Over the past few months we’ve talked a lot about grants and programs, both from the government and corporations, but how do you apply for these grants? This month, Al speaks with “Grant Angel” Stephanie Sang, Founder at Granted Consulting. As her nickname implies, Stephanie knows all about grants and shares her expertise with us.
Over the past few months we’ve talked a lot about grants and programs, both from the government and corporations, but how do you apply for these grants?
This month, Al speaks with “Grant Angel” Stephanie Sang, Founder at Granted Consulting. As her nickname implies, Stephanie knows all about grants and shares her expertise with us.
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Allan: [00:00:00] October is small business month in Canada established in 2006. Small business month is a time where we celebrate the significant contributions that entrepreneurs and small businesses make to the Canadian economy. Of course, on this podcast, every month is small business month. We celebrate all year round.
Why? Because it's just good business.
Hey everyone! Al here wishing you a happy and prosperous small business month.
Now, if you're a listener of this podcast then you've heard these statistics before, but for those of you who may have stumbled upon the show because of small business month. Here's a bit of a refresher. As of 2020, there were 1. 22 million employer businesses in Canada.
Of these, 97. 8 percent were small or medium businesses. That's a business with 100 or fewer employees. Now, again, if you're listening to this podcast, you're likely involved in one of these small businesses or at least considering it. So let's get personal for a second. Congratulations on being a small business owner [00:01:00] or entrepreneur.
You are a huge part of Canada's economy. You have contributed to the following. You've employed 46. 8 percent of the total private labor force or 5. 7 million individuals in Canada. You've contributed to 50. 3 percent of Canada's overall gross domestic product. You made up 40. 8 percent of Canada's 717 billion exported goods.
Bravo. You deserve to be celebrated. Take a month. How does October sound? And what better way to help you celebrate than to help you get some money, right?
Now, over the past few months, we've been talking a lot about grants, both government and corporate. We haven't really talked about how to apply for grants. That's what we're going to cover this month. I had the pleasure to sit down with Canada's grant angel, Stephanie Sang. As her nickname implies, Stephanie knows grants. And she's had great success in getting them for her clients. She's going to share with us some great information on how to find the right grants [00:02:00] for your business and how to apply for them. This was a great chat. You're going to want to hear it.
I'm also joined as always by a resident data expert, Sean McCormick. Sean was a bit of a Debbie downer on consumer spending last month. He's back this month and hopefully he'll have some better news for us. So stay tuned for that.
But first let's begin with my conversation with Canada's grant angel, Stephanie Seng.
I'm joined today by Stephanie Seng. She's the founder of Granted Consulting. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining me today.
Stephanie: Yeah, it's, it's great. I'm excited to share some information about grants.
Allan: Where am I speaking to you from right now?
Stephanie: I'm based in Vancouver, BC.
Allan: Vancouver. Now you're the founder of Granted Consulting. In a nutshell, what does Granted Consulting do?
Stephanie: Granted Consulting is a firm that helps small businesses across Canada access government grants. We manage the process from researching those grants all the way to selection, managing the application, and helping with that process. But we're a fully transparent process, so we don't submit the grant, the client will do that, and then once the grant comes through, we help with the claims process.[00:03:00]
Allan: Okay. So, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. You're an expert at this now.
Stephanie: Yeah, it's been 13 years. So it's been a while.
Allan: Amazing. Now, in the last few months, we've been learning about grants in Canada. So we've learned about provincial and federal grants available. Thanks to our visit from federal minister for small business, Rechie Valdez.
And last week I interviewed Mayumi Bay. She's one of the owners of the plant based workshop. Who won a Visa She's Next grant. So talking a lot about what grants are available for small businesses, but since you are Canada's grant angel, as it's listed on your LinkedIn profile, I'd love to get some insight and I'm sure our listeners would love to learn more about how to apply for these grants. What are some like tips and tricks to writing a successful grant? So let's start with, how did you get into the whole grant consulting business?
Stephanie: Well, actually I come from four generations of entrepreneurship. So my great grandparents were entrepreneurs coming from, Asia to Canada. And I just realized with every generation that they never leveraged government support.
Allan: Right.
Stephanie: So my mom actually worked [00:04:00] at CRA and, you know, we knew of tax credits. There were things like that, but Grants was something that I just assumed was for nonprofits. And I worked in Asia for 10 years and the company I worked with in Asia applied for grants. And so when I came back to Canada in 2010, I thought there's got to be an opportunity to help Canadian businesses apply for different grant funding programs.
Allan: And we learned from Minister Valdez that there's like upwards to 1500 different Provincial and federal grants available. So you're right. It's not something maybe as a new business owner entrepreneur, you think about as a possibility, like we're always thinking about how are we going to get that loan from the bank or how are we going to get an investor or something, but there is money available through government programs.
Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's really important to understand that the government is there to support specific initiatives. So often the grants are kind of more on the hiring, training, market expansion side of things, some R and D grants as well. I think one misunderstanding that a lot of small business owners have is that there's a big bucket of funding for, women entrepreneurs or those who identify [00:05:00] as such, or specific demographics And I would say other than indigenous communities and business owners who are of that descent, you're probably not going to expect a huge amount.
Allan: So these amounts may not be enough to start your business, but they may be enough to help you digitize your business, for example, or take it to the next level with marketing or hiring or so on and so forth. Correct?
Stephanie: Absolutely.
Allan: What is the process for applying for these grants?
Stephanie: I think the most important thing is first finding the right grant for your business at Granted we recognize that while there are resources out there, there's a lot of information on the web. There's also a lot of inaccurate information, so we had developed a portal that actually matches grants to businesses because as a construction company, you're not going to be able to apply for grants that are for retail businesses for instance.
So finding the right grant is probably the first starting point and then looking at the criteria. And this is something that often business owners will skip. They see that, Oh, there's a company that looks like me, that fits exactly what we're doing. And so I must also be able to qualify for it.
Well, there might be [00:06:00] stipulations around why they qualify and you might not. So looking through the application guidelines and the eligibility criteria is key. And then only after you've done that, would you actually look at preparing an application? Okay. So I think it's unique in that government grants are federal, they could be regional, they could be provincial and so depending on each province, you may find different emphasis on specific initiatives that they have.
So it's really important when you put a grant application together that you're addressing perhaps some of those initiatives. So if the goal is to increase employment in a rural area, you're In your application, you need to speak to how you're able to do that, just as an example.
Allan: Now, of course, as with any kind of loan you might be going for, or any kind of assistance, You probably need to have your numbers in order, right? You probably need to have a business plan or financial records and so on and so forth in order.
Stephanie: I mean, it does depend a little bit on the grant. The larger the grant that you apply for, definitely they're going to want to understand what your strategy is they may ask for a business plan if [00:07:00] there's a matching requirement. So what that means is, You have to put in 50 percent of the expenses and the government will either match you or there's some sort of a share. You have to prove that you've got that 50 percent in place. What I think that a lot of small businesses may misunderstand is that they think you can apply for a grant and the money just gets dropped into their bank account straight away and that's not necessarily the case. Often there's a claims process, which means that you're essentially forking out the funds. In the beginning, and then you're claiming back those amounts, but you can't do with it. You know, the order of it is you apply. First, you get approved, then you execute on those activities, and then you make your claims. You can't say, Oh, I hired four people last year. Can I go and get a grant for those four people? It doesn't quite work like that.
Allan: So with like a lot of other government incentive programs, you're getting it back sometimes in your tax return.
Stephanie: If it's a tax credit. Yes. If it's a grant, it's just a claims process, but it means that you are putting money forth first so if I'm hiring someone and I [00:08:00] put through a hiring grant, I apply for it. I've been approved. I'm paying their payroll and then I'm slowly recovering. Let's say it covers 50 percent of someone's wages. I'm recovering that 50 percent and applying for that through the claim process. So what I mean by that is you need to have some cash flow. Like don't go into grants, especially as startups thinking, okay, I'm going to apply for this and I don't have to put a penny into it from the government perspective. They're like, we need to make sure that what you apply for is what you're spending money on, I mean, we are all taxpayers, so they are the stewards of our taxpayer dollars so. The process is a little bit, um, reversed in that way. You apply, you get approved, and then you spend, and then you claim back a portion of it. If it's a tax credit, like you mentioned, then it goes in as a rebate on your taxes. But if it's a grant, it just comes back in the form of a check or a direct deposit.
Allan: What would a consulting company like yours offer to an entrepreneur or small business?
Stephanie: So, the goal for Granted is to actually make grants easy. For businesses, that's kind of our mission. So we actually built our own portal [00:09:00] specifically geared to small businesses, particularly those under the 2 million or 1 million mark.
And so it allows you to leverage our expertise and we transcribe the information that's government into layman's terms, just easy to understand bullet points, so you're not reading through dozens of pages of government documentation. We also have a boutique method, which is called our Granted Pro. And so that is actually pairing your business up with a small dedicated grant consultant from our team, and then we are working on those grants with you from application all the way through to the claims process.
And then we've got something recently that we launched. That's the in between. We created something called Granted Starter, and it is the best of both worlds. It's if you need help, you can use a token. Provide users with three tokens. And you also have the ability to apply for grants that you're comfortable with on your own.
And so the ability to leverage our expertise and learn a little bit, because the goal is eventually you may not need our support moving forward, because you've got the method down in terms of how to apply for grants successfully.
Allan: Would you recommend [00:10:00] small a business hire a grant writer, how complicated is it?
Stephanie: I think, um, when you look at grant writers, it really depends on what type of program you are going after.
I mean, it is government, right? So often if you get a call from the CRA, you're like, I need my accountant on the phone, not me. And so I think that that just happens with small businesses is making sure that they're not saying the wrong thing or putting something down that might be incorrect. Correct. So if there are small businesses who have those concerns, then yeah, maybe leveraging the support of either a grant writer or a grant consultant would be beneficial.
Allan: Now as a small business owner, I mean, first question that would come to mind for me would be, what is this going to cost me? Right? Like, is this going to be worth it in the end?
Stephanie: Yeah. So it's interesting. I mean, when I started this business, this was something that came as a question for us because it's like, well, it sounds like a scam. Like we've never heard of grants for small businesses before. So initially we did it kind of more on a contingency fee or success based fee method. Now we have a small nominal annual fee and it depends on the level of service that you're [00:11:00] accessing. It goes from, you know, under 1, 000 all the way up to like 3, 600 as an annual fee and then we, depending on the type of grant, we could be taking a nominal success base fee. So, you know, up to 20%, but there are grants when they're larger, we'll take a smaller cut. And so it just depends a little bit on the level of service that you're working on with us.
Allan: Again, I don't know how these things work. Is there like a success rate or something like that? Or it depends on the business.
Stephanie: So our success rate has been pretty strong. We've been at 92 percent in terms of success rate. This is based on the grants that actually get adjudicated. Sometimes you put an application in and there's a thousand applications and probably at the 50 application mark, they're going to say, you know, everyone from 51 onwards, we're not even looking at. But anything that's been adjudicated would be really strong.
I think the other benefit of working with a grant consultant is there are times when the government. I'm going to say adjudicates incorrectly. And so when you're applying on your own, you don't think that you can actually push back and ask for what's the feedback on what this says. And so often we will support our [00:12:00] clients in that way.
Allan: So you'll be advocates for your clients as well.
Stephanie: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if we're going to put together an application and we have a pretty thorough vetting process, we don't just say, you know, here's a list of 18 grants, which one do you want to start with? It's really being strategic in terms of identifying the best one and then, you know, getting that one under our belt and then the next one. And so that's, you know, the manageable way of leveraging grants as well as a small business
Allan: As a startup. What sorts of grants might be available for you?
Stephanie: It's a great question, Al, because, um, often I find we get a lot of early stage, you know, people are in ideation, especially post COVID everyone wants to have a little bit of a side hustle. Sure. And so we'll get a lot of people come to our website looking for grants on how to apply for funding to start their business. And unfortunately, I'm going to have to burst that bubble today and let people know that there really aren't programs that will fuel you to start your business.
There's definitely loan programs. So Futurpreneur is one where they're going to support you as someone under the age of 39 and give you a little bit of startup funding. But the reality is [00:13:00] that brands are there to grow the economic prosperity. Yeah. Government grants specifically of Canada. So they're looking at how do we create jobs?
So are you at the stage in your business where you're hiring someone? Are you investing in your staff and, and, um, investing in training? So that third party type of training, and then of course expanding your market. There's a lot of people who assume you can expand with grant funding across Canada. And while there are some limited programs that allow that most of those programs that support market expansion are to export. So to increase Canadian presence in international waters, and that is to help ensure that the government's not. Funding one company in Canada to compete with another company within Canada for the same domestic market.
So, I mean, generally I think small businesses, if you are looking to raise, then there's venture capital for that. If you're looking to get a loan, you know, that's a great way as well. But grants are probably not an area that will have very much support when it comes to [00:14:00] starting up a business. It's really kind of once you've got it going and it's getting, gaining some success that you could take a look at programs at that point.
Allan: If folks want to learn more about what Granted Consulting can do for their business, where would they go?
Stephanie: We have a great website, Granted.Ca, and on there is a grant calculator. So you can actually fill out a grant calculator and it will, for free, tell you approximately the grant amounts that your business, based on business stage, you know, information that you input in there. We could qualify for and I just want to say that the reason why we're called Granted and not Stephanie Sang Consulting is because I borrow this from Oprah like you've been granted, you've been granted, you've been granted, can't give away cars, but I can get grants in people's hands. So that is the goal of this business.
Allan: Thank you so much for your time today, Steph. Awesome.
Stephanie: Thanks Al.
AD: Businesses start up for all sorts of reasons. " Yes! We Are Open!". These are the stories of small Canadian businesses. "Yes! We Are Open!". They're not business stories. They're personal stories about business. "Yes, we are open!" This season I [00:15:00] travel to Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Yes, we are open!". Subscribe now to... you guessed It. "Yes, we're open!". Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Allan: I'm joined by Sean McCormick, VP of Business Development at Moneris Data Services. Sean, thank you so much for joining me this month.
Sean: My pleasure, Al. Good to be back.
Allan: Now, are you excited? Hockey season's starting. How are your Oils going to do this year?
Sean: I think, well, hey, it's cup or bust again. I mean, you get within a goal of a championship. You got to think that the goal is getting back there. I think we're going to be good for a few years here. We got some rails left on this track.
Allan: Yeah. I hope your goaltending is sorted out and stuff.
Sean: Stuart Skinner is the real deal. He'll be all right. How about you, Al? How's your team gonna do?
Allan: You know what? You say cup or bust. I'd love to see a second round in the playoffs. My expectations are a little lower.
Sean: Right, right, right. Yeah, you don't have anybody wearing 97 on the back of their jersey. That's probably the problem.
Allan: Sadly. Now, We talked a lot about sporting events over this summer and how they were bringing in the spend, you know, domestically, but also foreign spend.
Let's switch over to, another big event that happens in Toronto every year and just happened this [00:16:00] past month, and that's the Toronto International Film Festival. What sort of story did we see there?
Sean: Yeah, it was a mixed bag Al. And given the present state of the Canadian economy, we'll take a mixed bag right now to be perfectly honest.
We measured it in two ways. We looked at total spend year over year. So TIFF 2024 versus TIFF 2023. and then we looked at foreign spend. So total spend includes all domestic cards, all foreign cards, and foreign spend is foreign cards only.
So if we look at total spend year over year for TIFF on hotels, it was up 49%.
Allan: Okay.
Sean: That's a great story.
Allan: Yeah.
Sean: So that's domestic cards and foreign cards together. The foreign spend share of that was up 53%. So good news story. Now where those two diverge is the spending on Things, right? You're coming into Toronto to stay in a hotel and go see Tiff. What else are you gonna spend money on? Right? You're gonna spend it on clothing, restaurants, maybe jewelry, you know, it's kind of a high end event, right? So total spend, clothing was [00:17:00] flat. Jewelry was down 15 percent and restaurants was down 22%. That is entirely in line with what we're seeing in our national data that we look at from time to time on the show.
Now on the foreign spend side of the ledger, that was a really good story. So I mentioned that foreign spend was at 53 percent in the hotel category. In the clothing category, foreign spend was up 55%. In the jewelry category, it was up 32% and restaurants were basically flat. It was down about about 4%. Anywhere between zero and 4% is kind of flat in the way we look at it.
Allan: So that tells us that that event is, is bringing in the outside money, but, uh, that domestically Canadians are still struggling to find the money for these kinds of events.
Sean: Yeah, it's, it's discretionary spend Al. We see it in all kinds of different spending categories. And when it comes to Canadians and the way they're spending their money right now, and this is what happens when you're nibbling around the edges of a recession, right? People either don't have money to spend or they're [00:18:00] emotionally impacted by the economic events that they see every day. And they're less likely to spend money and more likely to save money. That's what we're seeing there. And this was a really interesting analysis to see people from outside of Canada, how are they spending their money during TIF and people from Canada, two very different groups of people.
Allan: Now, last month, we talked about that interest rate. Decrease and how that's hopefully going to turn things in the right direction. Are we seeing that trend happening yet?
Sean: Not yet al and that's that's going to take some time. I mean that impacts borrowing right? So I mean mortgages need to renew There's still a whole whack of mortgages that were issued at, you know Two and two and a half percent right that are coming for renewal right now, right? Which even if they renew it Four and a half, five percent. That's still a doubling of the interest on those mortgages, right?
Give you an example, restaurants. I think we talked about that in the last show. It's still trending down. It's more flattening out, but we've had negative year over year growth in restaurants for 31 consecutive [00:19:00] weeks now that goes back to the middle of. March, since we saw positive year over year growth, we're currently down, 2% year over year, average transaction size also off about 2%. So it's not a time right now where Canadians are, running out to restaurants on a whim. That's for sure.
Allan: People are still trying to save for that rainy day. I mean, you know, with a few more, hopefully decreases we're looking at in the near future. I mean, I'm one of those people, my mortgage is up in the spring, so I'm, I'm, I'm cheering those decreases on.
Sean: I'll give you one more category, Al, just to, you know, show you how this is pretty much a right across the board, less of a propensity to spend looking at apparel.
Apparel hasn't been as hard hit as restaurants this year in Canada, but we're still 12 straight weeks. So that's like three straight months of weekly year over year declines. Apparel was off as of two weeks ago. So middle of September, it was off 9%. You're over your first spend on apparel.
Allan: Well, Sean, I'm looking forward to the days where we have these chats and we start talking [00:20:00] about the good news again and I'm hoping that happens soon.
Sean: It's the beauty of capitalism. My friend, what goes down must come up and what goes up must come down. It's the pendulum.
Allan: Yes. Well, thank you so much for your time this month.
Sean: Okay, brother.
Allan: I'm joined by Ella Urquhart. She's the events manager at Moneris. Ella, thank you for joining me today.
Ella: Thanks for having me, Al. It's good to be back.
Allan: So by the time people hear this. Elevate Festival will have come and gone, and I'm sure that you will have had a big part in making it a huge success. Looking forward to seeing you at the festival next Wednesday.
Ella: Yeah, it's going to be great. We have a lot of Moneris speakers on stage, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes.
Allan: So now we're talking about the October calendar of events. What do you have for us?
Ella: Well, as you've already been talking about, this is Small Business Month, and we are proud to support our local communities by once again partnering with Ronald McDonald House Charities Canada on the Good for Small campaign.
We are showcasing the big impact that small businesses have in their community. In collaboration with our small business partners, we're proud to donate $200,000 to RMHC Canada, which enables [00:21:00] 847 nights of stay for families with sick children, ensuring that they can remain together and close to the care that they need.
Allan: I love this charity and this cause. I actually just spoken to some friends who unfortunately have had to use the services of Ronald McDonald House. So it is such an important cause, and I'm thrilled that Moneris is part of this.
Ella: Yeah, we love supporting RMHC Canada, and in fact, we are actually supporting their 5th Annual Great Games Challenge that's happening on October 17th as well.
So we're a proud sponsor of this fundraising event, and it's aimed at supporting families with sick children in need. And team Moneris will be stepping up to the plate to show off our trivia knowledge. So wish us luck.
Allan: All right. And if folks wanted more information on that, where would they go?
Ella: They can visit rmhccanada.ca for more info.
Allan: Great. Do you have anything else?
Ella: Yes. To close out Small Business Month, Moneris will be at the City of Toronto Small Business Forum, which is taking place on October 30th at Meridian Hall.
Allan: For more information on that, where would people [00:22:00] find it?
Ella: They can visit the City of Toronto website for more information on that forum.
Allan: Okay, cool. And I'll post links to both the Ronald McDonald House and the Small Business Forum in the show notes to this episode. So check it out.
Thank you so much for your time Ella.
Ella: Thanks for having me, Al.
Allan: That's all we have time for this month. I hope you found it informative. I know I did. Before I sign off, I'll post links to everything we talked about in this podcast in the show notes, so check those out. And if you're listening right now and you have any questions about anything business related, you can email us at podcast@Moneris.Com and we'll try to answer them in future episodes.
On behalf of Stephanie, Sean, Ella, myself, and the rest of Moneris, it's just good business saying thank you for listening. See you in November.