The Free Government Money Myth
I get highly irritated at those scum bags who advertise that you can get free government money just by paying them a huge fee or buying their overpriced book. This article:
The Myth of Free Government Money: A Perennial and Pernicious Scam
Why do so many entrepreneurs believe in the Tooth Fairy? located at:
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/0001/sa000111.htm lays out the scam behind the title.
Sadly it is true that a sucker is born every minute. I think that people are trying to get rick quick so they come up with a type of scam people will believe in. They know people always are looking for easy money and if they include the word "goverment" it would seem legit.
The Government really do give out free money. They call this free money "Grants".
But you don't need to pay any scum-artist to get hold of this money.
I held a couple of literacy programs for kids in the local area in my own time. The government decided I was doing a great community service, so they paid me a couple of handy grants for my trouble.
Free government money! (and I still didn't even have to pay anyone to get it) I just wrote to the government, told them what I was after and they agreed!
I really should host another one now that I really need the extra cash.... but who has free time these days?
Yes, they are called grants and they are available. But, they all come with conditions. You can not sidle up to a government office, stick out your hand and walk away with cash in hand.
In your case, you actually had a community oriented program that was actually providing a service to the community. I don't know what your application process was, but I bet you had to apply through some sort of agency and then meet whatever requirements were part of the program.
In any event, you at least weren't trying to scam a few bucks for your personal use. Thanks for doing some good in the community.
I think the reason it works so well is most people equate the US government with frivolous spending and think they have a shot to have some of that money frivolously spent on them. ;-)
I have heard of one guy who actually pulled this off. California offered some grant to encourage people to put solar panels on their house and were willing to pay the first $X amount per panel which covers the majority of the cost for most solar panels. Well they forgot to set a limit on them, so some guy bought tons of these panels in bulk for a discounted rate, got the grant money to cover the majority of the expenses and now uses them to sell electricity back to the power company.
That's priceless you can only bend over so long before you feel the need to return the favor :-)
Awww the old grant myths, what fun are those. You can easlily go to the library and find out where to apply for grants for free. I never realized how nieve people really were.
