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1 1 (February 13, 2025)

handle is hein.crs/govesma0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Service Informing the IegisIat~ve debate s~nce 1914 February 13, 2025 Searching for Federal Grants: An Overview of Resources The diverse range of federal grant programs can be challenging to navigate. Congress has authorized over 1,800 federal grant programs to support national goals and objectives, and federal grant funding can be used for a variety of purposes based on the eligible use provisions of each program. Federal grants are often primarily available for state and local governments, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, and other entities; federal grant programs are not often available to businesses or individuals. This In Focus provides information on selected key resources for searching and discovering information on federal grant opportunities. During the exploratory phase, grantseekers may use their familiarity with the details of their project to compare those details with grant program requirements and ask questions of administering agencies. This In Focus also briefly discusses grant administration. There is no single resource that will provide comprehensive information on the specific provisions of all existing federal assistance programs for grantseekers. However, there are several key sources below that may be of assistance. Who Administers Federal Grants? Grantseekers are encouraged to identify who administers grants of interest, as they may be the most important source of information. There are over two dozen federal agencies providing funding opportunities to the public in the form of grants. Understanding more about typical awards processes and terminology will assist in identifying the entity that is administering a particular grant. Many federal grant funds are first awarded to state and local governments through various formula grant or block grant programs (e.g., see Texas's Top 100 Federal Funding Sources in the Texas State Budget). The state and local governments receiving these direct awards are considered prime recipients, who then administer the program funding and may make subawards to other subrecipients. This subawarding is known as a pass-through process. In addition to pass-through subawarding of federal funds (often from state entities, and sometimes local entities), some federal grant funding is directly awarded by federal agencies without a pass-through. These awards are considered discretionary grants, administered by the federal agency, and, typically, reviewed in a competitive process overseen by the awarding federal agency. Identifying who administers a grant may help grantseekers identify official websites of administering agencies and grant program contacts. From these sources, questions can be answered about types and availability of federal assistance, eligibility requirements, application processes, and award cycles/timeframes. For more information, see the sections on state and federal government websites below. Assistance Listings at SAM.gov SAM.gov (System for Award Management) is hosted by the General Services Administration (GSA) and is a public platform providing multiple databases, including the Assistance Listings (formerly known as the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance). The Assistance Listings is a searchable database that describes over 2,200 federal assistance programs, including over 1,800 federal grant programs, and has a variety of search options. SAM's Assistance Listings provide a short summary of each grant program and contact information for grant-making federal agencies (e.g., see the Assistance to Firefighters grant program listing). SAM.gov Assistance Listings does not display grant program opportunities in real time, and it is possible that listed grant programs may not be currently available for application (or may not currently have any available funding to award). In addition to information on all kinds of federal grant programs, SAM.gov provides summaries of federal programs for federal loans, direct payments, surplus equipment, and cooperative agreements. Programs can be searched by keyword and filtered by federal organization, eligibility, assistance type, and location. Federal Program Inventory In 2024, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) publicly launched the Federal Program Inventory (FPI). Using data from SAM.gov Assistance Listings, this site similarly provides snapshot summaries of federal financial assistance programs, including grant programs (e.g., see the Assistance to Firefighters grant program summary). Like SAM.gov, this site allows searching by agencies, type of program/assistance, and eligible applicants-but this site also offers a category search function that displays results by topic across multiple agencies. This added functionality may be particularly helpful for new grantseekers who are at the beginning or exploratory stage of the search process. Grantseekers can select categories (and subcategories) to search, such as agriculture, economic/community development, housing, disaster prevention and relief, transportation, and many others. The Federal Program Inventory also displays some overview data on federal program obligation amounts from USAspending.gov. Grants.gov Grants.gov lists federal Notices of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs), which are announcements that federal agencies publish when they are ready to accept applications. Grants.gov opportunities can be searched by keyword, opportunity status, funding instrument type, eligibility,

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