Statistics [Getting Government Funding] For Your Business

When it comes to getting government funding for your small business in Canada, the easiest thing to do is to give up!

In fact, over the last few months we had a survey on our website which you may have been part of. This survey was created to figure out what people do in regards to applying and getting government funding. Here is a pie chart which we created based on the results of 10,000 + answers.

Getting Government Funding…

After reviewing the responses of over 10k individuals 2 numbers stand out a great deal. The first being at 51% of those (10,000+ surveyed individuals) seem to be afraid to try and apply for funding. The second is 22% of individuals give up on government funding mid application process. Others have answered that they have tried to apply for funding one to two times (at 14%), two to five times (at 9%) and more than five times (at 4%).

What does that tell you?

Not much maybe from where you’re sitting other then that 51% of people are afraid and that 22% give up (probably because it’s too hard).

To ensure that these results make sense to you, we followed up with those individuals who opted in to be surveyed to get a better understanding of their answers.

51% – Afraid To Try

After looking at the response of the individuals who stated that they were too afraid to try and apply for government funding the number one response that greatly exceeded other responses was the fact that the individuals simply didn’t know how to apply or where to apply to. Others with the same response often found themselves afraid to apply because they didn’t have a business plan ready, or had bad credit. Surprisingly only a small percentage didn’t have a business as of yet.

22% – Give Up

Out of those 10k individuals, 22% give up before they actually go through the process of applying and getting funding. The number one reason seems to be that they simply just don’t have the time to go research the funding programs, to create their business plan and to fill out the applications. The next statistic is that the application process is too hard, followed by lack of trust (that they will not get funding after all this work).

Getting Funding

One statistic stood out a lot from the other 3 metrics of those who actually applied for funding. Those who applied 1 to 2 times (14% of individuals), those who applied 2 to 5 times (9% of individuals) and those who applied 5 plus times (4%).

Those who applied only once to two times were the least likely to obtain government funding. Be it a government grant, loan or tax break credit, they had a success rate of only 5% on the initial 2 times of applying. The typical declined application responses were; insufficient information, lack of business plan, bad credit. poor representation..etc

Those who applied between 2 and 5 times to get government funding, seem to have converted to success at a rate of 11%. Those declined saw similar responses.

Finally those who applied for funding to multiple funding programs (5 + programs or 5+ times), converted to success at obtaining funding at 14%.

In conclusion, after looking at the responses of 10,000 plus individuals we were able to find out that more than half of those individuals simply were afraid to try and apply for funding, simply because they didn’t know how or where to go to apply. The others gave up before they were able to finish the applications for a variety of reasons such as difficulty of applications, lack of trust and the biggest, lack of time.  Those who did apply, were able to find success the more programs and the more times they applied.

Be it experience, extra knowledge after initial few times applying – those applying to 5 or more programs seem to be able to convert to a successful funding application 3 times as likely as those who apply only once or twice.

If you are ready to get funding for your small business, these metrics can help. Try our Funding Database to save time and find all of the available 1,500 funding sources directly.