How I Got a $1 Million Dollar Grant in Assisted Living
May 27, 2025
Getting grants for your assisted living facility is not an easy process and, but it’s possible! In this blog, I’ll break down exactly how I secured a $1 million grant, and how you can use the same strategies to fund your facility.
Let’s dive in! 🚀
Check out this video, too;
Why Grants Are Game-Changers for Your Facility
Grants are one of the ways you can get funding for your assisted living business. They're hard to find, but they have some great advantaged too, including that they don’t have to be repaid, and they can help you with everything from expansion to new technology.
But how do you actually get one?
Let’s walk through the process.
Step 1: Find Grant Opportunities
The first step in securing a grant is finding one that fits your business.
Here’s how I do it:
🔍 Grant Search Platforms: I use websites like Grant Gopher or Grants.gov to find opportunities.
💡 Tip: Search for “Assisted Living” or related terms to find specific grants that align with your business.
Once you find a grant, carefully read the description. Does it match what you need for your facility? For example, some grants are for building improvements, while others may focus on digitization or job creation.
If it aligns with your needs and your business, move on to the next step: applying!
Step 2: Write a Strong Grant Proposal
Your grant proposal needs to be clear, professional, and persuasive. Luckily, I’ve got a resource to help with that:
📌 Grant Writing Template: Use this template to guide you through the process.
When writing your proposal, make sure to address:
✅ Why You Need the Grant – Clearly state your goals and how the funds will help.
✅ How You’ll Use the Money – Be specific about what you’ll spend the funds on, whether it’s staff, equipment, or facility improvements.
✅ Impact – Demonstrate how this grant will benefit your facility, your residents, and your community.
Step 3: Submit Your Proposal and Follow Up
Once you’ve written your proposal, it’s time to submit it!
Many grants have specific deadlines and instructions, so make sure you follow those carefully. Most grant opportunities will also tell you how they review applications (e.g., annually, monthly, or whenever they receive submissions).
💡Pro Tip: After you submit your grant application, stay on top of communication. Follow up to check the status of your application, and be ready to provide any additional information if needed.
Step 4: Understand the Reimbursement Process
One important thing to know about many grants is that they don’t just hand you the money upfront. Most grants work on a reimbursement model, which means you’ll likely have to pay for the services/items up front and then provide an invoice for reimbursement before you get reimbursed.
For example, with my $1 million grant, I had to provide regular updates, including:
💡 Monthly Reports – I submitted monthly updates showing how the funds were being used.
💡 Quarterly Reports – I had to report quarterly updates on the grant, detailing how the funds were used and the progress we were making with the new items we'd received through the grant.
This is a good thing! It keeps you accountable and helps make sure you’re spending the funds properly.
Step 5: Document Everything for Compliance
Grant funding comes with compliance requirements. The key here is documentation.
💡 Tip: Keep a record of all your receipts, contracts, and reports. This will help you stay organized and avoid any issues if your grant is audited.
Documenting every step you take ensures that you can easily demonstrate how you used the funds and helps you stay on track with your goals.
Step 6: End-of-Grant Reporting
Once your grant period ends, you’ll need to submit a final report. This is where you’ll showcase the impact of the grant.
🔍 What They Want to Know:
✅ How You Used the Funds – Provide a breakdown of how the money was spent.
✅ The Impact – Show how the grant helped your business and residents. For example, did you create new jobs? Were you able to improve care for your residents?
Grant organizations want to see the difference their funding made, and your report will help you show them the value.
Step 7: Stay Compliant and Continue Reporting
Once the grant is complete, it’s not over! Staying compliant is crucial if you want to apply for future grants. Keep records of how you used the funds and continue following up as necessary.
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
💡 Ready to start your own journey with grants?
✅ Step 1: Search for grants on Grant Gopher or Grants.gov.
✅ Step 2:Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
✅ Step 3: Stay organized and document everything—this will make your grant journey smoother!
Interested in learning more?
💡 Download the Grant Writing Template to get a head start on your grant proposal!
Got questions? Drop them in the comments below! ⬇️
Show full transcript 👇
Transcript
00:00:02
hey friend it is Brandon Gustafson with Assisted Living investing excited to be here with you today on our live session um at Assisted Living investing we're here to help beginners like you uh launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months so excited to have you here with me on the channel today we are going to be talking about how I got a $1 million Grant I have seen a lot of interest from people uh in the group about this and so excited to kind of share this with you uh as we get into
00:00:29
this a little bit uh let me get this thing ready to go really quick U before we get started though have a another resource for you make sure I want to remind you to get over to the website Assisted Living investing. net um and go over to Grant SLG Grant I'm going to have a ticker it's going across the bottom of of the thing here today um so you can go and grab that but this is my grant writing template that I provide for people um so if you are interested in in getting this then I want to make sure that you grab
00:01:01
that uh it's something I give for free to everybody uh that wants it so again that's Assisted Living investing. netg grants and that will get you that um get that get that resource for you right there uh just about have this on here sorry I was a little flustered earlier today I was working on a project and kind of last lost track of time so a few minutes later than I would like to be um so just trying to orient myself alrighty U so I think we've got that up and we'll go ahead and add this on here so
00:01:32
million-dollar Grant um how did I get a million-dollar Grant that's what we're going to talk about today make sure you get again over to Assisted Living investing. netg grants to get that free underwriting template uh for those of you that don't know who I am uh my name is Brandon Guston I own two assisted living facilities out of state I live in Salt Lake one of my facilities is in Colorado Springs in Colorado and the other one is in NAA Idaho which is near boisey so I operate those remotely have
00:01:58
been doing this since 2020 have a masters in healthcare administration have worked in the healthcare industry for over a decade uh so a lot of experience a lot of that with government programs and working for nonprofits so in my professional career I've actually secured multi-million dollar grants um really large grants for organizations that this is how they function because they're nonprofits for my own uh for for what I've done I've secured one and a half million in SBA funding to acquire um my
00:02:26
my businesses plus some other things that I've done in the past and have done 1.2 million in grant funding and we're going to get into that a little bit in our video today so if you new here make sure you type in newbie I would love to see um who's here and if you are kind of experienced and assisted living and are interested in learning more about grants and type in operator down below and as you have questions just go ahead and type those in we'll have some time here at the end of the call uh or at the end
00:02:52
of the live session to go over uh any of your questions whether they're related to Grants or other things uh just go ahead and type those in I'll try to keep an eye on the chat and if there's something that's like relevant to what we're doing uh what we're talking about in a given moment I will try to um you know jump in and answer that as well as as we go along so let's get into it uh let's talk about grants what are they grants are essentially free money um but
00:03:19
they are for a specific purpose and so something you need to realize with grants is um these are they're individuals or they are organizations they have money they want to give it away because it it allow it gives them a tax break um is the the short version of why they want to give this money away um but they need to do something that is uh kind of in alignment with their Mission Vision Values with the goals of the company and things like that so when you start looking at Grants and grant opportunities what you're going to find
00:03:51
is it's not just free money that you can spend on whatever it's going to be for a specific purpose when it comes to Assisted Living this could be uh some that could help you out is under serving an underserved population uh which would include the elderly or could be um some racial or ethnicity things um it could be a population that needs you know mental health or special needs um developmental disabilities those types of of spaces are what you could potentially see grants in um but they
00:04:21
are organizations or individuals that are passionate about that group of people for whatever reason it could be housing um you know providing them with housing it could be um providing them with support through Staffing um you know the support that they need uh for to to just live like the services that we provide in Assisted Living so it could be any number of things grants are out there um they they are for you can find things for $500 you can find things for a million dollars um there's a lot
00:04:53
of opportunities out there for Grants but at its core money that you get to have if you're a for-profit organization you're going to have to count these These funds uh there's a tax um piece of that that you want to understand and talk to your accountant about so you understand exactly what that looks like and how it will impact you um but it's it's money that you can use to make improvements to your house to find and higher Staff to potentially open a facility uh there's opportunities out
00:05:22
there all over the place so the next question that I that I see is do you need to be a nonprofit and the answer to that is no I am a for-profit organization um it it could certainly help you if you're a nonprofit but I I I'm I'm a for-profit organization uh and I've been able to secure over one you know over a million dollars I have one grant that is just over a million and another one that was $200,000 um as a for-profit organization so they are out there for you even if you are a for-profit organization uh but
00:05:54
I want to pause and talk for a second about nonprofits so nonprofits it's it seems like a really good idea and I'm not saying that it's not a good idea what I want you to understand is if you become a nonprofit there is a completely different structure that you have to have you have to have a board of advisers you have to take minutes uh in a certain way um you can still be profitable um it just money has to come around in in different ways um and it can be a lot more complex setting up the
00:06:24
entity the correct way can also be more complex so you're going to probably spend more money setting up your entity in the first place so you you if you want to do this correctly you could go on Legal Zoom or somewhere else and set up a nonprofit uh super easy kind of put it together um and and learn how to do that but if you want to do things correctly and not run into any audit issues in in in the future I would highly suggest that you talk to talk to an attorney that you follow all the things that are going to allow you to
00:06:53
maintain your nonprofit status um and continue moving forward with that the other thing to note with grants is um it it could potentially help you if you're a nonprofit to get grants um there's a lot I would say there's more opportunities for nonprofits to get grants but they want it to be an established nonprofit not something that you set up two weeks ago and now you're seeking grants um that's not necessarily what they're looking for they want something that has been established that
00:07:20
has proven that they've done something for at least a year often times for as long as three years before they feel comfortable and that's where um a lot of people they they like the idea of grants they hear about it and and it's a cool thing but it is also something you have to kind of pump the brakes on a little bit because they are they can be hard to get um there's a process and you just kind of have to understand what you're getting into so um that's the difference between a for-profit and a nonprofit
00:07:45
organization when it comes to Grants now let's talk about my grants um and and what hold on a second I feel like I skipped a thing nope I didn't okay sorry I thought I was I think there's another slide on here but but it must be later so um my grants let's talk about those for a second so I have received two grants these are in the state of Colorado um so you know I'm wearing an Idaho hat right now but we also operate in Colorado and uh in Colorado they received arpa funds actually every state
00:08:17
received arpa funds this is covid era grants U so these were these were Grant funds that came or they were funds that came through arpa um that were distributed out to the states and states were able to allocate them in different areas often times they ended up putting a lot of the funds into Health Care programs and in the state of Colorado uh one of the programs that they did this for was associated with long-term care um Senior Care um types of facilities Assisted Living um Residential Care uh
00:08:52
facilities Alternative Care Facilities uh you know just a a myriad of of areas but in the healthcare realm and and Colorado um we were on email lists this is how we found out about the grant opportunities we are on email lists um they would send out the information about the grants and then you just had to go and apply for it they would give you all of the the instructions on how to apply you know here's here's your you have to submit your your Grant proposal uh you have to tell us XYZ how you're
00:09:20
going to use the funds what you're going to do with them what are the results going to be there's a lot of things that you have to put into that Grant proposal and then how you're going to report on that and then uh just kind of moving forward so we went and uh determined that there were we actually determined there were three grants that we wanted um the third one we did not get um I think we should have but we didn't um actually it was the one that I thought I felt most confident
00:09:45
that we were going to get um but the other ones are the ones that we got and one is um it's called dollars to digitize and it was to allow us to digitize a lot of what we do inside of the facility buying new laptops and iPads um getting uh electronic Healthcare record set up um printers fax machines um just things that that you would need to to turn everything you have from paper and this is actually a thing that you have to be concerned with as a small facility because sometimes you don't know what you're doing and and
00:10:17
you just do paper stuff with your your uh pharmaceutical records and and your resident notes and things like that it can be really hard to track those things and keep them and then you know if there's a fire then they they get lost digit izing these things is going to be helpful so that's what the purpose of this grant was for and it was a $200,000 Grant the bulk of that was to pay an EHR vendor to create a system for us um the other one uh was what is called the single occupancy Grant and it is
00:10:45
intended to create more single occupancy and promote um Health um the the idea with it is we create more um single occupancy spaces within the home so that uh decreases the the spread of disease uh like covid and also that it would allow us to create more autonomy and give the residents a little bit more um you know personal space and things like that which in a home like ours that we have in Colorado which is a an old four-story home that was built in the 1890s um that has a lot of shared rooms this is actually really beneficial
00:11:24
for us uh to be able to to utilize and this is a million dollar Grant and we're using it to upgrade the infrastructure of the building and to create um some of these single occupancy spaces within the house um as best we can we we're not able to create like single rooms it just doesn't work for us but we are able to create um privacy walls that that are like permanent and they go up almost all the way to the very top of the ceiling that don't impact um sprinkler systems and things like that uh there's there's
00:11:51
a whole process that goes into it um so if you're interested and learning more about that and the specifics of the single occupancy grant that I have just type in single occup cany down below and I can do a video that's kind of specific to that as we progress on that Grant we actually um just recently submitted things from our architect um to the state um and county for approvals and things so we can start construction which will happen here in the next couple of week weeks which is really
00:12:18
really exciting for us um but those are the grants that we were able to secure and the purpose of them now the thing that that I mentioned UPF front is you have to be aware with grants they are going to um they're going to have it be for a purpose so these two grants one is dollars to digitize it is specific to digitizing um digitizing the the things within the facility um to to move us over to that to that you know that type of of medium the other one is single occupancy sing Single occupancy which is
00:12:51
intended to promote health and autonomy with our residents it is for a specific purpose and we can't just go and do construction because we want to add on an extra 10 rooms or something like that it has to be for the specific purpose of the Grant and we have to show that through our receipts and invoices and inspections that happen throughout the entire Grant period and monthly reporting that we have to do um so we have to demonstrate that we're using the funds appropriately so that we can continue receiving funds
00:13:21
and we don't get in trouble um especially in this case from the government um we need to make sure that we are aligning with with what the the purpose of the Grant is so that this this is the example that I I was telling you earlier it has to be for a specific purpose it's not a here's a million dooll Grant now go do whatever you want with it um that is not how grants work it is for a specific purpose so um let's get over here this is how you find a grant and creating your proposal this is
00:13:49
the slide that I was looking for that I couldn't find so how do you find a grant there are two incredible resources that uh that I have uh well not that I have that that you have available to you to help you find grants uh there are websites they are grants.gov and grantg gopher.com really solid resources for you to to kind of pay attention to and uh and and go and look at and get familiar with um they each have their own little like search um tools and things like that so you can leverage them to find
00:14:25
Opportunities and figure out um how much a grant opportunity might be offering you and what you need to do to comply and are you going to be able to do that um the other thing that you'll want to notice note is you know I told you that it needs to be for a specific person or purpose and it needs to be you know potentially for a group of people something that you'll find um is sometimes they give grants for minority owned businesses or women-owned businesses or things like that so you might be able to find something like
00:14:55
that that it's probably not going to be a million dollar Grant but it could be a few thousand to kind of help you get started and and maybe that's you can use it as part of your down pay mode or buy the furniture for the house or or something along those lines um you can you can find these funds that are out there and grants.gov and go granto for.com incredible resources to kind of get you started um as you're going down that path um if you stay tuned and especially if you go and grab the this
00:15:20
this template Grant uh that you go to Assisted Living investing. net SL grants um that I've got going down on the ticker um that will get you on my email list and the reason why that's important is I'm going to be creating a course actually for this um so if you're interested in the course type in course down below um and I'm going to be working on this and hopefully releasing it here in the fall um but it's going to be this is how you go and use these tools and how you um actually write a
00:15:45
grant and what that's going to look like so you can use that um as a tool to to help you get these grants so if you're interested in that again type in course down below and uh make sure you get this this grant writing template and then you'll get on email list and I as soon as I release that I will let you know you'll be the first to know um actually that that specific group of people that that give this grant writing template are are probably going to get like a little special promotion so just you
00:16:11
know I can see that on my end so if you want that make sure you go and grab that that free resource um when you find a grant opportunity what you want to do here is you want to read through it um and I don't have an example up to show you but if you go to grantg gopher.com you type in you know Assisted Living it's going to come up with dozens of opportunities you would click on the on an opportunity it's going to have a paragraph on there it's going to say this is the purpose of our grant um
00:16:38
this is who we serve this is why we why we are offering grant funding for an opportunity for you to do this with Assisted Living um and you read that and you say does this align with what I'm doing with my facility or not and if it does then they'll typically have a link that goes to their website which is going to take you to the application more information and things like that um once you do that then you can use this grant writing template that I'm giving you um at Assisted Living investing.
00:17:04
netg grants and you could write your Grant proposal um following the template that is in there and then you submit it um they're going to have timelines like if you go on their website go on Grant goer or grants.gov um they're going to have the paragraph of what the grant is they're going to uh give you timelines for when they review and process grants and uh what the application process looks like some of them do this on accordly basis some do it annually some do it monthly um it's just kind of some
00:17:33
do it just kind of whenever they receive applications they just kind of uh review them as they get them and then we'll um sub and then process them that way but that's how you find a grant that's how you put together a grant proposal and and then once you get it U then you just kind of have to make sure you're staying in compliance with with that Grant to kind of help you along the path so that you can continue receiving funds and that you're using those funds appropriately and you don't get any
00:18:01
weird audits or or anything like that you want to avoid all of that stuff but that's kind of how those work um during that funding period you submit the grant uh application they say yes we want to work with you um at that point most grants do not just give you a blank check and say Here's $5,000 here's a million dollar go use it however you want and put it in your bank account rather they will do it on kind of a reimbursement type of a model and so um this is not always the casee so you may
00:18:31
get somebody that says here's $5,000 we like what you're doing um that could be the case um in the grants that I have it is much more of a reimbursement model and so I have to do monthly reporting um for for my dollar for my um single occupancy grant for the dollars to digitize it was a quarterly report but I had a regular Cadence of reporting that I had to do um and then once I did that we have to demonstrate the use of those funds how are we using them did we pay vendor to to go and actually build the system for us um you
00:19:03
know I've hired an architect firm to take care of stuff are they actually doing things do we have the plans uh that that they're doing uh so you have to kind of show proof of the use of those funds so that they feel confident enough to reimburse you and then you just want to document everything just and and this is great recommendation for you owning an assisted living business as well but you want to document every single thing that you do as you go through the process because this that's
00:19:30
what's going to um allow you if in the event that there is an audit and you want to avoid that if you have documented everything it's going to make it so much easier to hand that over um and and get outside you know and not have to deal with anything from that standpoint that's what you expect during the funding period um at the end of the grant there will also be kind of like a uh uh I don't know it's like an after action review uh type of a report it's like your monthly report just a little
00:19:57
bit deeper here that regular report just a little bit more in depth uh they want to see how you use the funds the impact that it had the reason why is a lot of these organizations they end up being nonprofits or they end up being trusts and they are actually really interested in um seeing the impact that their money is making um in in the world and so you want to kind of track that and say you know we had you know we saved um 10 jobs because of this grant or we created 10 jobs or we um we were able to um touch
00:20:28
the lives of 20 of our residents at our facility or 10 or whatever number it is and this is how we did it XYZ um so they like to see that stuff and so when you're documenting everything as you go through it you're doing that regular reporting that end of Grant reporting um that you do is actually going to be really um simple to to kind of get through so um hopefully that has been helpful for you giving you kind of an overview of how I got my million Grant um how we've used it and how you can go
00:20:56
about finding grants yourself um to to see what you looking for and if you are again interested in learning more about uh Grant make sure you go get the the the grant writing template Assisted Living investing. netg grants and if you are interested in getting a course just type in course down below um I am going to be creating that and we'll hopefully have that out at some point so some of you that are watching this um once we get that course created we'll put a link down below uh in the video on YouTube so
00:21:23
uh make sure you go and grab that I want to remind you to like the video subscribe and ring the bell as well so you get notified every time we go live we do this on Tuesday afternoons and we also do uh content on Thursday mornings that we put out there and um Elena thank you for for that comment U make sure you grab that grant writing template and then I'll get you you'll be on the email list so that once I drop that course um it will you'll be the first to know um for that so I don't have it created just
00:21:49
yet um but it's something I'm going to be working on hopefully over the summer and releasing here the next um few months okay um anyways if there's any other questions please please type those in below I've got a few minutes to answer any questions that anybody has and grants not grants whatever questions that you have uh but want to thank you for for being here and and watching I love helping people uh guide them through a lot of different things uh especially Assisted Living um you know
00:22:18
what would I do here at Assisted Living investing is help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months uh we have a five-step process and step three of that is funding and inside of that is where you kind of have grants that kind of fits into that into that realm and uh you know it's it's something that if you can find them and they're a good fit for you then it's going to benefit you quite a bit so uh I want to thank you again for watching thanks everybody for being
00:22:44
here um reminder get over to Assisted Living investing. netr um and also remember if you're a beginner and you need help with all of this stuff at Assisted Living investing I'm here to help people like you launch their Assisted Living business in the next 12 months uh if you want to learn more go check out our Mastermind program at Assisted Living investing. netmaster take you through everything it's a year-long program uh you know that five-phase process that I just previously mentioned we take you through
00:23:12
all of it and uh just kind of help you get that business up and running I love you know the people that we have in in The Mastermind right now they're incredible love working with them we actually have a one our our monthly Q&A call is coming up on Thursday so if you are interested and want to get into that uh really quick and and be there for that monthly Q&A call make sure you uh go and sign up today Assisted Living investing. netmaster you can get in there make sure you're on there for the
00:23:37
call and uh you know start getting some extra benefit um there right right off the bat so I want to thank you again for watching and we will talk to you uh next week thanks everybody
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