Getting Grant Funding

IMR Offers Assistance In Finding Grants To Fund Projects

IMR - Information Management Resource - creates solutions for capturing, integrating and processing information, data, and documents to ensure efficient information exchange and long-term retention of critical data. Many of the solutions that IMR has implemented for healthcare, educational and other organizations have been funded in part or whole by grants.

IMR now offers a resource to help organizations identify possible grant funding sources for their projects. Obtaining grant funding can make all the difference bringing a project to fruition.

Each year, the federal government makes over $400 billion available for a wide range of projects. Funding at the federal level comes from 26 grant making agencies, and grants are either:

Direct - funds go directly from the federal funding agency to local recipients; or

Pass-through - funds go through the state, and possibly even a regional entity, before they are made available to the local entity.

Grant Types

Another distinction to be aware of is the type of grant a particular program offers. A grant may be:

• Formula - Funding allocations are based on a formula - such as student poverty (No Child Left Behind Grants), risk assessments (State Homeland Security Grants) or a number of acute care hospital beds (Hospital Emergency Preparedness Grants).
• Competitive - applications are competitively scored based on a set of objective and/or subjective criteria, and the score the proposal receives factors in to the award allocation; or
• Earmark - grant awards are decided at the legislative level during the budgeting process. You will need to apply to your local Congressman or State Representative to obtain these funds.

Grant Sources

Grants typically come from one of three sources, including:

• Federal - issuing from one of the 26 Federal grant making agencies. These grants tend to be large (often $250,000 to $500,000 in size) and restricted to broad, national priorities;
• State - issuing from a state agency, either using funds derived from within the state or passing through funds received from elsewhere (most often a federal agency). These grants tend to be more accessible, smaller than federal grants, and more in line with state priorities; and
• Private - Foundations and Corporations provide approximately $35 billion each year in funding, and they tend to be the most responsive to locally developed projects and local needs.

All three of these sources may figure in to your funding strategy. A common approach is to fund the bulk of a project with federal and state funds, then apply to foundations to support the local elements that fall outside the parameters of the government funders, or to cover the required matching costs.

If you'd like more information about getting assistance with finding grant funding,
please fill out and submit the form below.