We’re sorry to inform all our readers and followers that, after 15 years of researching and sharing information on grant opportunities, we’ve decided to close GRIN with immediate effect.
Over the last 12 months, GRIN’s financial position has become intractable. In fact, GRIN has become so grim that we’ve hit the gin and have called in the retrievers. A couple of poodles may also be involved.
GRIN director Dominie commented “if we’d just stuck to sending out grant alerts, GRIN would have been fine. Sadly, it was our decision to diversity into several other areas that has led to the downfall of the business”.
Among the diversification projects GRIN has initiated over the last few years, all of which proved to be financially disastrous, were:
o Make-up for dogs, overlooking the fact that dogs don’t have eyelashes and find it difficult to pucker their lips. We found that dogs were more inclined to chew the eyeliner and fetch the lipstick rather than allow it to be applied.
o Hats for Cats – another animal-related product that failed because – as it turns out – cats don’t like wearing hats.
o Starting a grant-making organisation – “The GRIN Foundation” – with no money to give out, but having to employ 10 additional staff to manage the volume of enquiries.
o A foolhardy and subsequently abandoned office move to Virne in Finland, after we were informed that we would have to be resident for at least 5 years before we could enter the wife-carrying and air guitar world championships. Paradoxically, our Finnish Focus Forums indicated that the Cats in Hats project may have found a market in Finland’s sub-zero temperatures. “If that had worked out”, mused Dominie, “we could have moved on to other potentially lucrative initiatives like pyjamas for llamas or wigs for guinea pigs”.
“The most unsuccessful and damaging scheme to diversify the business”, continued co-director Paul, “was to make a large-scale investment in inflatable dartboards. When we realised this wasn’t going to work, we felt quite deflated”.
“We’re terribly sorry to let people down in this way. We really thought we had some great, innovative business ideas that no-one had come up with or tried before. Now we know why.”
The Cats in Hats Project
This is what we were aiming for:
Although technically a success, this was the usual result:
GRIN will be open for business again on Thursday 2nd April 2026.