Are federal grants still worth your time? Here is how I'm thinking about it right now.
What federal grants are riskiest right now and $2.1 billion in workforce funding.
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Hello
Greetings from Orlando, where I’m part of what may or may not be an exploratory committee for Donald Duck. He is very angry about this dark moment in American politics. He’s got name recognition, and I think he’s running.
I’m on vacation this week, but THE MONEY never rests. This is a mildly abbreviated edition with grants listings and a quick overview of how I have updated the DANGER RATINGS I developed shortly after the January funding freeze. I’ll be back for a fuller edition next week.
Quick notes.
If you’re a laid-off fed, you probably saw the announcement of the new free legal defense network supporting federal employees working through awful conditions and the prospect of illegal firings. You can learn more here.
Urban Institute published research on the economic risks of nonprofit grant funding cuts.
Their funding opportunity is mentioned below, but I want to highlight the great research support on the Inflation Reduction Act being provided by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. There are many disappointing things happening right now, but smart people who care a lot put real work on ensuring the investments coming out of the IRA helped workers get ahead. I appreciate Equitable Growth’s effort to follow it up with research.
An updated set of things to consider when applying for federal funding.
In the last few weeks, I have had conversations with folks who have sworn off federal grant dollars. I don’t blame them, but not every organization can afford to make the same call—even if they’re being asked to afford a lot in applying.
Federal financial assistance applications are investments that swallow time and money. The Trump Administration made applying an even harder call by freezing financial assistance and shutting down whole programs before Congress gave its OK, which isn’t how American government has worked for the past couple centuries.
To help applicants navigate the new world, in January I put together my Danger Ratings based on a list of keys to whether the grant you saw solicited online is actually the one that will be awarded—if it’s ever awarded. “High” means I wouldn’t trust that what you’re seeing listed will be awarded or the funding opportunity details will stay the same. “Low” means you probably can trust it. “Medium” means 50/50.
The keys were a rough list based on my experience in the first Trump Administration and three administrations of dealing with Congress, which usually doesn’t leave it alone when an agency makes a decision to fund or not fund something. A lot has happened since then. So below I’ve added, subtracted, and reordered the keys based on recent events and information.
I’ll admit these new keys paint a darker portrait of the grants landscape than what I provided in January. Darker is not impossible. Stuff is going to happen, it will be damaging and poorly considered, but more applications create demand, and demand still makes cutting off these programs much harder. So if the benefits outweigh the risks, you should still apply to something that fits your work.
A couple things to keep in mind:
The keys mostly aren’t determinative on their own, they’re things I consider when I decide if something is high and low risk in addition to other information that I don’t always feel comfortable sharing here. My rule of thumb, though, is three negative reads from the keys is high risk.
Despite what that initial OMB memo said, I’m just assuming “Congress said we had to spend the money” doesn’t matter to the Trump Administration, so I have dropped considerations of whether the law might force an award until we have more clarity from the courts. John Roberts may eventually decide in favor of the separation of powers of the last two centuries, but eventually is not now, and the threats of now have a palpable impact on the risks of applying.
With that, here are my new keys.