It will now become more accessible to find federal grants through the government. The four dozen grant-awarding agencies will streamline how federal grants are advertised and promoted. In the past, people would find out about grants available through Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO) the various agencies would send out.
It has traditionally been unclear, and the wording has caused grantees to hire people to help them write the application because it hasn’t been user-friendly.
“These plans will result in the simplification of hundreds of NOFOs throughout next year, which will lower the burden for tens of thousands of grant applicants,” the Office of Management and Budget wrote in its update to the President’s Management Agenda. “This will build on NOFO simplification pilots that agencies conducted in fiscal 2024, including AmeriCorps’ work to
reduce the word count of their AmeriCorps State and National NOFO by one-third and the Department of Transportation’s cutting their Tribal Transit NOFO nearly in half.”OMB is keeping its promise to simplify NOFOs to bring transparency to the more than reported $1.2 trillion agencies across the government grant each year.
Simplifying NOFOs is a broader priority of bringing the grants management community closer through the Council of Federal Financial Assistance (COFFA).
In 2023, OMB launched COFFA to identify opportunities to reduce the burden on applicants or recipients.
“We are improving our program effectiveness by ensuring efficient delivery, and we are sharing best practices across the board. So we’re not going to just continue to focus on those differences, but instead identify where, in fact, we can and should be learning from each other,” said Deidre Harrison, the co-chairwoman of the council and deputy controller at OMB.
OMB said that making grants easier to find is an example of the council’s progress.
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