After losing my job last December and hearing all the whoopla coming out of our current administration about "energy independence,""going green," and "economic stimulus," my wife and I decided to look into getting some government grant money for alternative energy research. I had some ideas that I thought would be great to test and put into practice. And, no, I don't have a PhD.
After doing some digging and making some phone calls, we found all sorts of information on how to apply for grants. The long and the short of it is: unless you are in a recognized minority group, you are a professor at a university, or you are some big corporation that's been tapped into government-funded R&D before, you are entitled to get bupkis from Uncle Sugar.