Sneak Preview: Pilot Testing Under Way at Simpler.Grants.gov
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) A project team within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is currently working with grants stakeholders in pilot testing a more user-friendly version of the current Grants.gov site called “Simpler.Grants.Gov,” aiming to make searching, and eventually applying, for federal financial assistance easier and more inclusive to a wider range of applicants. The team aims to implement the search portion of Simpler.Grants.gov as the default version at Grants.gov by this fall.
The current Grants.gov site was launched in 2002 as part of the eGrants Initiative under the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999 (Pub. L. 106-107) to allow applicants for federal grants to seek opportunities and apply for grants online through a governmentwide web portal. Applicants using the current Grants.gov site can review synopses of all available competing funding opportunities for grants and cooperative agreements. They can search by agency, category of activity to be funded, Assistance Listing number and other parameters. The site now has about 10 million users annually, and includes notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) totaling about $300 billion in federal funding per year.
However, the site contains various complexities that make it difficult, particularly for those new to applying for grants, to search for assistance. “The Simpler.Grants.gov team is working on a redesign to make the grants process more transparent, make it easier for applicants to find what they need to apply for relevant funding opportunities, make it more efficient for grantor agencies to manage those opportunities, and make funds more accessible, especially to underserved communities in desperate need for support for their local communities,” Julius Chang, HHS program manager for Simpler.Grants.gov told attendees of a recent Council on Federal Financial Assistance community meeting.
The HHS team working on Simpler.Grants.gov began work on a three-year process in October 2024 to develop a parallel test site that mirrors the current Grants.gov site. The team wants to find ways to improve on how the site displays NOFOs and, by the end of the process, offer an easier way to apply for awards.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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