Grants for Small Businesses

The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for an evaluation project that contributes to building a portfolio of evidence regarding inclusive human rights in Ukraine. In support of this goal, DRL seeks to promote the use of sound data and generate findings on what works, for whom, and why in democracy and human rights programming abroad. Projects should support the following objective: the rights of marginalized, underserved, and at-risk individuals in Ukraine are recognized and respected within a democracy, rights, and good governance framework.

The GEL-ICS program will build a cohesive group of leaders working on issues in cyberspace who are committed to the UN-affirmed Framework of Responsible State Behavior and will be equipped with the necessary knowledge and global connections to be effective advocates and champions of the Framework through the fellowship and other activities.

The UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award is currently accepting nominations for its 2024 round. The award recognizes individuals and institutions that have made outstanding contributions to urban development, including improving the quality of urban life and providing adequate, affordable, and accessible housing. Nominations must come from third parties before the deadline of May 17, 2024. The winners, selected by the Executive Director of UN-Habitat following recommendations by a panel of experts, will receive the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour Award at the global celebration of World Habitat Day in Querétaro City, Mexico, on October 7, 2024. The award considers best practices and initiatives aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities. Special attention will be given to initiatives related to the theme of World Habitat Day 2024: "Engaging youth to create a better urban future." For more information on eligible nominees and how to nominate, visit the provided link or register your nomination online. Nominees will be notified about the outcome from July 15, 2024 onwards. Contact UN-Habitat at [email protected] for any questions.

The Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) is offering the PRODUCT PROMOTION (GTP) Grants as part of the GO TEXAN - Marketing Enhancement Grant Assistance Program. This initiative is specifically designed to support GO TEXAN Product Partners at Tier 2 or higher in their efforts to market and promote Texas products that are produced, processed, or have added value within the state. The grants aim to enhance the marketing capabilities of local businesses, fostering growth and expanding the reach of Texas products both locally and beyond. Applications are accepted until May 16, 2024, with the grant program running from August 15, 2024, through December 31, 2025. Eligible partners must be in good standing with the GO TEXAN program and meet specific participation criteria, including maintaining their partnership status throughout the grant period.

The U.S. National Science Foundation seeks to build research capacity and infrastructure to address complex and compounding national and global crises whose solutions require a human-centered approach. To help generate effective and long-lasting solutions that benefit the entire U.S. public, NSF is providing this funding opportunity to inform possible future Centers for Research and Innovation in Science, the Environment and Society (CRISES). The envisioned centers will catalyze new research and research-based innovations to address seemingly intractable problems that confront our society. They will develop evidence-based solutions that address fundamental quality-of-life issues, such as those involving the environment, extreme weather and sustainability; workforce and the economy; equity and access to opportunities; and well-being. CRISES supports planning proposals to catalyze ideas that will potentially inform or serve as the basis for a larger, center-scale program. This opportunity supports researchers in the social, behavioral and economic sciences who use empirical methods to grapple with crises that impact individuals, families, organizations, regions, nations or our entire planet. The Centers for Research in Science, the Environment and Society initiative invites proposals to take the first steps toward developing large-scale interdisciplinary research activities that will address todays crises and ultimately enhance peoples quality of life. NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate supports research to understand the social and behavioral aspects of our rapidly changing world and how these issues are affected by our social, economic and natural environments. Fundamental and use-inspired research supported by the directorate advances our understanding of people, organizations and society, while revealing emerging opportunities to address challenges affecting our ability to live healthy and productive lives.

Beyond Open is a competitive small business grant program focused on enhancing economic mobility within Charlotte's Corridors of Opportunity. It aims to support diverse-owned small businesses, including those owned by minorities, women, veterans, LGBTQ individuals, and persons with disabilities. The grant can be used for capital assets such as equipment, technology, inventory, and real estate, and does not require repayment. Administered by FFTC Partners For Empowering Communities, a supporting organization of the Foundation For The Carolinas, and funded by the Wells Fargo Open for Business Fund, Beyond Open has awarded over $10 million in grants to nearly 300 small businesses during its first two rounds. The third round will distribute approximately $5 million in grants. The program aims to retain jobs, encourage job growth, and inspire new entrepreneurial endeavors in areas with low economic mobility and among historically underrepresented groups. It also seeks to create opportunities for small businesses to provide goods or services in affluent areas where minority business owners have been under-represented.

This program provides financial support to social equity-licensed cannabis businesses in Cook County to help cover startup and operational costs, prioritizing those in historically marginalized communities.

This program provides funding to various organizations and businesses in Kansas to create or improve tourism attractions that will draw more visitors and stimulate the local economy.

This program provides financial support to LGBTQ+-owned and allied restaurants, cafes, and bars to help them thrive and recover.

This program provides financial support to LGBTQ+-owned and allied restaurants, cafes, and bars to help them thrive and recover from challenges.

This funding opportunity provides financial support for new marketing initiatives aimed at boosting tourism in Kansas, targeting not-for-profit organizations, for-profit businesses, government agencies, and other eligible entities involved in promoting travel destinations.

This funding opportunity provides financial support to businesses, nonprofit organizations, and government entities in Roseburg to promote tourism and enhance visitor experiences, particularly during the off-peak travel season.

This solicitation presents an opportunity to shift towards on-site clean, dispatchable generation technologies, addressing the evolving generation mix and ensuring an ample supply of resources to meet the demands of critical facilities during the net peak period while maintaining system reliability. These technologies are well-suited to ensure a reliable and resilient energy supply for critical infrastructure on-site, including communications, healthcare, government offices, and many more, to provide on-demand load and peak matching. As such, this solicitation will focus on advancing emerging clean, dispatchable generation technologies, such as fuel cells or linear generators, using 100 percent renewable fuels, especially for critical sectors like industrial and commercial that have operational needs during peak hours. The projects from this solicitation will be deployed in these critical sectors and will reduce their demand on the grid, thereby decreasing the reliance from fossil-gas power plants during times of high electricity demand. Expected outcomes include on-site pilot-scale deployment of cost-effective and highly efficient clean, dispatchable generation technologies that will support energy demand of critical facilities and reduce the strain from the state’s electric grid while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions and criteria pollutants by curbing fossil-based generation. Ultimately, these projects will contribute to supporting the state's decarbonization goals, enhancing the reliability and strengthening the resilience of the state’s electric grid by increasing the availability of on-site clean, dispatchable generation technologies.

The U.S. Standard Grants Program is a competitive, matching grant program that supports public-private partnerships carrying out projects in the United States that further the goals of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. The program promotes partnerships projects that must involve a) only long-term protection, restoration, enhancement and/or establishment of wetland and associated upland habitats to benefit diversity of wetland ecosystems and b) maintaining an abundance of waterfowl (ducks, geese, and swans) and other populations of wetlands-associated migratory birds consistent with the objectives of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, U.S. Shorebird Conservation Plan, Waterbird Conservation Plan for the Americas, and Partners in Flight Bird Conservation Plan. The program requires a 1:1 non-federal match and research funding is ineligible. This program supports the Department of Interior and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service mission of protecting and managing the nation natural resources by collaborating with partners and stakeholders to conserve land and water and to expand outdoor recreation and access. Also, this program contributes to efforts to reduce climate pollution, support climate resilience, support land conservation and biodiversity efforts and leverage partnerships.

The U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for an evaluation project that contributes to building a portfolio of evidence regarding inclusive human rights in Ukraine. In support of this goal, DRL seeks to promote the use of sound data and generate findings on what works, for whom, and why in democracy and human rights programming abroad. Projects should support the following objective: the rights of marginalized, underserved, and at-risk individuals in Ukraine are recognized and respected within a democracy, rights, and good governance framework.

To obtain a copy of the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) please go to the ARPA-E website at https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov. To apply to this FOA, Applicants must register with and submit application materials through ARPA-E eXCHANGE (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Registration.aspx). For detailed guidance on using ARPA-E eXCHANGE, please refer to the ARPA-E eXCHANGE User Guide (https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov/Manuals.aspx). ARPA-E will not review or consider concept papers submitted through other means. For problems with ARPA-E eXCHANGE, email [email protected] (with FOA name and number in the subject line). Questions about this FOA? Check the Frequently Asked Questions available at http://arpa-e.energy.gov/faq. For questions that have not already been answered, email [email protected]. Agency Overview: The Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy (ARPA-E), an organization within the Department of Energy (DOE), is chartered by Congress in the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (P.L. 110-69), as amended by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-358), as further amended by the Energy Act of 2020 (P.L. 116-260): (A) to enhance the economic and energy security of the United States through the development of energy technologies that (i) reduce imports of energy from foreign sources; (ii) reduce energy-related emissions, including greenhouse gases; (iii) improve the energy efficiency of all economic sectors; (iv) provide transformative solutions to improve the management, clean-up, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel; and (v) improve the resilience, reliability, and security of infrastructure to produce, deliver, and store energy; and (B) to ensure that the United States maintains a technological lead in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies. ARPA-E issues this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) under its authorizing statute codified at 42 U.S.C. 16538. The FOA and any cooperative agreements or grants made under this FOA are subject to 2 C.F.R. Part 200 as supplemented by 2 C.F.R. Part 910. ARPA-E funds research on, and the development of, transformative science and technology solutions to address the energy and environmental missions of the Department. The agency focuses on technologies that can be meaningfully advanced with a modest investment over a defined period of time in order to catalyze the translation from scientific discovery to early-stage technology. For the latest news and information about ARPA-E, its programs and the research projects currently supported, see: http://arpa-e.energy.gov/. ARPA-E funds transformational research. Existing energy technologies generally progress on established learning curves where refinements to a technology and the economies of scale that accrue as manufacturing and distribution develop drive improvements to the cost/performance metric in a gradual fashion. This continual improvement of a technology is important to its increased commercial deployment and is appropriately the focus of the private sector or the applied technology offices within DOE. In contrast, ARPA-E supports transformative research that has the potential to create fundamentally new learning curves. ARPA-E technology projects typically start with cost/performance estimates well above the level of an incumbent technology. Given the high risk inherent in these projects, many will fail to progress, but some may succeed in generating a new learning curve with a projected cost/performance metric that is significantly better than that of the incumbent technology. ARPA-E funds technology with the potential to be disruptive in the marketplace. The mere creation of a new learning curve does not ensure market penetration. Rather, the ultimate value of a technology is determined by the marketplace, and impactful technologies ultimately become disruptive that is, they are widely adopted and displace existing technologies from the marketplace or create entirely new markets. ARPA-E understands that definitive proof of market disruption takes time, particularly for energy technologies. Therefore, ARPA-E funds the development of technologies that, if technically successful, have clear disruptive potential, e.g., by demonstrating capability for manufacturing at competitive cost and deployment at scale. ARPA-E funds applied research and development. The Office of Management and Budget defines applied research as an original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledgedirected primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective and defines experimental development as creative and systematic work, drawing on knowledge gained from research and practical experience, which is directed at producing new products or processes or improving existing products or processes. Applicants interested in receiving financial assistance for basic research (defined by the Office of Management and Budget as experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundations of phenomena and observable facts) should contact the DOEs Office of Science (http://science.energy.gov/). Office of Science national scientific user facilities (http://science.energy.gov/user-facilities/) are open to all researchers, including ARPA-E Applicants and awardees. These facilities provide advanced tools of modern science including accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, light sources and neutron sources, as well as facilities for studying the nanoworld, the environment, and the atmosphere. Projects focused on early-stage R for the improvement of technology along defined roadmaps may be more appropriate for support through the DOE applied energy offices including: the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (http://www.eere.energy.gov/), the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (https://www.energy.gov/fecm/office-fossil-energy-and-carbon-management), the Office of Nuclear Energy (http://www.energy.gov/ne/office-nuclear-energy), and the Office of Electricity (https://www.energy.gov/oe/office-electricity). Program Overview: The energy transition towards net-zero by 2050 demands an unprecedented level of innovation that must be completed in the span of a generation. Global primary energy usage has increased continuously for the past century. This increase is expected to continue with improved standards of living and the rapid expansion of new technologies with high levels of energy-intensive computation, such as artificial intelligence. Present grid capacity is constrained and cannot accommodate these increasing primary energy needs to reliably deliver power on demand. Meanwhile, all paths through the energy transition require concurrent efforts to decouple the production of essential carbon-based materials from harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Since the Agencys inception, the ARPA-E OPEN program has served as an opportunity to advance transformative energy breakthroughs in critical areas that fall outside the scope of its technology-focused programs. Vision OPEN challenges the research community to develop groundbreaking technologies to enable a future energy landscape that is dramatically different. The Vision includes three goals that are critical to achieve a sustainable energy and carbon transition with: 1) GHG-free abundant primary energy; 2) An intermodal energy superhighway that transports diversified forms of primary energy; and 3) A carbon transition that sustainably meets demand for polymers and other materials. To view the FOA in its entirety, please visit https://arpa-e-foa.energy.gov.

The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces an open competition for organizations interested in advancing freedom of association and improving working conditions in the palm oil sector in Indonesia.

This funding opportunity provides financial support to new businesses in Campbell County, Virginia, helping them grow and succeed through entrepreneurial training and mentorship.

This grant invites private sector companies and organizations to collaborate with USAID on projects that address economic growth, financial inclusion, and environmental sustainability, leveraging their resources and expertise to achieve shared development goals.

This grant seeks innovative research to develop a system that enables the Air Force to effectively manage and execute command and control operations across distributed locations in dynamic and contested environments.