs by providing them with tools, resources, expert mentors, networks and community building to expand existing businesses and to launch new ventures.

The Government of Canada, through FedDev Ontario’s Women Entrepreneurship Strategy (WES) Ecosystem Fund is providing $3.2 million for Queen’s University to design and deliver programs and services to accelerate, train, mentor and provide resources to women entrepreneurs and women-led companies in the community.

The focus of the WES strategy is to provide support to women entrepreneurs from diverse and underrepresented groups.

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