The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance

The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance provides a complete listing of available assistance programs from the U.S. Government. You can imagine that this makes for a large list!

There are over 2,000 assistance programs cataloged on this site. The majority of these programs are gathered together from five departments of state. Like Grants.gov, this website does not itself offer assistance. But what about me? you might ask, and we do our best to answer in the section below.

Why do they operate this way? In an effort to be more “transparent”, this web site provides a listing of available assistance programs. Following referendums and laws passed to increased accountability, agencies use a specific ID number in reference to the programs they offer. The ID number provided by the CFDA is supposed to be useful for tracking and adding together purposes. Whatever the site might offer beyond that is not its main goal.

Beware: The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance provides listings in print along with archives of previous years. This fact has sometimes been abused by others who make and sell books out of the printed listings. All available information is free and you should never pay to learn about opportunities such as these.

UPdate April 2019 The government recently announced that the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance has been “retired.” It has been moved to beta.SAM.gov, which now contains all of the functions and data previously located at CFDA. The site was retired on May 25 in 2018. This action is part of a consolidation with other sites and systems which are part of the government awards process. It is an effort to streamline systems and reduce the burden and cost of maintaining multiple systems. They say that the new system offers many improvements including better search function capability — including links to relevant opportunities on grants.gov.

News July 2018 The CFDA website no longer exists. It has now officially been replaced by the new website beta.sam.gov. This site continues to document information about federal financial awards and those who receive, make and manage them. Individuals can still do searches for assistance programs for which they may be eligible. They can also create their own user account and save their searches for future reference if desired. It’s important to know that the website is in beta and considered to be a “work in progress” so it’s possible you may run into some glitches. It’s operational though and there is an option to provide some feedback if you’d like.

Are you curious about what programs may still be around that were/are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under the Obama administration? It can be hard to find but one place makes it pretty simple: the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. This site not only catalogs all current programs available to states, U.S. territories, Indian Tribal Governments and even some profit and nonprofit organizations and individuals. The agencies which gather the information now highlight more than 250 programs that are funded totally or partially by the Recovery Act. They are listed under the Programs tab and you can get more details on any program listed by clicking on the little “View” icon to the left of the listing (looks like a little magnifying glass over a paper report).

If you are looking for personal assistance then this web site may not help you. Registration is only for government employees that need to update listings. However, individuals do not need to register to browse the site. If you are a citizen or business looking for grants, this website offers general information as well as program-specific data. Under the General Info section, you can find articles on using the CFDA, writing grants, assistance types and FAQ. Unlike Grants.gov, this site does not allow you to begin the application process for assistance. But you can get some program details as described in the paragraph above.

Update #2 January 2018 The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance website is moving to a new site as part of a program to consolidate 10 different government award systems in one new website. As it stands right now you can go to the CFDA to see at a glance the breakdown of all federal monies that go to the top five receiving agencies. This may or may not be of interest to you. At the moment you can also still search for programs according to a keyword or by the program’s number if you know it. Later in 2018 the site will redirect to a beta site to find listings for programs.

Important Update January 2018

Unfortunately the acronym for the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance — CFDA — has been used by criminals to misrepresent themselves as agents of the government. They do this both on Facebook and by telephone. There is a Scam Alert currently posted on grants.gov warning people not to be fooled if someone contacts them claiming to be from the CDFA and announcing that the person called has won a grant and — here’s the tipoff — they first need to send money to the agent, usually along with lots of personal information. Although it might be exciting to get such a call, don’t fall for it! Government agents to not communicate with individuals about grants by phone or social media. The CFDA does not even make awards of any kind — it is simply an information database about existing programs.

Update August 2017

The website grants.gov maintains a page that list scurrent scams and fraudulent activity related to grants. Currently one of the ones they list says that people have been reporting to them that they have received calls from people claiming to be agents of the “CFDA” , but that does not mean the official Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. Instead if questioned they will call it something like the Community for Federal Domestic Assistance, having the same initials. The actual, official CFDA does not make such phone calls and does not use any social media to provide awards or assistance to individuals. If you receive such a call you should report the crime to the FBI center for internet crime complaints (www.ic3.gov).

Update December 2016 While this site is not terribly user friendly —and not designed for end users — it can be interesting to nose around and see what’s there. For instance, when we clicked the “Agencies” tab expecting to see a list of agencies we went to a short page about the “Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation.” This Foundation conducts three programs including Agriscience Awards, Life Sciences Awards and Christopher Columbus Awards. The first two are described as providing “Direct Payments with Unrestricted Use” and the third as offering Special Project Grants. The Profile of the Agency says only that it was created by Congress in 1992 to award these fellowships to “encourage and support research, study and labor designed to produce new discoveries in all fields of endeavor for the benefit of mankind.” Sounds pretty wide open and might be interesting to pursue if you’re involved in that type of thing. You can search the name of the Foundation to learn more. It appears they largely are aimed at providing grants and awards to middle school student teams using STEM in community service activities.

News Update September 2016 Please note that the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance has place a warning on its site about what to do if you receive a phone call or social media post from someone who claims to be with the CFDA — especially if they say you’ve won an award and/or that you must send them money to receive an award. The CFDA DOES NOT contact people directly by phone or any other means. They ask that you contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center at the FBI and your local police if this should happen to you.

Initial Opinion The whole site is a big quagmire of gobbledygook. You'll likely find it boring unless you're into analyzing grant listings. Many listings on the web site appear more as a brain-dump than as a formal listing. The technical/government/political jargon is so mind-numbing as to be generally not useful. In many cases, better information is available directly on the web site of the providing agency. (The providing agency is the department directly responsible for the listing. Look under the Agency/Office column of the Programs table.)

The provided articles are both long winded and boring.

Update May 2016 Many people wonder if there is still any money out there resulting from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Well the CFDA now has a section called “Recovery” which allows you to search recovery programs. In fact they currently list over 250 new and existing programs that have been identified by government agencies as funded by the ARRA. So if you’re interested in knowing where ARRA funds are still going, or in seeing if any of those might be of benefit to you, you can now check that out. On the CFDA home page just click the “Recovery” button in the column on the right side.

Updated Opinion February 2016 The CFDA site appears to have improved since the above opinion was written. We found that the numbers of programs offered by different departments have been updated as of early February 2016. The colorful 3-D pie chart mentioned below is still available with the updated numbers. Also, on the upper right of the Home page is the heading “Find Programs”. You can enter a keyword or a Program Number and, if you know it, the Assistance Type you are looking for — probably a Project Grant (though you could also choose “Direct Loans”). Then click Search. You may get some “gobbledygook” but you might also find a grant or loan. Our favorite item to check in the Search section is “Added Programs (since last publication date).” That way you’re sure to get currently available programs - and you’ll get a shorter list! We got a list of 26 items. Each one had a check box next to it with a little magnifying glass next to it. You can check the box of a program that looks promising then check the magnifying glass — and it will take you to a program description on the appropriate agency’s website. That description will also include Eligibility Requirements so you can see if you or your organization should apply. Not bad!

One section that is interesting — and colorful — is right on the home page. There is a bright 3-D pie chart that shows current information showing how money is distributed among the five agencies which issue the greatest amount of funds. These are - in order from greatest to smallest - the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); the Department of the Interior; the Department of Agriculture (interesting info on some loans from these folks in Grants for Housing); the Department of Justice; and the Department of Education (this where Pell Grants come from!).

Beyond those largest agencies ou'll find a bizarre set of agencies participate: from obvious ones like the Department of Labor to less obvious ones like the Railroad Retirement Board and obscure ones like the Denali Commission. We hope it's intuitive that if you're a farmer looking for help, then you should browse listings from the Department of Agriculture. Likewise, we guess if you're a railroad engineer or mountain climber, then there may be agencies for those too (sarcasm)!

The list of titles is also really broad. Sure, they provide search but to what end? Just in case I'm looking for “Payments to 1890 Land-Grant Colleges and Tuskegee University”? No. These will probably be very hit-or-miss for you. No wonder an ecosystem builds up around sites like these. Overall, we think this is harmful. It encourages the kind of lottery-winning attitude associated with assistance.

Overall, interacting with the government can be like wading through molasses. You'll find on these pages that a broad variety of checks and balances are applied to increase transparency but this doesn't translate to increased honesty. Sites like these do not always achieve their goals. Though it is a nice gesture, it's really not that useful. Skip this website.

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