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The Latest Outfit Promising Something for Nothing: Aimfar

You might think that, given our tendency to mock various scams and time wasters in the grant world (see, for example, here and here), people would stop sending us spam with outlandish promises in it. Alas, that’s not the case, since we recently received a message from Jacqueline Ruth Turco of “Aimfar,” which says, “Let us write your non profit clients a grant. At least 75% of your non profit clients will qualify for and receive a grant.” Aside from the awkward or nonstandard English, this message is bizarre because it doesn’t identify the purported funding agency.

A quick reminder: grants are usually made by government agencies at various levels (federal, state, local) or foundations/corporate giving sources to nonprofit or public agencies. If you receive e-mails promising something for nothing that don’t even a) identify the entity offering you money or b) why that entity might offer you money, it’s likely a scam of some sort. At the moment, Aimfar’s “About” page talks about micro loans, not grants, and it’s not obvious what exactly they do, which is another bad sign in the grant world. You might notice that if you go to the Seliger + Associates services page, we list the stuff we do: write proposals, edit proposals, grant research, and so forth. If you go to Aimfar’s page, it’s difficult to say exactly what they do aside from spamming us and presumably others as well.