The one you flagged — Cartier Women's Initiative — is a real fit in spirit, but not this cycle. CWI requires the business to be generating revenue from sales for at least one year, with annual revenue between $50K and $5M. With beta launching September 2026, that gate rules us out for 2027. It becomes a genuinely strong target for the 2028 cycle — details and a prep plan are at the bottom of this page.
So this list is built around where She & HER actually is today: pre-revenue, women- and sapphic-led, Black-founder-led, scalable tech with clear social impact. Every Tier 1 and Tier 2 program below accepts pre-revenue or idea-stage companies. Ranked by fit, not award size.
Tier 1 Apply now — strongest fit
Pre-revenue eligible, non-dilutive, and aligned with exactly who Desi is and what She & HER is building. Start here.
SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant
SoGal Foundation · non-dilutive
$5K–$10K
+ SoGal Ventures access
Rolling — verify current windowBlack women / nonbinaryIdea-stage OK
Built for exactly this: a Black woman founder with a scalable, high-impact, VC-track idea. No revenue floor — you only need a legally registered business and the ambition to scale. Bonus that's worth more than the cash: lifetime "ask-me-anything" access to SoGal Foundation and SoGal Ventures, which plugs directly into your raise.
Last day of every monthWomen-ownedStartup category$15 application fee
The lowest-effort, highest-frequency option. No revenue requirement, a dedicated Startup category, and one application keeps you in the running for monthly $10K awards plus $25K and $100K year-end prizes. Apply once, you're entered for the year. Worth doing this month.
Opens April 2026 — verify if openLGBTQIA+ owned<$5M revenue
The clearest mission-alignment grant on the list — LGBTQIA+-owned, with an accelerator attached. Cash is small, but the credential and the cohort matter for a sapphic-led company.
Check two gates: requires 1+ year in business (you're ~13 months from May 2025 incorporation — OK) and 2–100 employees. Confirm how your contractor/equity-only team counts before applying.
Explicitly encourages women and minority founders, and every applicant gets feedback — useful signal even when you don't win. Monthly winners roll into a $2,500 year-end prize.
Not one grant — a funding platform. Register She & HER's profile and you get matched to partner-funded grants (e.g., Allstate Boost: $20K to 100 businesses + accelerator). Infrastructure move: do it once, get alerts forever.
One application feeds a matching database across corporate partners (Visa, Neutrogena, Amex). Same logic as Hello Alice — set it up once and let the matches come to you.
Getting WBE certified in Houston unlocks corporate and government contracting set-asides and grant programs that require certification. Foundational paperwork that pays off across everything else.
This is the bigger insight for Jeanette's lane. She & HER and The She & HER Institute open different doors.
Track A · Now
She & HER, Inc. (for-profit)
Everything above. Startup grants and pitch awards open to for-profit women/LGBTQ/Black-led companies. Most cap out in the low five figures but stack well and build a funding track record.
Track B · ~July 2026
The She & HER Institute (501c3)
Once the IRS determination letter lands (ETA mid-June–early July), a whole separate universe opens: foundation and philanthropic grants for education, LGBTQ equity, and racial equity — many of which only fund 501(c)(3)s, and at far larger amounts than startup grants.
Recommendation: Start Track A this week (SoGal + Amber + Pride). Hold a Track B research sprint for the moment the determination letter arrives — that's where the six-figure foundation money lives, and it maps directly to Jeanette's Grants & Philanthropic Partnerships mandate.
Parked Cartier Women's Initiative — 2028 plan
Why we wait
CWI's Regional Awards pay big (~$100K top award + a year-long fellowship and executive coaching) and you clear the women-led / women-owned / impact / for-profit gates cleanly. The block is a single hard requirement:
Generating revenue from sales for ≥ 1 year as of the application date
Annual revenue between $50K and $5M
1–6 years registered operations (✓ already met)
Not more than $2M raised in dilutive funding (✓ comfortably met)
With beta launching September 2026, you'll have ~12 months of revenue history by the 2028 application window (typically opens ~April, closes ~mid-June). The application questions barely change year to year, so nothing about waiting is wasted.
Prep checklist for the 2028 cycle
Track monthly revenue from beta launch — you'll need to show ≥ 1 continuous year of sales
Map She & HER's impact to at least one UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 5 Gender Equality, SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities)
Draft the long-form answers in a separate doc (CWI strongly recommends this) — reuse across other awards
Confirm B2-level English founder bio & impact narrative (trivially met)
A word of caution. The grant space is full of SEO sites posing as funders. Stick to the named foundations and platforms above, never pay more than a small (~$15) application fee, and confirm each program's current open window before investing time — several run on cycles that shift year to year. Where this list says "verify," that's a 5-minute check, not a guess to skip.