Grants are the rarest and least important source.
They probably should not even be mentioned except that they are extremely useful to entrepreneurs who go after and succeed in getting them . They usually come from government, corporate, industry, or charity sources and are either recognitions of past achievements or are seed or sustaining funds for some socially, economically, or technically beneficial endeavor. Depending on the stage of development the business is in, perhaps the most important form of grants is for workforce training and education, usually of disadvantaged, or displaced workers. Grants, especially those administered by agencies of the federal government, are to be used for a specific purpose and very rarely involve actual cash. It is more likely that, as in the case of Dwayne Fosseen, whose company, Mirenco, of Radcliffe, Iowa, received a grant from the Department of Energy, services in kind.