Searching for Federal Grants

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance
This resource has both print and online versions which include 64 federal agencies, including all major cabinet level departments. The home page of the CFDA (www.cfda.gov) allows the grant seeker to download the 2009 print edition. It is not necessary to have an account on this site in order to search the catalog or view programs.

A basic search can be done by inputting a keyword or program number and/or the type of assistance (grant, loan, federal contract, training, federal employment, etc.). A list of program solicitations will appear. The searcher may then click on a particular grant opportunity and receive a very complete description of that program. However, no application forms are available, and the grant seeker is referred to the specific agencies for that information. The listing will contain all programs which make grants for certain types of projects (i.e., environmental, law enforcement, education, etc.) whether the opportunity is currently open to accept applications or not. Many federal programs accept applications once a year.

Advanced searches allow the grant seeker to input the following: full text, assistance type (grant, loan, etc.), applicant eligibility, use of the assistance, beneficiary eligibility (the types of persons which the program will ultimately benefit, such as job recipients in the case of an economic development program), functional codes (agriculture, natural resources, law enforcement etc.), deadline, date modified, date published, whether the opportunity is funded by ARRA money, subject terms and whether the opportunity is subject to the clearinghouse requirement.

Both the basic and advanced searches will produce the following information: authorization for the program, its objectives, the types of assistance available, applicant eligibility, application and award process, post-award reporting requirements, matching funds required, and timeline. A very handy user’s guide can also be downloaded. In addition, clicking on specific agencies will produce a list of programs administered by that agency. The user has the ability to click on a particular program and view it separately.

It could be deduced that searching on CFDA should yield more opportunities due to the fact that there are sixty-four agencies available on that site and only forty-two on Grants.gov. Of course, both sites contain listings for all of the major cabinet agencies. I would like to give a very interesting example of the widely varying results which can be obtained by searching both sites. I had a client who wished to open a school to train firefighters. While searching Grants.gov, I used the keyword “firefighter”, “firefighting”, and “firefighter training”. Much to my surprise, I only got one result, a program administered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On using the same terms in CFDA, I got over six hundred results.