Adam Torres and Micki Vandeloo discuss manufacturing grants.
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Show Notes:
How to get capital to support your manufacturing investments? In this episode, Adam Torres and Micki Vandeloo, President of Lakeview Consulting, Inc., explore what it takes to secure grants in manufacturing.
About Micki Vandeloo
Micki Vandeloo helps fund the success of the manufacturing community (manufacturers and the for-profit and non profit companies who support them). With more than 25 years of experience in the manufacturing industry, she has led her clients to success by helping them clarify project goals, plan new services and programs, and secure grant funding to support their missions. Micki’s team of grant professionals at Lakeview Consulting has collectively obtained more than $260 million in grant funding and written over 850 grant proposals.
About Lakeview Consulting
Lakeview Consulting helps manufacturing companies and trade associations obtain the research and writing services needed to fund their success. Lakeview Consulting customers say we make the often complicated grant research and application process easy and painless. They believe in long term partnerships to help our clients develop and implement a strategy to fund their success!
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Miki Vandaluw. She’s president over at Lakeview Consulting.
Miki, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. All right. Well, we appreciate you being here. And think this is a great topic. So talking about how to get capital to support manufacturing investments. And I know you’re in the grant space and help with companies that are looking to secure some funding and grants and other things.
And we’ll go into that and get into the specifics in a moment. But first thing first, how did you get involved in this field? Like, they suck in? Oh, well, I’ll tell you, Adam, I worked for over 25 years in manufacturing. which day, what areas, like what areas were you in? Like basically, yeah. in the Midwest around the St.
Louis area and I’m a Michigander by the way, first time from Michigan. love this topic. I’m like, it’s near and dear to my heart. Go ahead. Go ahead. No. So when I was working in manufacturing I intersected with grants, you know, in a number of my different jobs. And in one particular job, I helped manufacturers write training grants, got very familiar with economic development grants, and then I got hired by one of my clients.
When I was working that job, and then I helped that client, which was a steel service center in southwestern Illinois I helped them get a large grant and I just discovered when I was doing that. I was like, man, this is I like doing this. I always had kind of a passion. My degree is in industrial engineering, but my passion was really with writing.
I really love to write. And so it kind of combined my technical expertise with my passion. And so I just wrote this grant and I got them 600, 000. And then over the two year period of the grant, it was during the 2008 2009 timeframe, when very similar to COVID last year, the country was going through the And so, as with COVID, The federal government decided to give money to the state in during COVID.
It was called ARPA during that period of time. It was called ARRA, American Recovering Reinvestment Act. And it gave money to the states to promote energy types of initiatives in the state. In the state of Illinois, if you’ve ever been in northern Illinois, there’s a lot of wind turbines. There’s a lot of wind turbine farms up there.
They have what they call good wind. So the state of Illinois decided to really expand that. Technology in the state and so our, company provided coil and sheet steel. That could go into wind turbine, so I applied for 600, 000 dollars in funding to expand our capacity. To be able to produce those parts and over the 2 year period of that grant.
It expanded a 2. 3M dollars for a number of reasons. A lot of companies that have received funding went under because of the recession. And so we just got opportunity after opportunity to increase that grant size. So we got about 3M dollars worth of funding. Equipment for 2. 3 million dollars. And that made my company’s leadership pretty happy.
And so, but the 1 thing I started to realize both in working at those companies and just doing this grant work is if I wasn’t there to find the grant and write the grants, these companies wouldn’t be doing it. Because a lot of manufacturers don’t know where to look for grants and they don’t have the time to look for them and they definitely don’t have the time or the expertise to write the grants They don’t you know, they don’t understand that whole world.
So I decided to start a business that way and so I said Okay, i’m going to be the person that goes into these companies and that was back in 2000 2013 And I ran it as a side hustle for a long time. I incorporated in 2014 In And so we’ve been in business for 10 years this September. I now have four.
Congratulations, that’s a big milestone. Thank you. That is a big milestone. crews out there unite. That’s amazing. Exactly. And so I now have four employees, too. So I have a project manager, I have two writers and a researcher. I don’t write the grants anymore. what my passion currently is, is actually going out and doing podcasts.
Speaking to manufacturers, I speak at a number of different manufacturing conferences, and my goal is just to get the word out about grants manufacturers and assure them that there’s help out there to help them get that funding. Wow. And so this I want to go back to this thought process of of. what you said on why you started the business, that if somebody’s not writing these grants, doing the research, like it’s a whole business of really to secure this funding.
Like, it’s not like you’re going to just randomly stumble upon it. Maybe you get lucky, but you got to kind of take the lump, the luck out of this. When I’m thinking about my own life, I can think about like in college, like this is almost like college, but the grownup version of college when it comes to grants, I mean, very specifically.
So like, I remember after I was in college or even as I was leaving and when other students or other people are like, Oh, you should have applied for grants or you should have did this, should have did that. And I’m like, well, I didn’t even know that existed. Like, how did you find a grant? Like what?
And this is going back quite some time. So it’s like, it’s not like I was like, how was I supposed to know about this grant? Like really? And so if I think about all of that money that was out there, especially when I was going to school, there happened to be a lot of money that was being funded by a lot of different people for grants, but I, I just didn’t know.
So this is like the adult version of that. Like what you don’t know can really hurt you. Am I, am I off on that by the way? Like, is my analogy like totally off? If it is, you could tell me. Does that make sense? No, makes a lot of sense. And that Absolutely true, Adam. and what I always tell people is when I worked in manufacturing.
My employers never liked leaving money on the table. They never liked it. And therefore Let’s clarify one quick thing, just because there’s some people that are listening. Grant versus loan. You’re talking about grants. I don’t want to assume for somebody that’s never received a grant, like that doesn’t even like, let’s define what that means.
Because when you say amounts of money, I didn’t know. I’m sitting here like,
Marker
what?
So the biggest difference, and the main difference between a grant and a loan, everybody knows that a loan has to be paid back, and with interest usually. A grant, on the other hand, does not have to be paid back. So if you meet the terms of the grant, you, let’s just say you’re applying for a training grant, and you’re going to train ten people in leadership development, maybe the cost of the training is about 30, 000, maybe the cost of the training is about 50, 000.
Most training grants will pay for half of the cost. So you would apply for the grant, you would get approved for the grant. If you get approved for the grant, then you conduct the training, and then most grants are on a reimbursement basis. So you have to do the training, and then they, send you a check for 15, 000.
So it is, it is literally a check that goes to you. It is income, by the way. it can be taxed, but you know, regardless, you’ve saved half that cost of training. So you said leaving money on the table, you’re talking actual money. Right, I’m talking actual money.
Yeah, that’s what I tell manufacturers. I’m like, if you choose, if you learn about grants, if I’m telling you about grants, you’re like, this just doesn’t resonate with me. I don’t want to do this. That’s completely up to you. But if you don’t know that these things are out there, you are truly leaving money on the table.
And you don’t even know it. So that’s a lot of my parts of my presentation go around the fact that if you know that these things exist, a lot of our work is in the front end of the grant. So it’s the research into grant opportunities and the writing of the grant. That’s what our expertise is in. And so we do a lot of that research.
We do a lot of research for companies because. Putting the, wealth of grants that are out there for their specific situation can be very valuable for them. Yeah. So workforce development and growth. are even manufacturing investments like reshoring? Like, what are some of the, give me some of what kind of grants are there out there that so people and based off o just before you kind of a your team, correct me if you’ve obtained over 150 So when you say these thi Like whether someone’s going to get it or not, obviously they have to qualify.
They have to, you know, go through whatever the processes are, but is that money there? I mean, you’ve already gotten 150 million for people in your career and you and your team. Right, right, exactly. So yeah, what I tell people is grant fund. Economic development efforts in general. So most of the funding for manufacturers comes from the state that that manufacturer is located in.
If a manufacturer has several different facilities in several different states, each of those facilities could potentially qualify for grants from the state they’re in. So it’s a huge benefit for multi location companies for sure. So the general themes are related to economic development, job growth.
Investment recycling, so reduction of greenhouse reduction of landfill sending things to landfill training. So, upskilling people is an economic development benefit. And then research and development and capital investment. So facility investment, capital investment can all be incentivized by grants.
Reshoring is a unique type of, so federal government has decided to not really specifically have what are quote unquote reshoring grants. What the federal government has chosen to do is they’ve taken the vulnerable. Supply chain areas electric vehicles. You know, semiconductors chip, semiconductor chip.
Medical supplies right after COVID. And they’ve chosen to incentivize the building of facilities the, and huge investments in capital. They, they decided to incentivize those in those industries. So there aren’t what I would call specifically reshoring grants are typically called manufacturing modernization grants.
They’re called, there are a couple of states that offer what are called manufacturing readiness grants or industry 4. 0 grants. And those can fund equipment. Those can fund a portion of an equipment cost. Some are, you know, in the 50, 000 range, and in Indiana, there’s one that’s 250, 000. It’s called the Manufacturing Readiness Grant.
So, there are a few states that offer. Equipment grants. But what I tell my clients is that if you have a project, let’s just say you’re going to be investing in equipment. Well, you’re likely going to need to do some training. You might be needing to invest in software to run the equipment. You might have to, you’re going to obviously purchase the equipment.
You might have some engineering costs. What I try to get my clients to do is tell us specifically what they’re going to be doing. As part of these projects, and then we find different grants that can address those different areas. So if there’s training that goes with that equipment purchase those that portion of the project can be segregated out and we can apply for a training grant.
So, it’s a very additive process. It’s a very, you know. It’s really working with the clients to get them to specifically identify costs associated with certain activities. And then once we can find those activities, we can go out and look for grants to offset the cost of those activities. Hmm. So why don’t people like, you know, when I’m listening to this, if I’m in manufacturing and otherwise, like why aren’t people receptive to this?
Like you mentioned, if somebody doesn’t want to participate, doesn’t want to like, like, I don’t what, what would be the reason why someone would want? I don’t want to be rude, but like, why would they want to leave money on the table? I’m just a little confused on that. Sure. Yeah, you know, what it is a lot of times is they just don’t know.
They don’t know what’s out there, and so they’re not really aware, but sometimes, you know, there are some companies, and most of them are private companies, some don’t want to share their financials, and you do often have to share some sort of financials in order to apply for a grant. Some people just don’t see that there’s enough of a return to put in the time, even though we shepherd our clients through this process.
You know, they, don’t even want to spend that amount of time. But what I tell people is that you can’t make that decision until, you know, what’s out there, you know, and I don’t think you can make a really informed decision until, you know, what’s out there. And then you can say, okay, for these grants, that’s too much information.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to give that amount of information or I don’t think 15 is worth my time. You know, again, what I tell them is, okay, it might be 000, but that frees up that amount of money in your budget to go do something else. And I’m pretty sure that if I handed you a check right now for 15, 000, you wouldn’t turn it down, you know, I try to get them to think about it in terms of it’s time.
And working with us, they don’t have to spend that much time. You know, if they went out and did this, it would take them much longer to go find the grants and then they would kind of struggle probably with applying for the grants. Whereas if they hire us to go find grants for them. We present them those grants.
We collect the information we need. We write the application. They aren’t spending much time to do it, and they’re still getting the 15, 000. So to me, that’s, I don’t get a lot of clients that say, I’m not interested. But when I’ve heard that before, usually those are the reasons. I can see the financials part like being okay, like just depending on like the size and this and that I get that piece of it.
right. And then I get some of these other ones, but like, and I can see some of the arguments there that you made, but. On the other side of this, I guess you don’t know until you try aspect of it, like the amounts that you mentioned in terms of like what happened over COVID with that.
Now, obviously that was a large one that you secured there, but going into that, they didn’t know. That grant was going to get bigger like and you didn’t know so it’s like it also seems like and this is the part that is super interesting to me is that once they’ve worked with you, you already know they’re strong suit.
So now you know and you’re on the lookout so if something else comes up and they’ve already worked with you, duh, of course you’re going to want to get them more money. That’s right. Right, right, right, other programs and other things like that’s what you’re doing anyway. So now you all like who wouldn’t want somebody that’s on your so even though something may be what X amount right now that might not have been worth their time, even for your team just to have them on their radar, and to be trained for what’s coming up next to be like, Oh, right.
You know who applied so and so that’s the one that’ll go for that. We need to reach out to them Like that alone to me is like to know that you’re not you have somebody out there working for you Because it’s in their best interest as well. Like you’re aligned right the the interests are aligned. So it’s a win win Right?
Right. Yeah. This is a great story. I love it. I love it. It’s a great idea. I’m like, don’t have anything in manufacturing. I’m like, is this a media grant out there? What’s going on? I know you do. Got me all jealous over here. I understand. It’s okay. Yeah. Yeah. well, Mickey, this has been a lot of fun.
I really appreciate the conversation. I appreciate getting to know a little bit more about what you do. And obviously you know, the great work you’re doing to help your clients. Sure. Secure funding. That being said, if somebody is listening to this or watching this and they want to follow up, I know we only barely, you know, scratched the surface on the topic.
I know there’s so much more. do they connect with you and your team? Sure the best way to connect with me is by email. My email is mic MI cki@lakeviewconsulting.net. You can also go to my website, lakeview consulting.net. You can see the services that we provide and I have articles all about manufacturing grants.
There’s tons of articles, there’s tons of resources on there. I’m pretty sure you’re gonna link to my website in the show notes. So, you know, just follow that link otherwise in the show notes. And also, you know, I am speaking at a few conferences coming up in October. I’m speaking at Spring World in Chicago.
I’m speaking at Fab Tech in Orlando, and I’m also speaking at the Industrial Heat Decarbonization Summit Indianapolis, all on manufacturing grants. So, if any of your listeners are looking for a speaker, or want me to do a webinar for their team on manufacturing grants, I’m always happy to just. Do those things to get the word out.
Amazing. And we’ll put your information of course, in the in the show notes so that the audience could just click on the links, head right on over, check out what you’re up to and connect with you as well. That being said, speaking to the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.
Hit that subscribe button. We have many more mission based individuals coming up. We don’t want you to miss a thing. This is a daily show each and every day. We have new guests for you that we’re bringing on. And again, we don’t want you to miss anything. So definitely hit that subscribe button and Mickey, thank you again so much for coming on.
It’s been fun. Thank you. Adam. It has been fun.
