Funding is the act of providing resources, usually in form of money

Money

Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...

 (Financing

Finance

"Finance" is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created...

), or other values such as effort or time (sweat equity

Sweat equity

Sweat equity is a term that refers to a party's contribution to a project in the form of effort --- as opposed to financial equity, which is a contribution in the form of capital....

), for a project

Project

A project in business and science is typically defined as a collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a particular aim. Projects can be further defined as temporary rather than permanent social systems that are constituted by teams...

, a person, a business or any other private or public institutions. When a request for funding is made then fundraising

Fundraising

Fundraising or fund raising is the process of soliciting and gathering voluntary contributions as money or other resources, by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies...

 is being attempted.

Funds can be allocat

Allocation

Allocation may refer to:* Computers** Delayed allocation** Block allocation map** FAT** IP address allocation** Memory allocation** C++ allocators** No-write allocation ** Register allocation* Economics** Economic system** Asset allocation...

ed for either short-term or long-term purposes.

Sources of funding

Among the main sources of funding, there are:

• Credit
  Credit (finance)
  Credit is the trust which allows one party to provide resources to another party where that second party does not reimburse the first party immediately , but instead arranges either to repay or return those resources at a later date. The resources provided may be financial Credit is the trust...
  
  
• Donation
  Donation
  A donation is a gift given by physical or legal persons, typically for charitable purposes and/or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including cash, services, new or used goods including clothing, toys, food, and vehicles...
  
  s
• Grants
  Grant (money)
  Grants are funds disbursed by one party , often a Government Department, Corporation, Foundation or Trust, to a recipient, often a nonprofit entity, educational institution, business or an individual. In order to receive a grant, some form of "Grant Writing" often referred to as either a proposal...
  
  
• Savings
• Subsidies
  Subsidy
  A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor A subsidy (also...
  
  
• Tax
  Tax
  To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
  
  es

Soft funding

Donations, subsidies and grants are described as soft funding or crowd funding

Crowd funding

Crowd funding describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations...

, i.e. funding that has no direct requirement for return of investment.

See also

• Crowd funding
  Crowd funding
  Crowd funding describes the collective cooperation, attention and trust by people who network and pool their money and other resources together, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organizations...
  
  
• Foundation (charity)
  Foundation (charity)
  A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....
  
  
• Investment
  Investment
  Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
  
  
• Mass-funding
• Peer-to-peer lending
• Research funding
  Research funding
  Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both "hard" science and technology and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most...
  
  
• Seed money
  Seed money
  Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding, friends and family funding or angel funding , is a securities offering whereby one or more parties that have some connection to a new enterprise invest the funds necessary to start the business so that it has enough funds to sustain itself for a period...