Citizens Community Champion Award

The Middlesex County Revitalization Commission offers grants to qualified small businesses in Middlesex County, Connecticut. The grants are designed to provide operating assistance for small businesses to continue and grow their operations. This is a five-year grant program. The MCRC Business Operating Grants Program will distribute $200,000 in grants annually from 2023 to 2027. Small businesses (up to 50 employees and under $8 million in revenue) that have been in business for at least two years in a Middlesex County town may be eligible to apply. Businesses may apply for up to $25,000 to help fund projects that spur business growth or mitigate a hardship.

A grant program for artistic and cultural projects in the city of Seattle. As a small awards program, smART Ventures encourages innovation and widens cultural participation, particularly by individuals, organizations, and communities that may not qualify for other funding programs. Accepting applications year-round, smART Ventures is flexible, inclusive and simple. It provides support ranging from $500 to $1,500, proving that small investments can have big impacts.

The BBB Breakthrough Accelerator provides emerging small business owners with a 12-week accelerator program valued at over $5,000, culminating in a microgrant (typically $1,000 to $1,500) awarded to every graduate at the end of the program. Administered by the BBB Foundation for Education and Entrepreneurial Leadership (FEEL), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit affiliated with the Better Business Bureau, the accelerator is delivered in person at BBB campuses across the country, including Cromwell (CT), Fresno (CA), Phoenix and Prescott (AZ), Richmond (VA), and San Diego (CA). The program equips small business owners with the strategies, mentorship, and tools needed to grow with intention, resilience, and integrity, with particular focus on those building without consistent access to traditional resources or support systems. Participants pay a $99 program and materials fee to attend, and the curriculum covers core business topics including branding and digital presence, financial and legal foundations, sales, marketing, AI strategies, operations and leadership, and entrepreneurial resilience. To qualify, applicants must be actively running a registered, revenue-generating business with at least six months of operation, be early in their growth journey, and be ready to strengthen operations and scale with intention. In addition to the microgrant and educational programming, graduates receive one-on-one mentorship and strategy calls, on-site childcare during sessions, complimentary professional headshots, business tools to strengthen their online presence, curated networking with industry leaders and peers, and (at the San Diego location only) six months of coworking, podcast studio, and meeting room access.

This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) encourages applications for investigator-initiated mid-phase clinical trials of natural products(i.e., botanicals, dietary supplements, and probiotics), which have a strong scientific premise to justify further clinical testing. For this NOFO, natural products include promising nutritional regimens that standardize the amount of a specific naturally occurring nutritional compound (e.g., omega-3 fatty acids, anthocyanidins, or polyphenols) and have compelling preliminary evidence. All applications submitted under this NOFO must be supported by sufficient preliminary data demonstrating bioavailability (if applicable) and documentation that the natural product produces a reproducible and measurable impact on target engagement (i.e., measure of the mechanism of action). Only in cases when it is not possible/practical to measure target engagement in the patient population of interest or when there is a fundamental understanding of the products mechanism of action will this preliminary data requirement be waived. Applications submitted to this NOFO should propose a mid-phase clinical trial to do the following: determine the optimal dose or formulation of a given natural product for use in a future multi-site efficacy trial; or determine which patient phenotypes will be responders versus non-responders to the natural product to inform inclusion/exclusion criteria of a future efficacy trial. Clinical trials submitted under this NOFO are expected to be hypothesis based, milestone-driven, and directly related to the research priorities and mission of NCCIH. This NOFO will not support single-site or multi-site efficacy or effectiveness trials, nor will it support trials to test natural products for the treatment or prevention of cancer. Applicants are encouraged to contact the appropriate NCCIH Scientific/Research contact for the area of science for which they are planning to develop an application prior to submitting to this NO

Workforce+ is a Performance Grant option that allows TVA to make an investment in competitive economic development projects focused on building a highly skilled and qualified workforce. Award amounts are paid directly to the company and are contingent on companies meeting the minimum requirements of the Performance Grant Program. Funding amounts are based upon approval of the company’s talent pipeline development plan.