How to Find the Right Grant for Your Business

Before opening any search tool, write down four things: your state or territory, your industry or sector, your business size (sole trader, under 20 employees, over 20), and what you need the money for. These four criteria eliminate roughly 80% of grants immediately.

Most grants are either state-specific or Commonwealth-wide. A NSW-based business cannot apply for a Victoria-only program, no matter how well the project fits. Filtering by jurisdiction is always the first step.

Government grants have three main statuses: open (accepting applications now), ongoing (no fixed close date, rolling intake), and forecast (announced but not yet open). Closed grants are not worth reading unless you're researching for next year.

Focus your energy on open and ongoing programs. An open grant with a deadline in 30 days deserves more attention than a forecast program that may not open for six months. Sort by closing date when you can.

This is where most people waste time. A grant might look perfect based on the title — then you read the eligibility and discover it requires a minimum $500,000 annual turnover, or is restricted to primary producers, or only available to businesses in a regional postcode.

The most common eligibility filters are: minimum or maximum revenue thresholds, employee count caps (e.g. under 200 FTE), ABN age requirements (e.g. trading for 12+ months), industry restrictions (e.g. manufacturing only), and geographic restrictions (e.g. regional NSW only).

Check all of these before investing time in an application.

Many businesses don't realise they can apply for multiple grants simultaneously — a Commonwealth program and a state program covering the same project are often compatible, as long as the combined funding doesn't exceed the total project cost.

For example, a regional NSW food manufacturer could potentially stack the Commonwealth's Export Market Development Grant (EMDG) with a NSW Government manufacturing grant and a regional development rebate — all for the same export expansion project.

Always check the grant's terms on "co-funding" or "concurrent funding" before assuming you can stack.

Our grant finder lets you filter by jurisdiction, status, and funding type simultaneously, and search by keyword across titles, descriptions, and eligibility notes. A few tips:

Search for what the money is *for*, not the grant program name. Searching "export" will return grants for businesses expanding overseas. Searching "solar" or "energy efficiency" will return rebates and grants for clean energy upgrades.

If your search returns too many results, add a second filter — jurisdiction plus status narrows most searches to a manageable list. If it returns nothing, try a broader keyword (e.g. "technology" instead of "SaaS").

Self-service grant searching makes sense for straightforward situations — a single-state business with a clear project. But if your business operates across multiple states, works in a niche industry, or has a complex funding need, a professional grant finder is often worth the cost.

The reason: experienced researchers know which programs are competitive (lots of applicants, low success rate) versus which are underutilised. They also know about upcoming rounds before they're publicly announced, and can assess whether your application has realistic prospects before you spend weeks writing it.