NATIONWIDE – The new year brings new opportunities to start a business, embark on an artistic endeavor or bring a new innovation to life. 

Here is a compilation of grants and opportunities that young entrepreneurs, small businesses, creative artists, restaurateurs and tech innovators can apply for in 2023. 

Young Entrepreneur Grants

Diamond Challenge
The Diamond Challenge provides a unique opportunity for teens to learn about entrepreneurship while putting their ideas into action. The competition offers $100,000 in prizes and resources to take student ideas to the next level.
Deadline: January 9, 2023

VentureLab Spark Startup Materials & Mentorship Program
Started in 2019, VentureLab Spark Startup provides a four-month mentorship program to kids ages 8-18 with a business idea and up to $500 in materials to help them start or scale their business.
Spring cohort applications due by: January 16, 2023

The E-Team Program
The E-Team Program, part of the VentureWell Accelerator, supports student ventures. They help students advance their inventions through a mix of up to $25,000 in grant funding, entrepreneurship training, mentorship by dedicated staff, national recognition, and networking with peers and industry experts.
Deadline: February 1, 2023

Jacobson Innovator Competition
To encourage the entrepreneurial mindset in youth, the Jacobson Institute sponsors the Innovator Competition each fall and spring. The competition is for any high school student in grades 9-12. Students don’t need a background or coursework in business to compete. First place is awarded a $1,500 cash prize.
Deadline: April 17, 2023

Go For Yours Scholarship Fund
The Go for Yours Fund is available for artists, entrepreneurs, and trailblazers (ages 13-21). The ideal recipients have modeled a commitment toward reaching their goals and need funding to achieve a specific dream. Scholarship is $500.
Deadline: Year Around

Incfile Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Grant
Incfile, a business formation service, is awarding young entrepreneurs (high school senior, undergraduate, graduate, or trade school student) a scholarship to continue their education. Scholarship is $2,500.
Deadline: March 31st, June 30th, and September 30th.

Small Business Grants

Small Business Growth Fund
In partnership with GEN, the Small Business Growth Fund provides the capital high-growth small business owners need to make their next big move. Each recipient will receive a $25,000 grant, provided by Mastercard.

Deadline: January 6, 2023

FedEx Small Business Grant
Ten Grand Prize winners receive $30,000 each. Additional prizes may be available and will be posted to FedEx website.
Deadline: February 21, 2023

UPDATE: 64 Small Business Grants to Apply for in 2024

California Competes Tax Credit
The California Competes Tax Credit (CCTC)  is available to businesses that want to locate in California or stay and grow in California. Applicants will be analyzed based on twelve different factors of evaluation, including number of full-time jobs being created, amount of investment, and strategic importance to the state or region. Previous awards amounts have been a $20,000 minimum in tax credits and higher.
Deadline: January 23, 2023 & March 20, 2023

Halstead Grant
The Halstead Grant is an annual award for emerging silver jewelry artists. The experience is designed to help jewelry entrepreneurs create a strategy to kick-start their careers. The grand prize is a $7,500 cash grant and $1,000 in merchandise as well as recognition in the industry. Deadline: May 1, 2023

Amber Women’s Grant
WomensNet awards a $10,000 grant on a monthly basis to women-owned businesses. They also have an end of the year $25,000 grant award. There is a $15 application fee.
Deadline: Monthly

Awesome Foundation Grants
The Awesome Foundation distributes $1,000 grants, no strings attached, to projects and their creators. The foundation has awarded $6,083,000 in grant funding since 2009.
Deadline: Monthly

Incfile Fresh Start Business Grant
Whether you’re starting over or starting from scratch, Incfile wants to be there to help your business succeed. One adult entrepreneur will receive $2,500 to put toward business startup costs and will also receive free formation services from Incfile.
Deadline: March 31st, June 30th, and September 30th.

Food Industry Grants

The Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund
To help restaurants recover in times of critical need, DoorDash has partnered with Hello Alice to create the Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund. The fund supports restaurants impacted by natural disasters like fires, floods and hurricanes, and provides relief through $10,000 grants.
Deadline: January 3, 2023

Young Farmer Grant
The National Young Farmers Coalition – Young Farmers, has partnered with Chipotle to support young and beginning farmers and ranchers start up and grow their businesses with a flexible funding opportunity each spring.  

The program provides 75 farmers and ranchers with $5,000 grants. Grant recipients also received a one-year membership to the National Young Farmers Coalition.
Deadline: January 13, 2023

The Fruit Guys Community Fund
The Fruit Guys Community Fund grants range from $2,000 to $5,000 for projects that help small farms and orchards operate more environmentally and economically, as well as strengthen community outreach.
Deadline: January 30, 2023

Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund
The Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund is a small grant program that provides direct assistance to veterans who are in their beginning years of farming or ranching. The Fellowship Fund does not give money directly to the veteran, but rather to third-party vendors for items the veteran has identified will make a crucial difference in the launch of their farm business. Awards range from $1,000 to $5,000.
Deadline: February 2023

Fund a Farmer Grant
Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT) provides grants up to $3,000 to qualifying farmers who need assistance in improving the welfare of their farm animals. FACT offers two types of grants: Pasture Improvement Grants and Certification Grants.
Deadline: January 10, 2023

Brighter Future Fund
American Farmland Trust provides $5,000 grants to support farmers across America.
Deadline: Fall 2023

Art and Music Grants

Jack Hazard Fellowship
Jack Hazard Fellows are fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir writers who teach full-time in an accredited high school in the United States. We provide a $5,000 award that enables these creative writers who teach to focus on their writing for a summer.
Deadline: January 4, 2023

Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant
The Susan Beech Mid-Career Artist Grant provides $20,000 toward the completion of a significant jewelry-related project. The proposed project should be about jewelry, loosely defined. Applicants must be between the ages of 35 – 55.
Deadline: January 8, 2023

Translation Projects
Through fellowships to published translators, the National Endowment for the Arts supports projects for the translation of specific works of prose, poetry, or drama from other languages into English. Grants are up to $25,000. Award amounts are determined by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Deadline: January 12, 2023

The American Theatre Wing Training Scholarships
The American Theatre Wing is committed to fostering a future generation of theater makers that reflects the diversity and dynamism of America as a whole. 

Public middle and high school students who come from populations historically underrepresented in the theater industry, demonstrate talent and ability in theater arts, but have a lack of economic resources to receive high level training prior to college are eligible to apply. 

Scholarship funding can be used for: 

• Theater training programs that stand alone or are housed in professional theater settings
• Theater training camps
• After school classes or training programDeadline: January 13th, 2023

Outpost Residency
Outpost is a residency for creative writers of color from the United States and Latin America. Each September, two writers are awarded a $2,000 stipend as well as complimentary travel, lodging, and meals to spend a month cultivating a generative writing community in the mountains of Southern Vermont.
Deadline: January 15, 2023

Woodberry Poetry Room Creative Fellowship
The Creative Fellowship program invites poets, writers, translators, visual artists, composers, and scholars to propose creative projects that would benefit from an immersive encounter with the Woodberry Poetry Room and its collections. The fellowship includes a stipend of $5,000.
Deadline: February 1, 2023

Creative Writing Fellowships
The National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowships program offers $25,000 grants in prose (fiction and creative nonfiction) and poetry to published creative writers that enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement. Deadline: March 8, 2023

Walter Grant
The Walter Dean Myers Grant program was established to provide grants of $2,000 each to individuals working toward a career as a children’s author or illustrator who are currently unpublished. Since 2015, they have awarded 26 grants.
Deadline: Summer 2023

The Shirley Holden Helberg Grants for the Mature Women
The National League of American Pen Women, Inc. awards three grants of $1,000 each in art, letters, and music to women 35 years of age or older.
Deadline: September 30, 2023

The Pollination Project
The Pollination Project seeks to unleash goodness and expand compassion all over the world. Individuals, groups and startup non-profit organizations can apply for a $1,000 grant.
Deadline: Daily

Jonathan Larson Grant
The Jonathan Larson Grant is an unconditional annual investment in individual talent. The grant is awarded to musical theater composers, lyricists, and librettists, or writing teams, early in their career, to support artistic endeavors and safeguard long-term music writing careers.
Deadline: Fall 2023

Frank Huntington Beebe Fund
The purpose of the fund is to provide fellowships for gifted young musicians, generally performers and composers in classical disciplines, who wish to pursue advanced music study and performance abroad, usually in Europe. The fund provides financial support for round trip transportation, living and other expenses. An all-inclusive grant of $22,000 will be offered. Fellowships are for one year and are generally not renewable.
Deadline: December 2023

Tech Grants

California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development Initiative
The California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development Initiative (CalSEED) is a $24m grant program created to help early stage California clean energy startups bring their concepts and prototypes to market. Individuals, businesses and nonprofits are eligible to apply to the program. CalSEED awards $150,000 to 20 – 25 projects annually.
Deadline: March 5th, 2023

Grant for the Web
Grant for the Web is a $100 million fund to boost open, fair and inclusive standards and innovation in Web Monetization. The last Call for Proposals aimed to target the creation of more financial nodes in the Interledger network. Up to twenty projects were awarded $75,000.
Deadline: Sign up to receive Call for Proposals

Theil Fellowship
The Thiel Fellowship gives $100,000 to young people who want to build new things instead of sitting in a classroom. Open to anyone aged 22 and younger.
Deadline: Year Around