Intro to Federal Grants

What I will learn?

• - Essential Federal Systems & Portals: How to set up and maintain SAM.gov (UEI registration and renewals), manage team workspaces in Grants.gov, link Login.gov accounts, and assign the Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) role.
• - Research & Feasibility: How to research prior grant recipients on USASpending.gov, evaluate award odds, and determine if an opportunity justifies the 40+ hours of application prep.
• - Decoding the NOFO: Strategies for dissecting long Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs/FOAs), tracking pre-submission deadlines, and identifying threshold compliance requirements.
• - Organizational Readiness: How to evaluate mandatory matching fund requirements, assess reimbursement-driven cash flow, and ensure qualified project management or research credentials (e.g., Principal Investigators).
• - Proposal Development Workflow: Futureful’s structured process for organizing application checklists, tracking partner MOUs/letters of support, and managing peer reviews ahead of submission deadlines.
• - High-Scoring Narrative Tactics: Techniques to write for independent reviewers, mirror exact NOFO prompts, structure answers using tables and bullet points, and eliminate common narrative gaps.
• - Federal Budgeting Rules: How to calculate and justify costs across the 9 standard federal budget categories (Personnel, Fringe, Travel, Equipment, Supplies, Construction, Contractual, Other, and Indirect).
• - Indirect Costs & Subawards: Navigating the 15% de minimis indirect rate versus negotiated rates (NICRA), calculating Modified Total Direct Costs (MTDC), and distinguishing contractors from subaward partners.