Denied FloorIsTired - Grant Application

[FloorIsTired]

Firm Name
Floor Financial

Which grant pool are you applying for?
Innovation, Startup, Research and Development (R&D)

How do you plan on using your grant funding?
I intend to use a significant portion of the money for advertising services, to support our professional network of Associated Accounting Professionals. We aim to connect businesses with Accountants to ensure that business finance services, record-keeping, and analytics are accessible. Other potential costs that funds would be used to cover would be to provide associates legal coverage in case of reneged payment agreements/provide liability protections. After steady clientele is developed we aim to expand business operations and may use leftover funds for that purpose.

We currently have 5 associate accountants and are quickly growing a network of financial professionals. Our business model is as a Freelance Network connecting accountant professionals to clients, and we take a commission cut of about 10% to handle costs of doing business and offer legal coverage to our associates.

Rates are independently set and negotiated per business by Associates, likely on a contract basis. Allowing the network flexibility to serve both small, medium, and big business in the long term.

Currently our main goal is to secure starting capital to set up the professional network as our base provided service in order to develop accessibility to accounting services to businesses, and move forward from there.

The business was formed under "Floor-Financial" in the plugin and can be found under that name.

Ideal Grant Amount $30,000

If awarded, I intend to use the grant money allocated to me for its intended purpose on which it was approved for, and provide a breakdown in my application thread of how the funding was used.
Yes

 

[inceee]

What are your advertising plans and how much do they cost?

 

[FloorIsTired]

What are your advertising plans and how much do they cost?

I haven't looked into the exact costs and where our ad focus would exactly be in too much detail yet, but I plan on purchasing ad space in press and some high traffic businesses, to try and spread the word more effectively and faster outside of just the discord. As well as purchasing billboards around a few communities.

I can estimate based on some known pricing options that for the first month of advertisements to maybe be about $20,000 if spent conservatively with about a 2 weeks of initial ad space purchased with press and businesses, and using the left over to purchase more affordable options of rented ad space for the next month.

We do have existing clients currently and word is spreading fast. So I imagine we just need to get on our feet this month, so people learn more about what we offer and how they can benefit. Due to the nature of Accounting work, jobs tend to be over long periods of time, which is why I am requesting for a grant to secure some starting capital to see if we can get us jump started a little bit quicker.

 

[Dept. Commerce]

Denied

Denied

DoC policy generally does not provide grants solely for operational costs.

 

[FloorIsTired]

I was hoping for this to be considered as startup funding, not as operating costs as there are hardly any involved at this stage, as this request was more for jump-starting a professional association for accountants to provide a high need of services for businesses off the ground, but I suppose maybe I didn't word it in the best way.

Thank you for your time regardless!

 

[inceee]

The main fundings that would have been used for this grant are advertising costs, which can usually be done for free. We therefore have determined that this is not an appropriate fund usage purpose. Furthermore, the core business revolves around being a middleman which doesn't require upfront investments. You are welcome to reapply again with different fund allocation usage/business ideas