The term assistance (or benefits) is defined by the
federal government as:
"
The transfer of money,
property, services, or anything of value, the principal purpose of
which is to accomplish a public purpose of support or stimulation
authorized by Federal statute,…and includes, but is not limited
to, grants, loans, loan guarantees, scholarships, mortgage loans,
insurance…, property, technical assistance, counseling,
statistical, and other expert information; and service activities
of regulatory agencies.
"
Federal assistance programs
To
distribute the Federal assistance (the funding grants) in an
organized manner, the federal government provides assistance through
federal agencies. It is the agency’s responsibility to adequately
provide assistance, as well as manage, account, and monitor the
responsible use of federal funds which were utilized for that
assistance. The agencies then supply the assistance to beneficiaries
(known as recipients, see below), such as States, hospitals,
poverty-stricken families, etc., through hundreds of individual
programs. These programs are defined by the federal government as:
“any function of a Federal agency that provides assistance or benefits
(funding grants) for: (1) a State or States, territorial possession,
county, city, other political subdivision, grouping, or
instrumentality thereof; (2) any domestic profit or nonprofit
corporation or institution; or (3) an individual; other than an agency
of the Federal government”. Therefore, programs (or “functions”) can
refer to any number of activities or services provided by agencies,
such as building a bridge, providing food or medicine vouchers to the
poor, or providing counseling to violence victims. Programs are
assigned to offices within a federal agency and may include
administrative personnel which work directly or indirectly with the
program.
Each program of funding grants, is created with a specific purpose and has unique
operations and activities, (i.e., no program is made for the same
purpose and to operate the same way as a previously existing program)
and it is assigned an official name for which to differentiate them
from each other. A program may be called by a different term than its
official name by the general public, by an entity, or even by law or
regulation; such as by the type of activity or service it engages, by
a specific project name (e.g., the
Big Dig tunnel project), or any other similar term. This type of
name, title or term given to a funding grant program is called the
“popular name”. However, the official name of program is standardized
within the federal government so that federal agencies can maintain
better accountability of their assigned assistance.
For example, an individual who receives rent assistance payments
through the
Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program might not know the exact
official name of the program, and may simply call it the “rent
subsidizing” program, due to its type of activity or service. However,
since there are many other rent subsidizing programs provided by the
federal government, standard program names of funding grants must be maintained in order
to differentiate them. In this case, funding grant programs such as
Supportive Housing for the Elderly (Sec. 202), which is a
project-based rental assistance program exclusively for the elderly
and Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments Program-Special Allocations,
a rent assistance program usually tied to
public housing projects, also engage in the activity of rent
subsidizing.
Examples of Federal assistance funding
grants programs
Programs administer assistance by “granting” or “awarding” a
portion of the funding grants assistance to recipients. These are called
Federal grants or awards. Recipients must first apply for the
award directly to the federal agency which administers the program.
The agency must then determine the amount of assistance to be awarded
and notifies the recipient of the award. In order for an award to be
considered official, a contract or grant agreements is entered between
the agency and the recipient where details of the use of the award and
the restrictions and limitations of the award are included.
Federal awards may specify a time period during which the recipient
may use the funding grants assistance which is called the Period of Availability of
Federal Funds.
Most grants have a term of one year (although some may have a longer
lifespan, even indefinitely), and the recipient must use the
assistance within that timeframe. This is done because federal
assistance is tied to the federal government’s budget process, and any
funds not used by a recipient within the specified time limit is
reverted to other uses.
As a condition of receiving Federal awards or grants, recipients
must agree to comply with the applicable
laws and regulations related to the program and its agency, as
well as any provisions included in the contracts and grant agreements
entered between the recipient and the agency.
Failure to do so may lead to sanctions, including fines and penalties,
exclusion or suspension from participating in federal assistance
programs and activities, and/or criminal charges. Most federal program
regulations for which agencies and recipients must always comply are
compiled in the
Code of Federal Regulations, with summaries and guidance for these
regulations contained in
OMB Circular letters.
Types of federal funding grants
Given the enormous size of federal assistance provided, the Federal
government has designed different types of grants, each with its own
unique way of awarding and/or operating:
Formula grants provide funds as dictated by a law.
Examples of this type of grant includes Aid to Families with
Dependent Children and the Job Training Partnership Act, and the
Work Incentive Program. These can be sub-categorized as either
Categorical or Block:
Categorical grants may be spent only for narrowly
defined purposes and recipients often must match a portion of the
federal funds.
Block grants combine categorical grants into a single
program. Examples of this type of grant includes the Community
Development Block Grant and the Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental
Health Services Block Grant. Recipients of block grants have more
leeway in using funds than recipients of individual categorical
grants.
Earmark grants are explicitly specified in
appropriations of the U.S.
Congress. They are not competitively awarded, and have become
controversial because of the involvement of
political lobbyists used in the process of awarding them to
recipients. In fiscal year 1996 appropriations, the
Congressional Research Service found 3,023 earmarks totaling
$19.5
billion, while in FY2006 it found 12,852 earmarks totaling $64
billion.
Recipients of Funding Grants
A recipient of federal awards or funding
grants is defined as any
non-federal entity that receives federal assistance and which is part
of, and/or located within, the United States and its territories and
possessions. Recipients are grouped into six main categories, as
established by the GSA:
State governments - This category includes any of the 50
States of the United States and the
District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), or any agency or
instrumentality of these governments, with the exception of
institutions of higher education (colleges
and
universities) and
hospitals.
Local governments - This category includes any county,
parish, municipality, city, town, township, village,
State-designated Indian tribal government, local public authority,
school district, special district, intrastate district, council of
governments, sponsor group representative organizations, and other
regional or interstate government entity, or any agency or
instrumentality of a local government, which are located within the
U.S.
Indian Tribal governments - This category includes the
governing body or a governmental agency of any
Indian tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or
community (including any Native village) within the U.S. and its
territories. These must first be certified by the
U.S. Secretary of the Interior as eligible to receive assistance
under special programs and services provided through the Bureau of
Indian Affairs.
Private individuals – This category includes
Native Americans, homeowners, students, farmers, artists,
scientists, consumers, small businesses, refugees, aliens, veterans,
senior citizens, low-income persons, health and education
professionals, builders, contractors, developers, handicapped
persons, and the physically afflicted. Examples of direct assistance
to these individuals include Section 8 vouchers, Pell Grant
scholarships, and disaster relief awards, among many others.
Every funding grants program is designed with a specific recipient in mind.
Certain programs have restrictions on who may receive the assistance
because of the nature of its activity or service.
Examples include infrastructure programs and grants which are usually
restricted to States, local governments, and U.S. territories given
that these are usually the only entities that administer public roads,
bridges, etc., or health-related research grants which individuals may
be eligible so long as they satisfy certain criteria, such as that
they have a professional or scientific degree, 3 years of research
experience, and be a citizen of the United States.
Pass-through entities and sub-recipients
The federal government allows certain entities mentioned above to
act as a Pass-through entity in order to provide the federal
assistance to another recipient. The Pass-through entity is still
considered a recipient, but the assistance assigned to it may be
“passed on” or “passed-through it” to another recipient. The entity
which receives the assistance from a pass-through entity is considered
a sub-recipient.
This is allowed because certain federal programs (funding grants) may not have the
organizational structure to provide assistance directly to the final
recipient and requires support from other entities.
For example, crime-prevention federal programs may be assigned to a
State Attorney General’s Office (AGO) (considered a State government).
This State office may decide to assign part of its federal grant
through sub-grants (also known as sub-awards)
to cities and counties within the State (considered local governments)
for crime-prevention activities such as neighborhood watch programs or
supplying new equipment to police forces. The original recipient, the
AGO, has become a Pass-through entity and the cities and counties have
become “sub-recipients”, all the while the assistance is still serving
the federal program’s purpose to prevent crime. Sub-recipients may in
turn pass on the assistance to another sub-recipient to serve the
purpose required by the federal program, for example if the cities
mentioned above pass on part of their assistance to nonprofit
organizations dedicated to patrolling neighborhoods at night.
Therefore, a recipient may be considered a pass-through entity and a
sub-recipient at the same time.
Certain programs of funding grants may require the original recipient to pass on the
assistance to sub-recipients (i.e., the federal program requires that
the assistance be provided to nonprofit neighborhood watch
organizations, and the assistance passes recipient through recipient
until it reaches them), while others may require that the recipient
not pass on the assistance (i.e., State must use the assistance
entirely on its own). Some programs award assistance to a pass-through
entity who is neither the direct applicant nor the ultimate
beneficiary, such as the Pell Grant program where students apply and
receive the aid but it is the university’s responsibility to receive
and administer the applications and disburse the aid.
Pass-through entities and sub-recipients are equally responsible
for the management of federal aid received. The federal government
monitors the federal aid provided to any recipient and requires all
pass-through entities to monitor the aid they pass on. Noncompliance
of a federal regulation on the part of the sub-recipient may also be
attributed to the pass-through entity because it is still responsible
for the funds it passed on.[citation
needed]
Applying for Funding Grants Money
There are over 20,000 grant sources, and
the place to start to find out about them is the Government Grants Site
.
There is a huge amount of information to be found on the site and
you can discover which Government Grants to apply for and make
applications.
This process is grueling; the US web site is slow and complex,
and it takes time.
It can be most disheartening after many hours into the process for
little progress,
and it is easy to give up.
Luckily there is a better
way!
There are software programs to automate the entire process!
Claiming Funding Grants
Using automation to get your grant
money!
This software will guide you through the maze of available Grants and give
you templates and tips for writing applications.
They have help lines and step by step instructions.
They make it very easy.
It's virtually done for you in a fraction of the time it would
take if you could actually wade through to the finish yourself.
To
distribute the Federal assistance (the funding grants) in an
organized manner, the federal government provides assistance through
federal agencies. It is the agency’s responsibility to adequately
provide assistance, as well as manage, account, and monitor the
responsible use of federal funds which were utilized for that
assistance. The agencies then supply the assistance to beneficiaries
(known as recipients, see below), such as States, hospitals,
poverty-stricken families, etc., through hundreds of individual
programs. These programs are defined by the federal government as:
“any function of a Federal agency that provides assistance or benefits
(funding grants) for: (1) a State or States, territorial possession,
county, city, other political subdivision, grouping, or
instrumentality thereof; (2) any domestic profit or nonprofit
corporation or institution; or (3) an individual; other than an agency
of the Federal government”. Therefore, programs (or “functions”) can
refer to any number of activities or services provided by agencies,
such as building a bridge, providing food or medicine vouchers to the
poor, or providing counseling to violence victims. Programs are
assigned to offices within a federal agency and may include
administrative personnel which work directly or indirectly with the
program.
A recipient of federal awards or funding
grants is defined as any
non-federal entity that receives federal assistance and which is part
of, and/or located within, the United States and its territories and
possessions. Recipients are grouped into six main categories, as
established by the GSA:
To find the Funding Grants you are eligible for, click Here!