Young Entrepreneur Grants: 26 Financial Incentives for Entrepreneurs 30 and Under
You’ve got a great idea, you’re excited and ready to work 12-hour days, and you’re looking for young entrepreneur grants to get things going. Now what?
Finding funding as a young person? It’s hard enough to simply buy or lease a car let alone start a business. But it’s definitely possible!
The financing programs listed here understand both the difficulty in finding funding when you’re young and the importance of young people and their innovative ideas for the Canadian economy.
While grant programs for starting a business are relatively rare, whether you’re young or not, there are still plenty of financing programs that could finance your new business—and with better terms—when traditional lenders won’t. In fact, try out these programs first!
What is a Young Entrepreneur Business Grant?
The Government of Canada defines a grant as
a transfer payment subject to pre-established eligibility and other entitlement criteria. A grant is not subject to being accounted for by a recipient nor normally subject to audit by the department. The recipient may be required to report on results achieved.
So, a young entrepreneur business grant is:
What Can Young Entrepreneur Grants Be Used For?
Young entrepreneur grants can be used to pay for many aspects of starting or running a business. Here are some of the uses that are covered by programs in our grants database:
And that’s just a sample! See the section below with a complete list of young entrepreneur grants available.
How Much Grant Money Can I Get for My Business?
In our database we currently have grants ranging from $300 to $50,000.
Am I Eligible for a Young Entrepreneur Grant? Common Eligibility Criteria
Two of the most common questions we get asked at Ontario Business Grants are “Am I eligible?” and “How do I qualify?”.
We analyzed the Young Entrepreneur grants in our grants database, and these are the most common qualifications we identified:
Note: these are just the most common eligibility criteria – there are many grants with different requirements.
How to Apply for Young Entrepreneur Grants: Follow These 6 Steps
While the application steps for young entrepreneurs grant programs vary, here are some common steps:
- Gather all possible grants. We cover business funding programs for young entrepreneurs in this guide, but there are lots of additional programs available for different demographic groups (such as women entrepreneurs, Black entrepreneurs, and others), as well as programs for different funding purposes (such as hiring, training, R&D, exporting, energy efficiency improvements, and much more).
- Find grants that are a close fit with your business goals. Make sure to review the grant program guide to confirm that your business is eligible. When your business goals fit a particular type of grant, you have better chances of getting matched to it.
- Contact the grant agencies. There’s no better way to find out what the funder is looking for than going right to the source! If possible, contact the grant agency and ask them questions that will help your stand out from the pack.
- Get your plan in place. Your grant plan should include a one-page draft of your grant application.
- Gather your documents. Funders often ask their applicants to provide a business plan and related documents. If you organise your documents in advance, you’ll be ready to submit them when the grant agency requests them.
- Submit an excellent application. Make sure you follow all requirements of the grant program (which you can find in the grant program guide) to increase your chances of success.
Bonus Tip:
- Consider other types of funding. Besides grants, there are dozens of different types of funding that young entrepreneurs can go after, from crowdfunding to business competitions, loans to incubators.
Young Entrepreneur Grants for Ontario: Current Grants Available
In the table below we list the grants currently available to young entrepreneurs in Ontario (and some are available across the country).
To learn more about each program, just click the program name and you’ll be taken to a web page that provides detailed information on the program, including eligibility, the dollar amount of the program, and how to apply for the grant:
$3,000
Grant
Summer Company is an amazing opportunity for young entrepreneurs to run their own business over Summer. Participants can expect to receive:
start-up money to kick-off a new summer business
advice and mentorship from local business leaders to help get the business up and running
Learning how to run your own student business is one of the best summer jobs you can have. You get to be your own boss while learning what it takes to manage a business. You’ll develop skills in areas such as sales, marketing, bookkeeping, customer relationship management, networking and more
$3,000
Grant
The Summer Company program (opens in new window) supports eligible young student entrepreneurs, aged 15 to 29, looking to launch and operate a small business during the summer.
No funding involved
In-Kind Support
Have you recently left full-time postsecondary studies and started a new business in Ontario? If yes, apply for the One-Year OSAP Grace Period for Entrepreneurs to get more time before you must start making payments on your OSAP loans.
You have six months after leaving full-time studies when you don’t have to make OSAP loan payments. This is known as your six-month grace period.
If your six-month grace period has not yet ended and you are the owner or joint owner of an eligible new business, you may be eligible for a six-month extension to your existing grace period. This means you would get an extra six months before you must start repaying your Ontario Student Loan and/or the Ontario portion of your Canada-Ontario Integrated Student Loan issued through OSAP.
$106,666
Grant
Mitacs Accelerate Fellowship provides a long-term funding and internship option for master’s and PhD students. Recipients can also access professional development training that helps them ensure project success and gain in-demand career skills.
$15,000
Grant
Mitacs Accelerate Entrepreneur provides early-stage support to postdoctoral fellows (PDF) and graduate student entrepreneurs. Accelerate Entrepreneur funds student entrepreneurs to further develop the research or technology at the core of their business when hosted by an incubator facility. This helps student entrepreneurs to take real, meaningful advantage of the supports provided by the incubator, with the goal of commercializing the technology, product, or service rapidly. In a nutshell, they get paid to grow their company and get to market faster.
$3,000
Grant
The program teaches youth the practical skills for starting up a successful business during the summer break. We then coach and fund them to run it.
$2,000,000.00
Loan
FCC provides financing to young entrepreneurs under 40 to start or expand their business. They can purchase shares in, buy, or improve an agricultural or food-related business, and take their dream business to the next level.
No fixed amount
Loan
If you’re looking to transfer farm assets or you’re a young farmer looking to build your farm, the Transition Loan can help make it happen. It allows you to make payments so you can manage your cash flow or build equity quickly – the choice is yours.
$10,000.00
Grant
The Youth Innovation Component encourages youth to find accessibility barriers in their communities. They work with local organizations to improve accessibility and safety in community spaces and workplaces.
$50,000.00
Grant
Digital Greenhouse is a digital innovation initiative for Canadian individuals, groups and organizations. It supports short-term projects that leverage digital technology to address sectoral and digital challenges, including:
1. the development of new digital tools and solutions that increase the resilience, sustainability, and discoverability of the arts sector,
2. the development of sector-wide and cross-sector collaborations, partnerships, and networks to support innovative digital business models, revenue models and monetization strategies,
3. sectoral approaches aimed at strategically increasing the digital/data literacy and ongoing digital transformation of the arts sector,
4. addressing challenges and exploring digital solutions related to accessibility, equity, diversity, decolonization, social justice, and climate responsibility created by, or relevant to, the digital world,
5. addressing challenges and exploring solutions related to the lack of access to digital infrastructure for remote regions and Northern and under-represented communities.
The Bottom Line
It may seem daunting when you’re first trying to create and build a new business and you’re a younger person without a credit history (or with little credit history) and with little work experience. Many lenders just don’t want to take that chance on you and can’t afford the vision to do so.
The financing programs here are different, however. They’re designed to take that risk because they know what a difference young people can make in business. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean you’re less capable; it just means you must work harder, so you do.
With a variety of programs at the federal and provincial levels, you can’t afford to not try. So give these programs a shot and see where your business can go!