Grant Funding Scams: The End-of-Year Money

Anyone working in grants, whether in grant writing or in grants management, knows there are a plethora of scam artists out there. Coming out of what has been yet another frantically busy peak season for federal Department of Education grants, it's a good time to pen an entry on some of the scams out there and discuss a few other questionable tactics encountered in the grant world.

We have some end-of-year grant money we have to use or lose.

This particular ploy is artfully crafted by someone who clearly knows at least something about the grant world. Typically, the call or email comes from some sort of vendor who states they have some left over grant money they can apply toward your purchase of their product, leaving you to pay only the reduced price of...sure. Don't fall for this nonsense unless you happen to have information on hand (preferably from an independent source) that verifies the price they are offering is in fact discounted (you will usually find it isn't).

To be clear, many vendors do in fact have grant writers on staff (or they contract with outside talent like yours truly). Keeping in mind that most vendors are for-profit companies, we all know "for-profit companies can't get grants"*. But, the vendor is almost never the fiscal agent for any grant they write; they write the grant for their customer who in turn uses the money to buy their product. In most cases this practice is perfectly appropriate and everyone wins. The only way a vendor is going to have extra grant money laying around is if they are the fiscal agent/grantee which is highly unlikely. The best way to stop calls and emails pushing one of these scams is simple; ask the representative to verify their source of funding. When they balk at this request, you'll know you're dealing with a scammer.

* This is actually a very common myth. For-profit companies can get some grants, but their options are more limited. We've provided some detail about grants for for-profits here.