Updated December 28, 2011
Through our Love A Local Business competition, Intuit has awarded over $800,000 in grants to businesses that were nominated by their fans: customers, friends, family members, employees and owners. It’s not too late to add your business to the list of winners – you could win a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant. Vote for your business today.
Small business grant winners within the past year include:
January 2012- 2Guyz Boutique for Dogs & Cats, Elwood, IN wins $25K
October-December 2011 Grand Prize Winner - Aqua Salon in Chicago, IL wins $50K
December 2011 (III) – Nick’s Pizza and Pub in Elgin and Crystal Lake, IL wins $25k
December 2011 (II) – Form-A-Corp.com in Palm Beach Gardens, FL wins $25k
December 2011 (I) – Abbi Kate’s Cupcakes in Choctaw, OK wins $25k
November 2011 (III) – Bantom Global Industries in Detroit, MI wins $25k
November 2011 (II) – Aqua Salon in Chicago, IL wins $25k
November 2011 (I) – Bath & Body Bistro in Albuquerque, NM wins $25k
October 2011 (III) – Heart and Soul Events in Frankfort, NY wins $25k
October 2011 (II) – Ferrin Accounting in Platte City, MO wins $25k
October 2011 (I) – WEBIT Services in St. Charles, IL wins $25k
July-September Grand Prize Winner – Marie’s Bed & Biscuit in Charlotte, MI wins $50k Grant
September 2011 – Bowie Home Improvement in Bowie, MD wins $25k
August 2011 – Atrium Wellness in Aurora, IL wins $25k
July 2011 – Marie’s Bed and Biscuit in Charlotte, MI wins $25k
Apr-June 2011 Grand Prize Winner- Sipping n’ Painting of Denver, CO wins $50k Grand Prize
June 2011 – Sipping n’ Painting of Denver, CO wins $25k
May 2011 – Devolution Solutions of North Hollywood, CA wins $25k
April 2011 – Party Girls Event Planning of Columbus, GA wins $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
Jan-Mar 2011 Grand Prize Winner – Harmony in Hooves Wins Grand Prize $50,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
March 2011 – Harmony in Hooves in Benton, Arkansas Wins a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
February 2011 – GoodOnYa Bar (and Deli’s) in San Diego Wins a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
January 2011 - Out of Proportion Studios Wins a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant.
October – December Grand Prize Winner – PEP Club Sports Wins Grand Prize $50,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
December 2010 – PEP Club Sports in Parker, Colorado Wins a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
November 2010 – Todali Tackle of Philpot, Kentucky Wins $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
October 2010 – Buss Fitness in Northfield, Ohio Wins a $25,000 Intuit Hiring Grant
July-September Grand Prize Winner – BookSmart of Morgan Hill Wins $30,000 Love A Local Business Grant
September 2010 – Ellechor Publishing House Wins $5,000 Love A Local Business Grant
August 2010 – Austin Loves another Local Business
July 2010 – BookSmart Wins July Love A Local Business Grant
April-June Grand Prize Winner – Austin is Home to Love A Local Business Grand Prize Winner Megan Summerville
June Winners – “Hobbypreneurs” Win Love A Local Business Grants
May Winners – Love A Local Business Grant Winners Work on a First Name Basis
April Winners – April Showers Bring…Small Business Grants to Small Towns in the Upper Midwest
March Winners – SailProud Apparel in Boston, MA, is the Grand Prize Winner
February Winners – Maria Luisa Gifts & Accessories in Nyack, NY is the Grand Prize Winner
January Winners – Blossom Birth in Palo Alto, CA is the Grand Prize winner
December Winners – Fitting Group in Pittsburgh, PA is the Grand Prize winner.
November Winners – Gull Wings Children’s Museum in Oxnard, CA is the Grand Prize winner
October Winners – Casa di Mir Montessori in Campbell, CA is the Grand Prize winner.
Hello,
My business was nominated and then I sent the link to customers and friends. Many of them told me they have voted but when I look it isn’t showing. Also, it looks like my business is listed 4 or 5 times now so I’m not sure if they voted or nominated again?
Would you have time to review and see if they can be consolidated? Thank you for your help!
Marcy Storm
Hi Marcy,
If you see multiple entries for your business, please read our Love a Local Business FAQ page with the entry that starts “There are two (or more) listings for my business with different spellings” for instructions on how to merge entries.
Also, be sure to nominate your own business if you haven’t already. That’s a requirement to win a grant.
Good luck!
Jay B. (Intuit)
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I was just wondering what dates that drawings are. I noticed it says at the end of each month (Jan, Feb, March), but it doesn’t say if it is on the last day of each month specifically.
Monthly deadlines are 11:59pm PT on the last day of hte month – Jan. 31 11:59pm PT, Feb. 28 11:59 pm PT, March 31 11:59 pm PT. Check out the Official Rules for more details.
Our business has 52 votes with comments displaying for month ending January 31st, 2011. Most votes came in on January 30th and 31st. Why are the votes not showing up on the top ten list for our area. This list shows our business has “one” vote and there are different listings as well for our business. At the end of the month, when is the top ten list updated to show all of the “actual” votes that came in for local businesses. Thanks so much. I await your reply.
Congrats to OOPS for winning the January 2011 grant.
I got people round up REALLY EARLY IN THE MOURNING to vote and it STOPPED WORKING!!! two people voted and then the widget stopped working… please HELP!
N. Drew
Skewed Minds LLC
When will you be announcing the winners to the March competition?
As the owner of The Pipe Doctor Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. located in Woodmere, New York, I am delighted to have the opportunity to nominate my business for this Intuit grant contest.
During the first few days of this contest period, I implemented a plan on getting all of our customers to vote. We started printing out the flyer to “Text2Vote” and mailing it to over 2,000 existing customers. Then we printed 5,000 postcards and now we are in the process of calling over 11,000 customers asking for votes. Thankfully with our Vonage unlimited calling plan and a couple volunteers from my staff, the direct telephone calls cost practically nothing. Finally, we added the banner for our website, http://www.pipedoc.net. We even created a facebook page! Only 11 days in, I can’t believe the turnout. We already have over 1700 votes!
If my company is the winning business, this grant will help fund our “Heating Fund” where we help those with their gas heating bills during the winter or those who are unable to repair their heating systems due to repair costs. During the winter season of 2010-2011, we donated over $2,500. In 2009-2010 due to the economy we only donated $850. Hopefully this winter if the economy does not get better we can multiply that amount many times over with potential funding from winning this grant.
Its sad, that despite our hard work and determination to be April’s Love a Local Business Grant winner, we have unfriendly competitors who are not playing by the rules and making false claims. On the FAQ blog forum, other people are posting as my company and continue to write slanderous comments. Seriously, nothing is wrong with friendly competition, but where do we draw the line. Funny, they even wrote negative comments when they voted for my company! (Luckily their vote counts – and maybe it will result in a win!)
Even if my company does not win, the response we are receiving from the postcards and mailings has increased business this month 750% from last year! Our customers are not only calling to say they voted, but also scheduling service calls for central air conditioning tune-ups and requesting repairs on their faucet that leaks and toilets that run! This increased call volume is bring in more revenue, allowing our employees to get overtime and will result in hiring!
I’d like to personally thank Intuit for this grant contest. Regardless of the outcome of the grant contest, we have realized methods to increase business, which in turn allows us to hire more employees and therefore help more people in our community.
I established The Pipe Doctor over 2 years ago with a great set of business principals, $550, a 2001 Chevy Astro Cargo van and a dream. Since then we have grown exponentially. And in only a few weeks, we have realized a 750% increase of growth that would have been lost if not for Intuit.
If any other small business has any questions or would like to brainstorm together to increase the bottom line, please do not hesitate to call or email me!
Respectfully,
Michael Diack, President
The Pipe Doctor Plumbing, Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.
1 Club Drive, Suite 4GR
Woodmere, New York 11598
516-295-2448 Office – ext. 9
516-706-0375 Fax
http://www.pipedoc.net
mike@pipedoc.net
I`M BIANCA TROFIN DAD AND I WANT ALL YOU TO KNOW THAT I`M VERY PROUD OF HER, FOR ALL WHAT SHE`S DOING. I LOVE YOU!
when will the April 2011 Winner be posted?
thank you for your time
Hi Karla,
We just announced the April 2011 winner on our Facebook Page. We’ll add an article to this blog about the latest winner soon.
Thanks for your interest.
Jay B. (Intuit)
Why is this grant limited to just Corporations?
What about all other entities working for the common good??????
Why is everything for Corporations?????
Categories folks, that’s what we need…
Cordially,
Bella De Soto http://www.belladesoto.blogspot.com
I am running a start-up non-profit. Do nonprofits qualify?
As a inventor, I have a great product for consumers.
If I show you what the product is, will you tell me if I can get grant ?
Thank you.
Greatest
Kelly paper should win. 100 % friendly and helpful & will be there for you when you need them to help. Not like staples . Don’t help just because there a big store .
This is a great idea although there should be different categories as some of the small businesses like mine are really small and will not be able to compete with the big small businesses based on the sheer volume of customers they have.
I vote for a mini-me small business category:)
As a little kid with a GIANT sized dream of constructing all the things my mind could create and having seen over 90% of everything i’ve thought of and created in my mind come to fruition, only for the benifit of somebody else, even though it feels somehow rewarding knowing that because there is no way to calibrate the likeliness of an invention being successful, others have proven my thoughts to be successful for me. I’ve never been in a financially free position to bring even one of my inventions to any market so i’ve always been hesitant to start the invention process for fear of not being
able to fund it from start to SUCCESS.
(unfortunately, I’ve even had the luxury of witnessing one of the inventions I helped my drafting teacher in high school with being stolen and is currently installed in almost every home since 1993.
- Is an invention eligible for these
grants?
– Are there people or companies that don’t take advantage of inventors while “helping to get their invention patented”?
-is it possible for an inventor to only invent, leave the financial standpoint behind and have an investor/s only invest?
Elimiller1275@aol.com
When will the June 2011 winners be posted?
Hi Susan,
We’ve already posted the winning business and City-by-City winners. Please view our Love a Local Business blog category for the latest news.
Jay B. (Intuit)
I am trying to nominate my Daughter & Son in law’s (Paul Manibusan) year old Business
“INNO4″ in Everett WA. sub of Seattle WA
I can’t seem to get it (my vote) in the right place ~ Please Add to local list
Thank You 425 259 2658
Great contest! I voted for all the businesses I frequent. Especially a great one for finding a local plumber. http://www.your-local-plumber.com
I voted for my business. I cant even imagine winning this monthly grant! It would really help my customers!
Check out my site: http://www.dgplumber.net
That’s great to hear, George. You’ve taken an important first step, because only businesses that nominate themselves are eligible to win. Have you been able to motivate your loyal customers to nominate your business, too?
Best wishes,
Jay B. (Intuit)
How can I get a list of my voters emails.
awesome page…
Great program! I just voted for my company. I am a Charleston Plumber. Please vote for me too!
Dear Intuit:
Would you please help us to find some finance to do renovation in our shelter camp. Thank you, CNU
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I’ve had several family members, friends and customers tell me that they voted for my business, yet they are not showing up. Some voted by clicking the link and some by text. Any idea why they’re not showing up?
Thanks!
Maura
Hi Maura,
I see 16 (now 17!) votes registered on the backend as well as on your voting page. Were you anticipating more votes?
Thanks,
Pamela
Are nonprofit businesses included? We have a 100% volunteer organization and would love to have money to hire our first employee!
December 2011 (I) – Abbi Kate’s Cupcakes in Choctaw, OK wins $25k
I didn’t see this company in ever in the top 10 in December! Can you tell me how they are December’s winner??
@Amy – Yes! Non-profit organizations can participate in this program. Good luck!
@Laura – It’s the luck of the draw! Although the businesses in the top 10 have a lot of votes, they do have to contend with being a small percentage of the overall votes in the drawing, so businesses with a lot of votes don’t always win. This system helps to level the playing field for all businesses participating and hopefully also discourages ballot stuffing.
Thanks for the reply, Pam! Good to know!
Greetings,
First of all, thank you for this great contest. Seeing all the nice comments from our customers has made us already feel like we’ve won. I am so pleased that my wonderful crew is getting all of this positive feedback from customers! That alone is priceless. On top of that, we now have all of these wonderful comments/testimonials scrolling on our website with the contest’s widget. Fantastic!
I know that I am supposed to “nominate” my business to be eligible to win the grant, but I don’t know if I’ve done that properly or not. Is there a webpage where I can check to see if I have properly nominated my business (Pet Pangaea LLC)? I am getting paranoid that I haven’t done everything I need to do.
Thank you again!
Cyndi
@ Cyndi – I’m so happy you’re getting a lot of love from this contest! If you nominated your business using the Small Business Owner link, you should be able to access the Winners Playbook using the email address you used to submit your nomination. Looks like you’re set up properly!
Hi,
I just wonder how the winner selection is working ? is it completely random or do you pick manually a specific company at the end ?!
Looking at all of your winners so far there’s almost no one from your top pulse list or from top 10 business is a winner !!! , some winners has only as low as 25 votes :-) , while the business who has 1000 votes or more aren’t winner !!!
Are you sure that you follow a random selection for the winners ?!!!!!!
If anyone familiar with probability science, they will now that your contest winners don’t make any kind of sense according to this science’s formulas , considering that you have almost 1000 nominees on average !!!!!
Please explain … !!!!
Thanks!
Hello,
Is this contest still running ?!
Any updates about January’s winners ?!
Thanks
Hello Marcil,
Thank you for your posts. I believe I’ve already answered your first question on a different page but just to confirm, yes, the winners are selected randomly by ePrize, a third party administrator.
As for your second post, the contest is still running! The winner of the January contest was just announced. A new contest started on February 1st and it will run through the end of March. Please see the official rules for more details.
Good luck!
Betsy