FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Dave Martin
646-483-5898
dave.goodgovpodcast@gmail.com
New York, NY — May 6, 2026
The Good Government Show sits down with GrantGuru CEO Adrian Spencer — and the numbers are staggering.
Most local government leaders assume grant funding is either too complicated, too competitive, or simply not worth the effort. Adrian Spencer would like a word. The CEO and co-founder of GrantGuru — the world’s largest aggregator of grants and funding — joined host Dave Martin on The Good Government Show for a conversation that doubles as a masterclass in how cities, counties, and municipalities can find and secure money they didn’t know existed. The headline number alone stops you cold: GrantGuru has identified over $3.6 trillion in available grant funding for local government, spanning 23,000 government programs and 180,000 private foundations. In a moment when federal dollars are being cut and local budgets are stretched thin, Spencer’s message couldn’t be more timely — or more useful.
Spencer, an Australian who traded a career hunting copper and gold mines in the outback for a career hunting grant dollars, brings a refreshingly practical lens to a topic that makes most administrators’ eyes glaze over. His firm’s core insight is deceptively simple: “Grants don’t fund organizations — they fund projects.” That reframe changes everything. A library that’s lost federal funding doesn’t apply as a library; it applies as a literacy program, an access initiative, a digital inclusion effort — each one a fundable project in its own right. Spencer walked Dave Martin through the mechanics of competitive grant writing, the danger of “grants fatigue,” the importance of tailoring every application to the funder’s policy priorities, and why the single biggest mistake governments make is simply not being ready when programs open. In today’s environment, he warned, programs are opening and closing faster than ever — and the cities that win are the ones that prepared six months or three years in advance.
The episode is full of moments that will make any government administrator sit up straighter. Spencer revealed that 75% of all Australian cities now use GrantGuru’s public-facing grants platform — a tool built after cities told him they were drowning in requests from businesses and nonprofits asking for money the cities didn’t have. By making the grants database publicly available, cities shifted the burden and unlocked a multiplier effect that transformed entire regional economies. His first-ever client used a $200,000 grant to launch a startup ecosystem in regional Victoria that is still thriving nearly twenty years later. “It wasn’t a huge amount of money,” Spencer said, “but we made it go a long way.” The key, he added, was whole-of-community collaboration — government, business, nonprofits, and universities all pulling together. “We like to think of grants as a team sport.”
For any government leader who has ever thrown up their hands at the grant process, Spencer’s closing advice is worth writing down: grants aren’t free money, and they aren’t for everyone — but they aren’t nothing either. “Ask for the right amount, answer the question they’re actually asking, and finish strong,” he told Martin. “That last 20% of effort is what separates the winners.” With federal funding in flux and community needs accelerating, Spencer’s argument is that the cities positioning themselves now — identifying projects, building coalitions, watching the horizon — are the ones that will be heroes when the next round of funding opens. The Good Government Show is produced by the Good Government Institute. New episodes are available wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at goodgovinstitute.org.
PULL QUOTES
“Grants don’t fund organizations — they fund projects.”
“Grants aren’t everything, but they’re not nothing.”
“We like to think of grants as a team sport.”
“Grants are a barometer of public policy — whatever the government of the day is trying to achieve will be reflected in why that program exists.”
“Nobody’s sitting back going, what happened yesterday was good enough for today. Let’s just settle for that.”