Keeping Track of Available Stimulus Dollars (American Recovery Reinvestment Act Funds)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is an unprecedented effort to jumpstart our economy, save and create millions of jobs, and put a down payment on addressing long-neglected challenges so our country can thrive in the 21st century. Source: http://www.recovery.gov/

Grant opportunities through the American Recovery Reinvestment Act Funds (ARRAF) are being released on a slow but steady basis. Organizations who find opportunities that fit their services must act quickly as the common time frame between grant announcement and submission deadlines is two months – in some cases just one month.

The information required within the application packet, from the narrative to the budget, is extensive so two months is a small window of time. In addition, organizations are required to preregister with the Federal Government in order to apply for Federal Grants including ARRAF grants. Organizations need to register only once and are assigned a DUNS number (Data Universal Numbering System). The assignment of a number can take a few weeks so if you are considering going the Federal Grant route you may want to take this step now. Dun & Bradstreet handle the function of assigning DUNS numbers. The free online registration process can be found at http://fedgov.dnb.com/webform.

Federal grant announcements can be found at http://www.grants.gov/. An efficient way to monitor new grant postings – ARRAF and others - is to sign-up for daily grant updates. Each morning you will receive an email from grants.gov listing all new grants. It takes just a few minutes to scan through the daily listings.

States have set up websites announcing ARAF grants being administered by them. For example, the State of Ohio has set up http://recovery.ohio.gov/ to share information about grants within the state. The Ohio site allows you to sign up for email notifications when new information is posted.

The funds are being made available - it is up to us to put them to good work.