If you are someone who wishes to begin researching and developing alternative energy technologies and you would want to be set up as a not-for-profit organization or entity, you will want to look into getting government grants, on both the state and the federal levels.

Government grants for alternative energy research and development have been highly touted by politicians on local, state, and federal levels in recent years, all the way up to the President himself.

This is due to the fact that we now recognize as a society that we need to seek out and develop alternative energy sources to those of the fossil fuels that we presently depend upon, as these fuels are not only slowly but surely running out (at least cheap access to digging them up is running out), but also damaging to the environment and air quality.

There is a fairly vast array of government grant programs available for you to check into. The great and most important thing to keep in mind about a government grant is that it's essentially free money.

It is not a loan, you don't pay any interest, and you don't ever have to give the money back. However, qualifying for these grants, as you might imagine with something involving the government and free money, has quite a lot of restrictions attached to it.

Not only is qualification based on purpose and need in the eyes and opinions of government bureaucrats, but just because you qualify does not mean that you necessarily get the grant. As Marshall McLuen put it, "the medium is the message".

The fact of the matter is that it is typically easier to apply for and qualify to receive a business loan but then, that would not be free money, that would be something you owed to someone, and with interest on top.

There are professional grant writers who know how to write proposals in such a way that they get around the heavy load of restrictions set up by the government, and you might need to resort to one of these.

Even governments employ professional grant writers to seek money from other branches of the government, such as a country government needing funding from the state or the federal government.

These people also keep abreast of what government grants are still or newly available and what ones have been removed from the table. It's an intricate web, so one must not get tangled up in when seeking needed financial backing for alternative energy research and development.

In fact, it is so complex that in the last decade or so the ranks of profession writers, as both individuals and as entire companies, have swelled. It is a profitable business and this can make it fraught with illegal actions and controversial claims.

Nevertheless, each year there are many thousands of grants awarded throughout the United States for the purpose of helping the public. And again, with the government endorsement of grant money to be given to alternative energy researchers, you could very well get what you seek.