Federal grants under the economic stimulus bill

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has created substantial new grant opportunities for nonprofits. For an overview of programs covered, you can skim our Special Reports to learn more.

Here is a sampling of grant funding opportunities to watch for and where you might see the opportunities coming up at the federal grants site or your state grant websites.

• National Endowment for the Arts: arts projects and activities which preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector 
• Department of Agriculture: food banks and conservation improvement projects
• Department of Commerce: competitive grants for innovative programs to encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service
• Department of Energy: weatherization assistance programs
• Department of Housing and Urban Development: emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes; neighborhood stabilization, including some funding for capacity building of and support for local communities receiving funding 
• Department of Health and Human Services: expansion of Early Head Start programs including funds for training and technical assistance; community health centers; “prevention and wellness” including community-based strategies
• Through the new National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, funding for consumer advocacy groups and nonprofits to defray the cost to such groups of participating in the National Technology Transfer
  a new initiative for nonprofit capacity building grants to expand the delivery of social services to individuals and communities affected by the economic downturn
• Department of the Interior: conservation, repair and restoration, and deferred maintenance improvement projects under the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and Fish and Wildlife Service
• Through State agencies:
  • Child Care and Development Block Grants to supplement, not supplant, state funding to provide quality child care services for additional children in low‐income families, including activities that improve the quality of infant and toddler care
  • Community Development Block Grants for those who received funding last year
  • Community Services Block Grants for the development and implementation of new and innovative approaches to deal with particularly critical needs or problems of the poor which are common to a number of communities
  • Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants
  • HOME Investment Partnerships Program Block Grants
  • Native American Housing Block Grants
  • Senior meals programs

Many nonprofits may be accustomed to their local processes for accessing block grants. If you are a nonprofit who thinks it is possible however that 1) there may be a federal grant that you could apply for, AND 2) that you have the capacity to devote some time to a federal grant application, your next stop is www.grants.gov to register. This apparently takes a few days to clear, so while your registration is pending, you can then spend time learning from the grants.gov website and searching for grants that might apply to your nonprofit’s mission, work, and programs.

On Grants.gov there is a brand new “Find & Apply User Guide,” along with tutorials and a host of other resources. And the searching alternatives to find grants look super helpful: you can search by category of grants or by agencies or simply look at all open grants for which nonprofits are eligible. Once you are clear about the types of grants you want to hear about, you can even sign up to be notified about future open opportunities in that grant category.

While we want to stress that these programs are not a panacea for all the issues your community is facing, they may be able to provide some help while also stimulating the economy. 

 Note: To receive additional issues of our “Special Reports”, you can sign up for an RSS feed. To receive our monthly Nonprofit Policy News, subscribe here. To stay abreast of news in the nonprofit network, sign up for our Nonprofit Congress Update.