Grants and funding are both great - but it's not free money with...

Grants and funding are both great - but it's not free money with no strings attached. There are ALWAYS conditions and expectations that go with it. And while it also allows them to do more work and fund projects, it is not revenue and can't be listed as cash flow and rarely for OpEx costs - even if they grow as a result of CapEx work.

Now, to be clear - grants are about as close to "free money" as a company can get. I've work with state and federal govt as well as higher Education Uni's that get massive grants and can't recall any that had a grant on the table and walked away. In fact, grants often help Uni researchers as they set out how much money is to be used for which kind of activities.

The framework makes sure the grant isn't just a big bag of cash. In other words, grant money can't be used for travel if no budget was allocated for travel in the grant. But if $50k was for travel, that money can't (well, shouldn't) be used for anything not travel related. Usually, it all needs to be reported on so a governance framework is typically agreed upon as well.

Not sure if this is useful or boring. Sorry for droning on...