Federal grant programs / Department of Defense

English for Heritage Language Speakers Grants to U.S. Institutions of Higher Education (12.554)

Also known as English for Heritage Language Speakers

• Awarded, FY 2021 to 2025$64.7 million
• Grant awards1
• Typical award$64.7 million
• Awarded in FY 2025$0
• Size rank947 of 1,823
• Type of assistanceProject grants

Key findings

• It is the 947th largest of 1,823 federal grant programs by five-year awards.
• Awards went to recipients in 1 states and territories.

What the program funds

The English for Heritage Language Speakers (EHLS) program is designed to provide intensive English language instruction for U. S. citizens who are native speakers of critical languages. The goal of the program is to enable participants to reach professional working proficiency in English, as measured by the federal Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) level 3 and/or the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) superior level. The program equips participants with the ability to read, write, speak, and listen at a superior level in an effort to build a critical base of future leaders to serve in the federal government service and the broader professional community.

From the federal Assistance Listing. Read the full listing on SAM.gov.

Open opportunities

No opportunity under this program is open or forecast on Grants.gov right now. Programs often post once a year, so the funding history below shows what to expect.

Rules from the program listing

Who can apply

Any accredited U.S. institution of higher education (defined in Section 1201(a) of the Higher Education Act of 1965, 20 U.S.C. 1141(a) is eligible to apply for a grant. This includes 2 and 4 year colleges and universities, both public and private. Other organizations, associations, agencies, and foreign institutions may be included in proposals but may not be direct recipients of a grant. Federal government schools are not eligible.

What the money can and cannot pay for

Grant awards are made to non-profit organizations in partnership with U.S. institutions of higher education to develop or strengthen their capabilities to enhance the national capacity and provide English-as-a-second-language instruction to native speakers of critical languages who are U.S. citizens. The National Security Education Act places no special or unique requirements on grantee institutions. Only requirements that govern all Federal grants will apply to NSEP grants. No International exchange programs may be funded by NSEP.

Matching requirements

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Deadlines

Specified in requests for applications released on behalf of NSEP by the Center for Applied Linguistic (CAL).

Award range and average, in the agency's words

$32,500,000 per year for five years

Examples of funded projects

Fiscal Year2025: A 2025 EHLS Scholar, a native speaker of Russian and a naturalized U.S. citizen, completed open-source research (Russia’s Financing of Infrastructure Programs in the Arctic) for the Defense Intelligence Agency

Quoted from the program's federal Assistance Listing. The notice of funding opportunity is the official source for each competition's rules.

Who usually wins

Almost all of the money went to nonprofits.

By state

Each state below has its own page for this program, with its recipients and yearly totals.

Award amounts are federal obligations reported to USAspending.gov for fiscal 2021 to 2025; see how our data works.