877-472-6814

I paid $2600/- in October this year and still waiting. My budget was tight but I took a risk. However, if something positive comes out I shall definetly inform you and of course, if something negative then the whole world will know about it. Good luck to you all & me!

My husband has been speaking with someone from sbfc.  He was told that we would pay once the grant is awarded.  I will let you know if that is not the case.  We won't pay up front, I don't care what people say about that.

I have been talking to Bill Widener, ext 420, I have been approved for $175,000.00.  But, I will have pay the $2600 up front also.  He told me to check them out on the internet and that he would call me back.  I didn't find much when I searched, except a thing on Yahoo answers that were sort of scripted in my opinion.  I told him that I was having trouble letting go of that amount of money up front.  He explained that that weeds out the people that aren't serious, and they would be chaising everyone down for there $2600 if they did that.  If they can't trust us, why should we trust them?

We spoke to this man at SBFC several times and have been professional and interested so he keeps trying to keep us interested.  We asked for informaiton and so far he can only fax one page with the most basic information.  My theory is that it is a company and that they will work to find you money, but 99% of us won't qualify and the fee will pay for exactly what they promised - an attempt at getting money.  Heck, anyone can set up a business claiming they will try and it's not illegal.  Lawyers take a retainer and they can try to help you win but you might not win.  I am very skeptical and I am going to pass.  If they really want customers then they better work on responding to everyone's concern.  He also faxed a list of Foundations (top 100) that give money.  It showed their asset pool sizes but that is certainly not how the distributions are made and I believe this is a simple case of preyingon our hunger for working capital.  I do believe grants are out there but you can hire an attorney to handle it for you - funny how we are willing to write a big check but I bet most of us snear at paying an attorney in town $175/hr. to do the work for us.  I am going to take a lesson from this and spend some money on gaining information around grant applications - heck, it was money I was ready to roll the dice on in NV...

I noticed that their corporate information contains gramatical errors.  It just doesn'ta add up.  Let's face it - they are so unprofessional, if this is a good idea we might as well find a company that is doing a better job at it and hire them to represent us - these people are rookies.

The information I received said:

SBFC Inc -
311 N. Pecos Rd.
Henderson, NV 89074

www.sbfcompany.com or www.smallbusinessfundingco.com

Secretary of State

www.sos.statenv.us

Corp. # C892-1977

Our licensed is verified under:

City of Henderson
2002303...  (can't read it)

877-472-6814

Oh - forgot to mention, we qualified for $400K at the initial $2,600 level (because we applied under childcare and farm as a woman owned business) and then we got approved for $1.2million if we paid $6,700.

I really would like to know if Grant money is out there - someone let us know.

Same song - I received a call, left my name and number and a guy named Daniel Araya called me back.  Went thru the initial process and he told me my business (existing business of 3 yrs) would qualify for approximately $250,000 to $300,000 in grant money.  He explained that they never actually see the grant money once it is given out, it comes directly to me, that is why they ask for the retainer of $2600 up front.  Then once grant money is received I would owe an additional $3700.  I don't know if any one has seen the contract, but all they promise is to submit the proposal and if a minimum of $100,000 is not received within the first year, then the will provide their services free of charge for the second year - still no promise/guarantee of money.  He told me they nave been in business for 30+ years, but they have only been incorporated just recently.  When I checked on the BBB website they have two business names, one for general business guidance, and one for the grant writing side of the company.  The business side of grant writing has only been in business since Aug '07 - therefore not enough time for the BBB to determine if they are satisfactory or not.  

Up to this point, I have been sold on the company, except for no testimonies.  The guy I have been in contact with at SBF has been very professional and has answered my questions well.  I HAVE NOT given them any money yet.  I would like to hear of a success story.  I did run across an interesting responce on Yahoo.  Here is the link and the response in case you cannot open the link.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071108003131AADvLkz

"It is really a ploy, unless you have any where from 13,000.00 to 20,000.00 dollars to spend. You will be sold on the concept that with your initial down payment they will complete the work for you, they in turn will take an additional 3,700 dollars off the top upon your award of the grant. What they don't tell you is that they are going to try to silicate another 10,000. talking you into becoming a non profit org. and another 10,000. for actually submitting the paper work,( of which they already said they would do) stating that your down to 20 or 30 applicants for this grant. The paper work they claim they need is so overwhelming your screwed if you don't have the money to have them do it. Be Leary or they will take your initial payment and your screwed, as they did me."

I would to hear the outcome from anyone who has paid the $2600 retainer fee.  Good luck to us all!

My story is the same, I did an extensive Google search from every angle I could think of and could not come up with any real "dirt" on SBFC. When I did a search on the phone # only It showed that they have several names tied to that #. Still I thought I'd give it a try. So at the end of Nov. 2007 they had my personal check picked up by FedEx. Since then I never hear from them. I have 5 differant extensions that I try calling from time to time. Eventually after leaving many messages I'll get a call back and they will tell me to be more patient, grants take a long time. It's hard to be patient when someone takes your money and doesn't even bother to comunicate with you afterwards. They sure were comunicating before they got there money. At this point I'm about 50/50 on wether this is a scam. To the person who claims to have recieved a grant from them and that it took 6 or 8 months, how do we know your not an employee of SBFC?

I experienced the same exact series of events listed above. Thanks to this message board, I refused to go any further.

Thank you-
Danielle

SBFC is a scam, they don't write grants, all employees work on comissions, they are not paid any base salary as they claim, the truth is that they fight for each client between themselves b'cause they get paid from check for 2600$, all of them are very aggressive, they got strange accent, and I believe they are a group of Latin Americans playing grant writing business.
THEY DON'T WRITE ANY GRANTS. They are just rude like a collecting company calling us to get money out of us, they just hunt for 2600$.
Sorry for all who were mistaken about their good intentions.

Cindy.