sample application

ocdc seed grants

OCDC has made available grant funds for cooperatives or groups that are pursuing cooperative activities. Two types of grants will be made available to recipients. One type focuses on feasibility and pre-feasibility study grants. Applicants should apply for pre-feasibility study grants if they are new groups who are interested in forming a cooperative, but need to uncover some preliminary information to determine if a full feasibility study is worthwhile. For example, if your group is interested in forming a vegetable cooperative but would like to go on a fact-finding trip to visit potential distributors, then a pre-feasibility study is probably in order. However, if your organization already has much of the preliminary information, and is ready to conduct a full feasibility study, then it is best to apply only for a feasibility study grant. The second type of grant focuses on hiring of services (i.e. legal or financial), or the development of marketing materials. This money is to be used to provide expertise to your cooperative or to assist in developing marketing materials to highlight the cooperative business. An example of this would be hiring assistance to develop an accounting system or hiring the services of a web developer to launch a website.