The Short Answer
Non-dilutive means you keep 100% of your company. No equity, no repayment. The trade is that the money is smaller and slower than investment, and you are competing for it.
- Apply every month, low effort: Amber Grant. Three $10,000 grants monthly, deadline the last day of the month.
- Apply once, get matched repeatedly: Hello Alice and IFundWomen. One application against many corporate-sponsored grants.
- Want the network more than the money: Tory Burch Fellows. $5,000 and a year-long fellowship, 50 places.
- Already at seed with revenue: Google's Women Founders Fund, up to $100,000 equity-free.
- Doing genuine R&D: SBIR and STTR. The largest non-dilutive money on this page by a wide margin.
Theanna does not award grants and has no relationship with any program listed here. This page exists because “equity-free funding” is one of the most common things founders search for and one of the worst-served by accurate information.
Every Program Compared
| Program | Amount | Timing | Who qualifies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amber Grant (WomensNet) | $10,000 monthly, $50,000 year-end | Monthly, deadline is the last day | US, for-profit, 51%+ women-owned, under $1M revenue |
| Hello Alice | $5,000 to $25,000 | Year-round, rolling | Varies by sponsor. One application, many grants |
| IFundWomen | $1,000 to $25,000 typical | Rolling, matched to sponsors | Women-owned. Corporate partners include Visa and Amex |
| Tory Burch Foundation Fellows | $5,000 plus a year-long fellowship | Annual, 50 fellows | Women-owned US businesses, competitive |
| Google for Startups Women Founders Fund | Up to $100,000 equity-free | Annual cohorts | Seed to Series A, revenue-generating, growing team |
| Cartier Women's Initiative | $100,000 first, $30,000 second, $20,000 finalists | Applications roughly June to September | Women-led, impact-driven businesses, global |
| FedEx Small Business Grant Contest | $50,000 grand prize, $20,000, $15,000 | Typically opens in spring | US small businesses, not gender-specific |
| Comcast RISE | $10,000, plus a pitch competition | Recurring rounds | Small businesses, historically focused on underrepresented owners |
| SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant | $10,000 | Rolling | Black women and Black non-binary founders |
| SBIR / STTR | Six figures and up, in phases | Agency-specific cycles | US small businesses doing genuine R&D. Not gender-specific |
Amounts and eligibility change. Confirm on each program's own site before applying, and treat any figure you see on an aggregator, including this one, as a starting point rather than a promise.
The Programs
Amber Grant
Run by WomensNet, this is the most accessible programme on the list and the one worth building a habit around. Three $10,000 grants are awarded every month, one for startups, one category-specific, one general, plus three $50,000 grants at year end. Eligibility is genuinely broad: US-based, for-profit, at least 51% women-owned, under $1 million in revenue, with no time-in-business requirement, so a company that started last week can apply. Applications close on the last day of each month.
From the community
$10,000
Sarah Delavan
Sarah, a founder in the Theanna community, won a $10,000 Amber Grant in 2025. It is the most winnable program on this page, and somebody in this room has won it.
The monthly cadence is the whole opportunity. Most founders apply once, do not win, and never apply again, which means the pool each month is smaller than the odds suggest. The award happens twelve times a year and the application is largely reusable, so the realistic strategy is to submit every month and improve it as you go.
Hello Alice and IFundWomen
Both operate as marketplaces rather than single grants. You complete one profile and are matched against corporate-sponsored opportunities as they open, typically between $1,000 and $25,000. IFundWomen's sponsors have included Visa and American Express, and it pairs the funding with coaching. Hello Alice is free and constantly refreshed.
The reason to do both early is leverage on your own time: the application is written once and works for months. This is the closest thing to passive grant-seeking that exists.
Tory Burch Foundation Fellows
Fifty fellows a year. Each receives a $5,000 grant, access to a 0% interest loan through Kiva, an all-expenses-paid three-day workshop at Tory Burch headquarters in New York, and a year of digital education and networking.
Judge this one on the fellowship rather than the cheque. $5,000 does not change a business; a year inside that network can. If the programming and the peers are not valuable to you, the application effort is hard to justify on $5,000 alone.
Google for Startups Women Founders Fund
Up to $100,000 in equity-free cash, plus Google mentorship, Cloud credits and product support. The largest straightforward non-dilutive award aimed specifically at women founders.
It is also the least accessible. The profile is seed to Series A, revenue-generating, with a growing team. If you are pre-revenue, this is a goal rather than an option, and the related accelerator programs are the nearer door.
Cartier Women's Initiative
The largest award aimed specifically at women founders that does not require you to be venture-backed first. $100,000 for first place, $30,000 for second, $20,000 for other finalists, alongside a substantial programme of coaching and visibility. Global, and oriented toward businesses with a clear social or environmental impact.
Timing matters here. The application window has historically run from around June or July to August or September, once a year. Miss it and you wait twelve months, so put a reminder in your calendar for May rather than trying to remember.
FedEx Small Business Grant Contest and Comcast RISE
Two corporate programmes, neither women-specific, both worth an application. FedEx runs a contest with a $50,000 grand prize plus $20,000 and $15,000 awards, typically opening in spring. Comcast RISE awards $10,000 alongside a pitch competition for additional funding, and has historically focused on underrepresented business owners.
Corporate contests reward a good story more than a good spreadsheet, which cuts both ways. If you can articulate why the business matters to a specific community, you are competitive here even at small revenue.
SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant
$10,000 for Black women and Black non-binary founders, awarded on a rolling basis. One of the few well-established grants aimed specifically at this group, and worth applying to repeatedly rather than once.
SBIR and STTR
The federal research programs, run through agencies including the NIH, NSF and Department of Energy. Not women-specific, and by a wide margin the largest non-dilutive money available to a US startup, awarded in phases that can run well into six figures and beyond.
The qualifier is real research and development. If your company is doing genuine technical or scientific work, this is the most underused funding on this page. If you are building a straightforward software product, you will not qualify, and any consultant telling you otherwise is selling application services.
What Isn't Real
The SBA does not give grants to start a business
This is the most repeated piece of misinformation in small business funding. The Small Business Administration mainly guarantees loans. The federal grant money on Grants.gov is largely for research, nonprofits and specific policy programs. If someone is advertising SBA startup grants, they are either confused or selling something.
Nobody legitimate charges you to apply. Not an application fee, not a processing fee, not a fee to be matched with funders. This is the single cleanest test, and it disqualifies most of what turns up in search results for grant money.
Be suspicious of very large numbers with vague eligibility. While researching this page we found a widely syndicated listing for a women-led business grant of up to $750,000 that appeared only on aggregator sites, with no primary source behind it. We left it out. If you cannot trace a grant to the organisation funding it, treat the listing as unverified.
Grants are not a funding strategy. They are competitive, slow and seasonal, and the money arrives on someone else's schedule. Apply to the cheap rolling ones continuously and build the business on customers.
How to Win One
Write the application once and reuse it. Nearly every program asks the same things: what the business does, who it serves, what the money is for, why you. Keep a single document with your best answers and adapt it, rather than starting from nothing each month.
Be specific about the money. “Grow the business” loses to “$10,000 covers the production run for our first 500 units, which we have already pre-sold 180 of.” Reviewers are choosing between many plausible businesses, and specificity is the fastest way to be legible.
Show traction, however small. Revenue, customers, waitlist, letters of intent. Grant committees are risk-averse and evidence that someone already wants this does more work than any amount of vision.
Apply repeatedly. Amber Grant runs every month. Most founders apply once, do not win, and stop. The ones who win are frequently the ones still applying in month nine with a sharper application than they had in month one.
Use Theanna to answer the questions
Grant applications ask the same four things every time. What does the business do. Who does it serve. What will the money be used for. Why you. The reason applying twelve times feels impossible is not that the questions are hard, it is that answering them from a blank page every month is exhausting.
Theanna already knows the answers, because it knows your business. Build Mode™ holds your context between sessions, so it can draft the “what we do and who we serve” answer from what you have been working on rather than from you re-explaining it. Traction keeps your revenue and key metrics in one place, which is exactly the evidence these applications ask for and the part founders most often scramble for at 11pm on the last day of the month.
That turns the reusable application from a good intention into something you can genuinely do every month, which is the whole difference between founders who win one of these and founders who meant to apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there real grants for women founders?
Yes, though they are smaller and more competitive than most people expect. The Amber Grant from WomensNet awards three $10,000 grants every month plus three $50,000 grants at year end, and applications close on the last day of each month. Hello Alice and IFundWomen both run marketplaces where one application is matched against many corporate-sponsored grants, typically in the $1,000 to $25,000 range. The Tory Burch Foundation selects 50 Fellows a year who receive $5,000 alongside a year-long fellowship. Google's Women Founders Fund awards up to $100,000 in equity-free cash but targets companies already at seed to Series A with revenue.
Does the SBA give grants to start a business?
Not for ordinary for-profit startups, and this is the single most common misunderstanding in this area. The Small Business Administration primarily guarantees loans rather than awarding grants, and the federal grant money that does exist on Grants.gov is largely directed at research, nonprofits and specific policy programs. The genuine federal non-dilutive route for a startup is SBIR and STTR, which fund real research and development through agencies like the NIH, NSF and Department of Energy. That money is substantial, but it is for companies doing actual R&D, not for building a first version of an app.
How much equity do grants take?
None. That is the entire point of the word non-dilutive. A grant is money you do not repay and that does not convert into ownership. This makes grants strictly better than investment on the ownership dimension, and considerably worse on the speed dimension: grant cycles are slow, competitive, and often carry reporting obligations. Most founders are best served treating grants as a supplement rather than a plan, applying to the low-effort rolling ones continuously and not building a runway around money they have not received.
Are grant application fees normal?
No, and this is the clearest signal that something is wrong. Legitimate grant programs do not charge you to apply. If a site asks for an application fee, a processing fee, or payment to be matched with funders, close the tab. The same goes for any program promising unusually large sums with vague eligibility and no named funder behind it. Verify that a real organisation stands behind any grant before you spend time on the application, and be wary of aggregator sites listing enormous amounts you cannot trace to a primary source.
Should I chase grants or focus on customers?
Customers, with grants running quietly in the background. A grant application can take many hours for a low probability of five figures, while the same hours spent on customer discovery produce revenue that is not competitive, not seasonal and not subject to someone else's decision. The sensible pattern is to apply continuously to the rolling, low-effort programs like Amber Grant and Hello Alice, where the application can be reused, and to treat the intensive fellowship applications as worth it only when the network and the programming are valuable to you independently of the money.