This week a friend of mine received a letter in the mail. Upon opening the letter there was a newspaper type page folded up, two tickets and a voucher for a $500 gift card. Of course the gift card requires you to make a purchase prior to receiving an actual gift card. The literature was inviting her to come to a presentation by National Grant Conferences. The marketing material has consumer testimonials claiming that people were given, thousands to tens of thousands to one person stating that they received 1.3 million for their business that they do not have to pay back.

    Now when people start throwing numbers like that around and want you to come to their “conference”, I immediately put my timeshare hat on. I might be young but I have been around long enough to know that people have been hawking these so called grant secrets, free money, the government has money just waiting for you to claim no strings, gimmicks for years. Remember the guy dressed like uncle sam. And apparently Kevin Trudeau ,who has had his fair share of legal issues, is now selling a book with free government money made available by the Recovery Act. On top of this pile of bull, he states he is not making any money from the book.  If you believe that I have a bridge to sell you.

   So of course I had to check out this “opportunity” and see if the company was legitimate. I googled National Grant Conferences and many, if not most of the results,  had headings with scam and rip off. I also checked out Rip Off Report which usually is pretty good but to my surprise they said they interviewed a list of people given by an insider and another list given by the company and the results were positive. Then I checked the Better Business Bureau to see if their report reflected the positive interviews and found very different data. The BBB profile gave them a grade of F, not a good start. It also show the company filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and has had lawsuits brought against it by various attorney generals. Not to mention, to join you have to drop a thousand bucks. That should be a red flag right there. Most of the time after joining they tell you that you need to buy this software and that software or it is going to cost an additional several thousand dollars to help you get a grant.  Seems kind of crazy for something you can look up for free.

   Now it is not to say there are not programs and grants out there that could be of benefit. An example would be a new program for student loan debt that I told my sister about. The program is called income based repayment and allows people with a small income to possibly qualify for lower payments and even partial or full forgiveness of the loans. Full details can be found at ibrinfo.org. Also, if you are applying for an SBA Loan or grant or just need advice in starting a business then go to www.score.org and you can be connected with a mentor who can help guide you in the planning and business plan writing process. They also have free templates to download that are helpful.

   Finally let me do you a anotherand give you the so called secrets these guys are selling. The links following this article has information about what the government is offering. This information is available at no charge. All I ask is for a comment from those who do qualify for these grants, what you were the qualifications and what did you get. Let us share in your good fortune.

IRS – Recovery Act benefits reminder

Government Grants 

IBR – Income Based Repayment Details and Calculator

   If you find any other good ones, please comment with the link and I will update the post. It may take a little work to find and apply for these opportunities but as they say, “nothing in life is free”.

Matt