In Government Grants for Women Part I, I told you about the great websites, Grants.gov and The Foundation Center, which you can find by Googling the name. Both of these are excellent resources for those looking for grants.

As to grants for starting businesses, the federal government is very interested in helping women and minorities get into entrepreneurship. So, a number of business related grants are geared toward helping minorities.

The only problem is what type of business to start.

Of course, there are an endless number of possibilities, here. Let’s take one, though, and discuss it.

You might want to think about starting a day care center. Day care is big business in the United States. It is the norm to have both parents work, so they need to have somewhere to put their children during the day. An entrepreneur can make big bucks with day care centers. I read recently about a woman who started a day care center in New Jersey, then expanded into a chain, then sold her business for several million dollars.

Day care is a fairly low tech business to start. Other than basic business skills, which you can pick up, there is no specialized knowledge you need. There are a number of local and state regulations you need to understand and follow, but all that takes is a willingness to find out what they are. All in all, day care can be an extremely profitable business.

You might be thinking you do not want to be surrounded by kids the rest of your working career. Well, get your business to a certain point, then hire a manager. You can stay in the office working on the back end of things.

There is enormous marketing potential with day care centers. I can think of a dozen or so cross-sell and up-sell products you might want to try. A cross-sell is another product you sell at the time of the original sale or after the original sale. An up-sell is a better, more expensive product you offer someone when they decide to buy. For example, let’s say some one decides to enroll their child in your day care from 9-12, Monday through Friday. A good up-sell might be something like offering them more tutoring services during that time, or offering them some number of pre-paid parents’ night out time.

Locate your day care in a good section of town, drawing from people who have more, not less, money to spend, and the sky will literally be the limit.

A day care would be an excellent business for a woman, minority or not, to try to fund with grant money. There would be a number of grants that might be helpful. The only problem is finding out about them. For that, you will need more resources. You can find out more about government grants for women from my website, which you can reach through the link in my bio box.

Lee Cole is a webpreneur. While investigating sources of funding for a new business venture, he learned about the world of government grants, which you can find out more about at his website, http://governmentgrants.weebly.com/