How our grant data works

Open opportunities

Every grant opportunity on this site comes from Grants.gov, the federal government’s official listing of funding opportunities. We take every opportunity that is posted (open for applications) or forecasted (announced but not yet open), with its deadline, award range, expected number of awards, eligibility, categories and program numbers. When an agency updates a notice, our page follows at the next daily refresh. The notice on Grants.gov is always the final word, and every opportunity page links to it.

Award history

The history behind each program comes from USAspending.gov, where federal agencies report every grant they award. For each federal program, identified by its Assistance Listing number, we total the grants it awarded in each of the last five complete federal fiscal years, count the awards, and list the largest recipients, the states the money went to and the kinds of organizations that received it. The average award is the total divided by the number of awards, so a few large awards can pull it up.

Federal fiscal years run from October 1 to September 30, so fiscal 2025 ended on September 30, 2025.

Joining the two

Grants.gov opportunities name the Assistance Listing they fund, and USAspending.gov awards record the same number. That is how each opportunity page can show who won the program before. Some opportunities name several programs, and new programs have no award history yet; the page says so when that happens.

Private foundations

Foundation pages come from Form 990-PF, the annual return every US private foundation files with the IRS, which the IRS publishes for electronically filed returns. For each foundation we use its most recent return and, where we have it, the one before. We total the grants it paid, work out the median grant (shown as the typical grant) and the largest, and group the grants by cause, using the purpose and recipient named for each grant, and by the state where the recipient is located.

Whether a foundation accepts applications comes from the box on its return for foundations that only give to preselected organizations. Application contacts, deadlines and restrictions are quoted as filed. The share of new grantees compares the recipients of the latest year with the year before. Grants to individuals are counted but not named. Very small foundations, with little giving in the latest year, do not get their own page.

Returns are filed after the tax year ends, so a foundation’s page usually describes its giving one to two years ago. Check its website or contact it for current deadlines.

Types of organizations

Grants.gov and USAspending.gov describe applicants and recipients in different ways. We map both onto one set of types: nonprofits, colleges and universities, state and local governments, tribes, small businesses, other businesses and individuals. The pages for each type, such as grants for nonprofits in a given state, combine past awards to that type with the open opportunities it is eligible for.

What the data cannot tell you

It cannot tell you your chances. Award counts show how many grants a program made, not how many applications it received. Most agencies do not publish application numbers.

Recipient names are reported by agencies and are sometimes inconsistent, so the same organization can appear under slightly different names.

Pass-through money is counted once, at the first recipient. A state that receives a federal grant and passes it on to local nonprofits appears as the recipient; the nonprofits do not.

State government grants are not included yet.