The Reality of Grants for Assisted Living Facilities
May 01, 2025
Grants are a potential way to fund your assisted living facility, but they come with challenges. If you're considering applying for grants, you need to understand the process, the paperwork, and the financial realities.
Yes, grants exist, but they’re not as easy to get as you might think. In this guide, we’ll break down the reality of assisted living grants, how to find them, and what it really takes to secure funding.
Let’s dive in! π
Check out this video, too;
The Truth About Grants for Assisted Living
Grants can be a great way to fund parts of your business, but they come with challenges:
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Most grants are for nonprofits, research projects, or specific social initiatives.
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They have strict requirements—you need to prove why you deserve the money.
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The application process can be time-consuming and competitive.
This doesn’t mean you should give up! Instead, you need the right strategy to find and apply for grants effectively.
Step 1: Understand What Grants Cover
Most grants won’t pay for everything, but they can help with specific costs like:
π Building improvements and renovations
π Staff training and workforce development
π Programs for seniors (dementia care, mental health, etc.)
π Affordable housing and Medicaid-based services
π‘ Pro Tip: Focus on grants that align with your business model and company mission. If you’re offering specialized care for low-income seniors, you’ll have a better chance of finding funding!
Step 2: Where to Find Assisted Living Grants
Finding grants takes research. Here’s where to start:
π Government Grants – Websites like Grants.gov list federal funding opportunities.
π State & Local Programs – Many states offer small business and healthcare-related grants.
π Private Foundations – Organizations like AARP and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation support senior care initiatives.
π Community & Nonprofit Funding – Local charities and organizations may have small grant programs.
π‘ Need help? Our Grant Writing Template makes it easy to apply for funding. Download it now!
Step 3: Write a Strong Grant Proposal
If you want to win a grant, your proposal needs to stand out. Here’s what to include:
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Clear Mission & Impact – Explain how your facility benefits the community.
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Detailed Budget – Show exactly how the grant money will be used.
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Strong Data & Research – Use stats to prove the need for your services.
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Partnerships & Support – Highlight any collaborations with local organizations.
π‘ Pro Tip: Grants are competitive, so consider hiring a grant writer or using our Grant Writing Template to improve your chances!
Step 4: Explore Other Funding Options
Relying only on grants isn’t a smart move. Most successful assisted living owners use multiple funding sources, including:
π° SBA Loans – Low-interest loans designed for small businesses.
π° Investor Partnerships – Bring in partners who believe in your vision.
π° Seller Financing – Negotiate deals where the seller finances part of the purchase.
π° Tax Credits & Incentives – Some states offer tax breaks for senior care businesses.
π‘ Want expert guidance on funding strategies? Apply for the Success System program and learn how to finance your business the right way!
Next Steps: Take Action Today!
π Want to fund your assisted living facility without wasting time on the wrong grants?
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Step 1: Download our Grant Writing Template to streamline your application process.
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Step 2: Need help figuring out where to start? Join the next Roadmap Challenge and build your launch plan with me.
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Step 3: Explore alternative funding sources for a solid financial plan.
Show full transcript π
Transcript
00:00:00
here with me on Assisted Living investing today on the live um today we're going to be talking about the reality of Grants uh so for those of you that don't know I actually have a couple of Grants um for my assisted living facilities I have gotten a lot of interest from people on the Facebook group about the progress there and things like that so I wanted to touch on that in in our live today so uh as we are getting things ready I want to remind you to go grab uh the free grant writing template you can grab that at
00:00:30
Assisted Living investing. netg grants uh it's just a free resource that I give away for you to help you get started if you are looking at at doing grants um can really help you move things along um and yeah just go grab that and sorry got one more thing to do here to get this onto the live um on the Facebook group oh no I forgot one thing hold on a sec um so for those of you actually you know what I'm going to do while I do this because I I think I can memorize this um okay sorry technical difficulties let
00:01:08
me share my screen number one and we'll add that to the scene okay so reality of Grant go grab the grant writing template we're going to have a ticker going down along the bottom as well for you uh here uh for those of you who don't know who I am uh my name is Brandon Gustafson I own and operate two assisted living facilities I do that out of state um I have done done that for four years since 2020 um as well so have a lot of experience working uh in that area have secured over one and a half
00:01:38
million 1.5 million in SBA funding um as I've gotten things going for my facilities um which has been really exciting and I have also um been able to secure over 1.2 million in grant funding for for my facilities as well so I have a lot of experience doing that I've worked in the healthcare industry now for um over a decade I have a lot of uh experience just kind of working there a lot of that in government programs type type things and um have uh you know just a lot of experience uh just kind of in
00:02:11
that that realm of of healthcare uh and yeah so okay cool I got everything up and running we're live on Facebook now and uh for those of you that are new here excuse me would love to hear from you um type in newbie down below um and for those that are live we're going to have Q&A so uh feel free to type those questions in throughout the the process uh throughout the video but if you have questions at the end um make sure you get those in and we'll get to those and uh for those of you that are not
00:02:38
watching live that's okay as well uh just type in your questions and I will get to them in the comments um there also so first off I want to talk to you about my two grants that I have for my facilities so as I mentioned I have I have two I've secured one over 1.2 million in grant funding um one of them is What's called the dollars to digitize both of these grants came out of our arpa funding so arpa is co era funding from the federal government that came down to the States uh the states were
00:03:06
able to kind of determine how they wanted to use those funds and a lot of States actually put it into healthcare related businesses um in Colorado um they they put it out specifically for long-term care stuff uh which kind of makes sense if you think back to covid era um there was a lot of concerns about uh providing adequate care to uh to seniors and things like that and so for for long-term care there were these opportunities for us we had two we actually had three that we applied to one of them we didn't get um and then
00:03:38
the other two we did so one was called the dollars to digitize Grant it was um all with an effort to digitize all of the the work that we're doing so it was U buying equipment and software and and things along those lines to encourage our staff and uh to make us more accessible for our residents to their other providers and things like that and it was really intended to to put those things together so we bought uh a bunch of equipment um for for the facility for computers and and things like that so
00:04:08
that we could have better access we contracted with a provider to help us build some software um for an EHR system uh so we did a lot of work there and and had some some really fun and good progress made the second Grant is What's called the single occupancy Grant and it's all with the intention of creating more private space for the residents in our home creating a a more safe environment creating more space for them and we actually uh just yesterday September 30th 2024 had to do my spend
00:04:40
down for it and I'm going to get into that here and at the end of the video about just kind of our experience with it but um that one has been uh really fun and exciting to see the progress like it's it's physical um physical changes to the facility and it makes it look beautiful and so uh we're really excited about that if you are uh interested in seeing more about that just comment um comment single occupancy down below um whether you're here live or on the replay um I might have some
00:05:11
stuff coming up for that um here in a couple of weeks so uh just kind of you know some previewing there for you um but yeah that those are the two grants that we had uh they are both at it at the end now uh we just have some final things that we're we're trying to run through um to finish the single occupancy one out but had a lot of progress made um as we're getting that that going there so that uh those are the two grants that we had um as far as grants something that I I want people to
00:05:40
know and remember this is this is a video that's all about the reality of Grants and working with grants when you are working with grants there's a ton of paperwork involved there is uh you have to put your Grant proposal together uh you have to review a bunch of documents uh once you receive the grant uh once once everything's approved you're going to have to do monthly or at least regular reporting whether it's quarterly monthly um the the people are going to want to see information on that so
00:06:09
you're going to have to um put you know stay up to date and and provide updates on exactly what's going on uh and so you have to be continually making progress on the grant so that you can continue to receive funding for it um and then at the end of the grant period you're going to have to do a final report and often times this is just a much more robust monthly report uh they want to see what actually happened so they're in the front your Grant proposal you're saying this is what we're going to do monthly
00:06:35
reports this is how it's going this is some of the barriers this is what we've made progress on and then at the end you have your final report and you say this is what we did and what went well what didn't go well and and people can receive that that feedback um all of these things are whether it's a government agency or a third party private entity that's that's the grant provider um they all want to see these things because that's why they're giving you the money um so they can see the
00:07:04
impact that it's making and you do that through these monthly reportings there's a lot of paperwork involved in Grants uh so it's it can take a lot of time to to kind of put that all together now when it comes to Grants you're going to receive money right that's that's the the entire idea behind grants is hey here's some money for you um and and then you can do the things that you have outlined in your in your Grant proposal so how payments work with a grant is um there's there's kind of at
00:07:35
its core two ways number one is they pay a vendor directly so this means you you submit your Grant proposal you get it approved you go find the contractors the people that are going to work for things or or you do the work for you and then you would um tell them okay now you need to go and invoice this granting uh agency entity so that they can provide you with the funds and and then you know you'll get paid um you know go talk to those people over there they have money I promise that's
00:08:04
that's kind of the idea there um the other one is you pay for the items that that you need to to buy so uh this could be laptops could be a big construction project whatever it is you have to pay for it and then you submit that to the granting Agency for reimbursement so in that sense it can be it can be a bit of a headache or if you are dealing with something like our million dooll um or our million dollar Grant was prepay for everything so that we can then get reimbursed and that means I have to have
00:08:35
a million dollars worth of of cash or or at least be able to cycle through it in a way that lets me um pay for things and then get reimbursed for it and and work things out on the back end so it can be stressful while yes you're getting the money you're getting free money um from people it it there is this component of how are you going to be able to handle those things now there are other grants where you are paying um like staff and and people like that and they'll typically so I actually work for I have
00:09:06
worked for nonprofit organizations for a lot of my professional career and have been in positions where my full salary has been funded through Grant projects and the way that those ones work is the granting agency the granting entity will contract out um with the grant the the person receiving the grant um the grant recipient and they say okay yep you you get a million dollars to pay for your staff um for this quarter and so as the the grant recipient I have to budget things out and figure out who's getting
00:09:39
how much money and and making sure that I'm documenting where exactly all of that money is going um and and putting that together it's how a lot of nonprofits end up working um especially if they're doing large government funded grants um they they get that money on a regular basis and then they pay out their staff um but they're nonprofit organizations they're not really charging for any of the other services that they provide and so you have this set budget here's all the money that you
00:10:05
get but you don't really have another way of of getting funds right so there's there's just kind of this this go between this give and take when it comes to Grants it's not it's not all sunshine and roses and and everything like that it can be very complex and when it comes to finances can also be stressful until the grant period is over so you want to make sure that you understand exactly what you're getting into when when you are working with grants and also like they have to be for a specific purpose
00:10:32
not just a cool here's a million dollar Grant awesome I got a million dollars what am I going to do with it no it's you say what you're going to do you have to do it you have to report on it and then at the end you have to give a final report like it's it's there there's a lot of complexities that go into the world of Grants um so there it is is it free money um you have a lot of reporting to do and also something I want you to be aware of is especially if you're a for-profit organization um it
00:10:57
could be considered as taxable income um so you want to definitely talk to an accountant about this this is something we found out with our with our our single occupancy Grant which is making improvements to the home uh that that money that is coming to us to make those changes is actually there's a a way and I don't understand all of it so but that has to be counted as taxable income now if we're a nonprofit now there's there a whole different set of things and I don't claim to know everything that goes
00:11:27
into that talk to an accountant to figure out what that means for you but um this this income that comes in you are going to get taxed on it and so while it is technically you know free money here you go go ahead and do what you want you have to be a little bit careful and not get over your your skis too much because um you could get to the point where it's like cool I got a million dollars crap now I have to pay $300,000 in taxes how am I going to handle that um so those are the types of things that you just want to make sure
00:11:55
you understand as you get into this world of of Grants um before you accept the funding have conversations with people and make sure you understand exactly how those funds are going to come to you how they're going to be used and if there's any tax implications for you on that not always but sometimes there are and so you want to make sure you understand that so you don't get saddled with a huge tax bill and and get yourself really far upside down because you you got a grant and you got this
00:12:21
free money so you have to be really really careful with that so I just want to make sure everybody is is cautioned when you're working in this world of Grants you have to be very careful with that so with that said I'm going to give a grand update and I I see there's a few people here in the um in in the in the live with me if you have questions or things like that now's a good time to start typing them as I kind of go into my grant update and and things like that so feel free to do that and if you're
00:12:46
watching after the fact then type in whatever questions you have I'll get to those um but as far as our grant update um we um we had to um you know single the the dollars to digitize we got done with months ago um probably six months ago the the single occupancy Grant we had had some conversations up front that we were going to be able to extend through December 31st uh we we knew there was a a final date of September 30th but we were we had gotten some some positive feedback uh is what I would
00:13:22
call itth that we are going to be able to extend things to October 31st possibly even December 31st um but I think as because this is a federal a Federal Grant and the fiscal year for for the federal government is September 30th and there was concerns about government shutdown and and things like that at the time of this recording um they they decided no we are not doing any type of extension like it's just not going to happen it's an election year like there's too much in the air so we
00:13:52
are not going to do that you have to have everything paid um and it was the past two weeks of just been ridiculously busy for me um what I had to do was because we had to prepay for all of these we had to secure some short-term funding so I had to work with with a bunch of different lenders and try to secure some of that funding we were able to get it we got a few hundred thousand uh we secured that funding we had some in the bank um so we were able to take that and then um we had to pay all of
00:14:19
our contractors um had to pay uh close to half a million dollars in contractors just pay it all out yesterday we had a ton of money in the bank uh and then we send it all and paid all our contractors and that was um really just like um it was really cool to see that much money in the bank for for a day or two um over the weekend then it was kind of depressing to like send it all out um but also when I was done it was a huge relief because I had to pay Everybody by tomorrow or I guess by yesterday um and
00:14:51
and I had to get paid invoices say I paid it by that time so still working on wrangling up a few of those invoices we about there um but we had to do that and now we will we submitted our final report um so I had to do that yesterday as well so we finished that um sent that out um and then we had to um we we had to once I get all these the rest of these um invoices we will submit that in and then we'll get reimbursed within 45 days so that's what the the state of Colorado has has told us we'll do um now
00:15:22
we had because of this time crunch we had been working with Architects we got permits we had everything in place for for for the work that we're were going to do and then they accelerated our timeline my general contractor stopped talking to me and so I had to kind of move into this project management role and go and find all of my contractors uh get them get quotes I put everything together make sure we're in under budget uh make sure that we're working the way that we need to to to get everything
00:15:47
done and then um we had to get everybody scheduled get everybody paid and now we're just kind of working on finishing up some of the the last few um projects and over the next few weeks we'll get most of that finished there's a few things like window and uh some other longer term um things like there there's a small construction project that's just months out um but everything else will get done um in the time that we had designed and so we're really excited about that um and we'll be actually
00:16:16
going out to to look at our facility so if you would like kind of a tour of our facility there won't be any residents in there and it might be a little bit under construction but if you are interested in in seeing a tour of one of my facilities my facility in Colorado type in tour down below and I can show you some of the progress that we're making there uh either do a live or else we'll record I'm trying to figure I got a Gimbal and we'll try to figure out how to do that I don't know how to do a live
00:16:40
on it still need to play around with it but uh comment tour down below if you'd like to see a little bit uh of of that uh information you know about where we're at so that has been the update on our grant as we make continual progress on it um in probably about a month from now I will do another update cuz things should be really close to being finalized at that Point um but it's it's been a ride it's been it's been kind of hectic to kind of put that all together but I wanted to kind of give you all
00:17:08
just a level set the the world of Grants the reality of what you're working with when you are working with grants and my experience with them I have a lot of experience professional experience here with these businesses as well um so I understand them um and you can go and grab that free resource that I have for you the grant writing template um Assisted Living investing. netg grrs we've got the ticker going down below um so you can go and grab that uh but I also have a course that's going to be
00:17:33
coming out soon so if you get that grant writing template um you will be the first to know um when I drop the course we are working on that right now uh working on doing editing so course is all created uh we just need to do some editing and get everything ready to go so that's going to be coming out really soon um and really excited to to drop that for you and kind of go through the world of Grants exactly what what it looks like how to write a grand proposal how to go find opportunity um how to work through a grant um
00:18:03
through the process that you have it how to close it out how to make sure that you aren't going to run into any issues if you get audited or those types of things want to make sure you have the resources you need um to to be successful and this comes from De nearly a decade of working in nonprofit organizations where I've done multi-million dollar grants doing grants myself taking grant writing courses and understanding how to do that and going to share all of that that knowledge with you so Gra the grant writing template
00:18:30
that's free assisted living investing. netg grrs and then you'll be the first to know when we drop us grants course and you can you know tell me if if it's useful and helpful for you or not so with that said uh let's get into the the comments and questions here Jessica and VA yep tour awesome thank you um appreciate you watching and yeah I will for sure uh get get on that um excited to uh show everybody the progress there of what we're making um I've gotten some pictures it looks looks really good um I
00:19:01
I don't know if I have any really good before pictures but uh we're super excited to do that and jacn thanks um while people are typing up questions want to remind you all that um you know if to like the video number one subscribe and ring the bell uh so you get notified every time we go and do these lives um I love interacting with you and answering your questions as you go through it um even if they're not the topic that we're talking about just kind of helping you along your your journey
00:19:30
uh it's it's something that is really rewarding for me and something I enjoy doing and if you need some help and a level of of expertise is as you're trying to move into the next phase of things consider applying to The Mastermind program you can do that at Alim mastermind.com application free application process um and then I'll send you all the details and and you can decide if it's a good fit for you and if you'd like to jump on a call um to chat about it a little bit more we can
00:19:54
definitely set something up to to chat about that so um that is everything I wanted to talk about today was just kind of give you just level set with you about what grants are how they work and what to expect if you are going the route of getting a grant um if you found this to be helpful make sure you like the video um and yeah just want to remind you as well to get over and grab the the free grant writing template Assisted Living investing. netr um and that will help you out and help you get started in writing a solid Grant
00:20:24
proposal that that's going to It's the Grant template that I use to secure you know 1.2 million so I know it works I've used it um and it hits on everything that you need so you can write a successful Grant proposal so does residential Assisted Living sound interesting to you but you're not sure how to get started uh as Assisted Living investing done it I'm here to help beginners like you launch their Assisted Living business and the next 12 months we do that through our Mastermind
00:20:50
program and I I love helping people and I also want to remind you that it doesn't take a lot it's just a little bit and consistent progress step by step by step and if you do that in your consistent and persistent I promise you you're going to be successful thanks for watching and we'll talk to you next week see you
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