Seed / Grants for nonprofit. ( need advice)

[A D]

Hello everyone, I am located in NYC area and planing on opening a non profit org including a wet lab as well as providing services to the public ( HS and College students). I was recently looking into obtaining seed funding but I came across the information that Dept of Education has many grants that might fit my idea.

So the question is does anyone here perhaps has any experience either with the seed funding or grant funding for this purpose? thanks!

[Dakota Hamill]

https://www.genspace.org/

Don't actually know if they're a non-profit but I'd assume so.  A few people on list are members there I think and seems like a friendly group.  You may not need/want to emulate their model exactly but I'm sure visiting them would give you some idea of what it looks like. 

On Mon, Jan 13, 2020 at 10:51 AM A D <aries...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello everyone, I am located in NYC area and planing on opening a non profit org including a wet lab as well as providing services to the public ( HS and College students). I was recently looking into obtaining seed funding but I came across the information that Dept of Education has many grants that might fit my idea.

So the question is does anyone here perhaps has any experience either with the seed funding or grant funding for this purpose? thanks!

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[Yuriy]

Please don't. There are already so many NPOs for DIY/community bio labs in the NYC area that unless you have a steady stream of curious minds coming and going your space will be just another struggling entity. Lets not forget the incubators.

When genspace realized that the a class based model brings in more revenue than a basic membership model they ran classes with little breaks. Every time you'd come in to further your goal, you wouldn't be surprised to find a class in session. It is frustrating to pay into a system like that and hear "no we cannot order that for you because of high trafic of novices and laymen." That was a couple of years ago. Their management changed hands but I don't know what restructuring that led to. Genspace could afford to do that. It has a decade old name recognition. Genspace itself sometimes reaches out into the city to teach a class/workshop there.

You could see if an existing community/DIYbio lab could use some help. Raising capital is always a topic no one wants to touch but everyone needs. Make yourself important. Become a part of an existing team. raise capital and negotiate to be be voted into an existing community/DIYbio lab.

Out of curiosity, where do you think of opening this space? my commute takes me an hour to a current community lab.