When you are looking for business funds whether you are starting one, maintaining or expanding your business, or buying another one, there are different categories that you can search under that may allow you to obtain more funds for the purpose. General business funds are great, but they are harder to get because there are so many business owners applying for them. Being an applicant of a specific category of business funds means that there will be less competition for each grant or loan, for example starting a business. If you apply for this one, than only people who are doing the same can apply for these business funds. If you were to apply for a generally business grant, you would be in a pool with those looking for the same, plus those looking for expansion funds, and even merger funds.
Having a look at the general types of business funds, there are grants, loans, and investments.
• Grants are usually applied for from the government, banks or other financial institutes that want to sponsor or help a business. Sometimes these are only offered in certain areas of the UK. For example, there are grants that are only available to businesses in Wales from the Welsh Assembly.
• The next type of business funds is the loan, which can be applied to at almost any financial institute and lender. These may come at higher interest rates from the smaller privatized lender, so read the fine print. Even if the payment terms are longer at a lower interest rate, you still may end up paying more interest than you realize. Go through the calculations to see which one is best for you if you take this route.
• Investments are the third main type of business funds. Most individuals or teams try this route when they cannot get a grant or loan. It means giving up a portion of your profits from the business to repay the money and for the investor to reap benefit from helping you out as well. This makes it good for both of you.
Although these seem pretty simple to understand, there are different sub-categories in each one, especially the first two. This is mainly because they are offered from different institutes that support various causes for purposes of their own.
Small business is actually quite a large category where you can find all sorts of options for business funds whether loans or grants. Many banks and other financial institutes will help the starter without a past record or default because they know that in some way they or the economy will be lifted if there is a success. Even business funds for small companies have their smaller groupings though. If you search in the Yahoo! Directory for business, you will find help for home based businesses, businesses online, small business promotional site, and many more.
Business funds for medium sized businesses can be found on the same directory albeit not in the same abundance. Other sites like www.cmrworld.com will be able to help you out there because they not only specialize in small and medium business funds and advice, but they serve just about any legitimate business. They are incredibly successful at what they do because they have many professionals that work in different areas of the field that can advise you of which set of business funds to apply for.
If you visit Business Link on the web, you will find other categories of business funds that you can find help in applying for. An interesting yet complicated business to run is one that uses international trade. You can apply for loans and grants if your business deals with imports and especially with exports. The latter one means more money coming into the country which is why business funds are more readily available for this industry. When using this site, it is better to register first so that you will have full access. You will be able to print off forms for various governmental agency grants or loans. You will need to check any applicable deadlines or restrictions for these business funds before completing the application. For any other type of funding, there is a directory link for you to use as well.
On the same site, you will also find information pertaining to business funds for growing your business, or buying and selling a business. If you are unsure about the process to follow for any of these categories they have professional advisers available to help you locate what you are looking for.
FreeIndex.co.uk has many different sources of business funds listed. This site acts like more of a directory to find sources for you, but they do contain various categories of these business funds. One such listing if for Art and Design Projects which basically comes from a firm that wants to help those that are self-employed whom are in the art and design profession. This specific firm helps those located in the North East Manchester area.
This is only one example of a specific target for business funds. There are also those available for technology and others. They key is to search for them in the right places. Directories online created specifically for companies locating possible sources of business funds in the UK are a good place to start. It may surprise you at what you might find. In looking for these, you only have to use the search engines – the ones specifically based on the UK are better, such as Yahoo! UK. This just means that all of the results that are yielded will be in the UK and not spread out across the world.
Business funds from the European Union are possible of course as well, so looking through these will have some benefit for you. The only disadvantage is the time it will take to sort through them. It is recommended that when you find them for you to look through the location and qualifications at the very beginning so that time will not be wasted. Then check the deadline to see if it has passed. When applying for any type of business funds, don’t be afraid to ask for expert help because it could be the difference between receiving the money and having to look elsewhere.