How To Raise Money For Business With Loans, Grants, Investments and More

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In this tutorial I will explain how to raise money for your business or start-up. Many people usually focus on some particular fundraising technique or strategy. But in this tutorial I discuss a number of viable strategies and explain which types of businesses are better suited for various fundraising techniques.

How To Raise Money With Loans

Loans are not  a great option because taking out a loan for a business is like risking money that you don’t even have. Nevertheless, people ask me about loans all the time. Most people ask about loans from banks. But banks to not give business loans to companies which have not started.

So your option is to get a microloan or a personal loan that you can put towards your business. I partnered with Lendio to help people understand whether they can get loans. Here is a link to Lendio’s free application so that they can determine for you if you are eligible for one of their loans.

Here is an tutorial that further explains how to get a business loan.

How To Raise Money With Grants

A large portion of all available grants tend to go to nonprofits rather than for profit businesses. Nevertheless, you can still get grants. Visit the grants.gov website to browse the grants for which you may be eligible.

You can also look for grants that are part of your community, whether it is a minority group, or a church affiliation, or a local business grant from your city.

Here is a tutorial that further explains how to get a business grant.

How To Raise Money With Investments

There are many different kinds of investors. Technology investors prefer high growth, scalable technology companies that are going after a big market. And investors who invest in local small businesses or restaurants, invest very differently. You can find technology investors on sites like angellist.com while to find investors who may invest in a locally-focused business is a little bit different.

To find an investor who may invest in a small business that has a local focus such as a restaurant, or something similar, the first place to go is to your friends and family. While it isn’t a great idea to do business with family, they are nevertheless the easiest source of an investment for your business.

If you do not get an investment from your friends and family, what you can do is research what the similar businesses are in your local area. Your local area can be as wide as a few neighboring cities. Try to reach out to the business owners of those businesses and ask them how they raised money to start their business. If they got an investment from an investor, that investor may also invest in your business since they had success with investing in local businesses in your niche.

How To Raise Money With Donations

There are two very different ways for how to raise money with donations. Traditionally, donations have been thought of something that is a fit for nonprofit companies. Specifically, the nonprofit companies which are categorized as charities have been thought of as good candidates to raise money with donations because wealthy individuals can write off donations to charity as tax write offs. That still remains true. Yet there is another, very new way to raise money, and that is via something called crowdfunding.

Crowdfunding is a way to raise money by taking relatively small amounts from many people. Some of the leading crowdfunding sites are kickstarter.com indiegogo.com and gofundme.com which all have their pros and cons.

How To Raise Money From Your Own Revenue

One of the best ways to raise money is to actually earn it with the revenue generated from your business operations. It is a difficult thing to do, but it enables you to not have to rely on getting outside funding, and focus on the fundamentals of your business.

Here is a tutorial with more fundraising ideas and here is a tutorial for how to write a fundraising plan.

Further Business Resources

I created mobile apps which can help you make your business ideas better, and improve your business ideas with some fundamentals. Here is my iOS (iPad or iPhone) fundraising app. And here is my Android fundraising app.

For more business-starting resources, please take a look at our business planning mobile apps. Here is the iOS business plan app and here is the Android business plan app.  Additionally, here is the iOS marketing app. And here is the Android marketing app. And here are our business apps on the Kindle. And here is an article where I give the argument that our Android apps are the best business apps on Android.

And please check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel where we cover many marketing topics.

Author: Alex Genadinik

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