How do you know if a website is legitimate (particularly for government grants?

A website is legitimate if it is a GOVERNMENT website -- meaning it ends in .gov domain.

You can go to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) http://www.cfda.gov/ and Grants.gov http://www.grants.gov/ - these are two FREE sites created by the federal government to provide transparency and information on grants. Browse through the listings and see if you can find any grant that would support your purposes.

You may also want to read the warnings FTC has issued against these "grant" companies:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/03/grantresources.htm

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/al...

Here is also one of the warnings issued by the Better Business Bureau http://www.concord.bbb.org/tips_timesharescams.htm...

The federal goverment does not give out grants to individuals. It gives grants to organizations who in turn give grants to individuals.

Check with the secretary of state in your state to make sure that the organization is a legitimate organization. By law, a non-profit has to be registered with them in order to operate in the state.