Federal Grants
What Is a NOFO? The Funding Notice Explained
Grant Writing Service Editorial Team
June 12, 2026 · 5 min read
Table of contents
A NOFO, or Notice of Funding Opportunity, is the public announcement a federal agency issues when it plans to award competitive grants or cooperative agreements. It tells you what the program funds, who is eligible, how much money is available, the deadlines, exactly what to submit, and how applications will be reviewed and scored. The Uniform Guidance at 2 CFR 200.204 requires agencies to publish one for every openly competed opportunity, and the NOFO is the rulebook for that competition. If anything in a webinar, an FAQ or last year's application conflicts with it, the NOFO wins.
The sections every NOFO now follows
Federal notices used to vary wildly by agency. The 2024 revision of the Uniform Guidance (Appendix I to 2 CFR 200) now requires every NOFO to include at least these sections, with the same or similar headings and a table of contents, and to use plain language where possible.
| Section | What it tells you | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Information | Agency, opportunity title and number, assistance listing number, total funding, expected number and size of awards, key dates | Decide in five minutes whether the size and timing fit |
| Eligibility | Who may apply, cost share or match requirements, other conditions | Confirm you qualify before anything else |
| Program Description | Purpose, goals, priorities, what the agency wants funded | Test your project against it, and borrow its language |
| Application Contents and Format | Every required form, narrative section, attachment, page limit and format rule | Build your checklist and outline from it |
| Submission Requirements and Deadlines | Where and how to submit, registration requirements, deadline time zone, intergovernmental review | Put every date on a calendar with buffer |
| Application Review Information | Review criteria, point values, review process, risk review | Structure your proposal around it |
| Award Notices | How and when you will hear, what an award document contains | Plan your start date realistically |
| Post-Award Requirements and Administration | Terms and conditions, reporting, other obligations | Check you can live with them before applying |
Agencies usually add contacts and support (the program officer and grants management contact) and other information such as related opportunities. Older notices and some agency formats still use different headings, but the same content is there.
Where NOFOs are published
Most federal NOFOs are posted on Grants.gov, where you can search by keyword, agency, assistance listing or eligibility and subscribe to updates on a specific opportunity. The redesigned search at Simpler.Grants.gov draws on the same listings. Some agencies also link to their notices from their own funding pages, and NSF posts its program solicitations on its own site as well.
Grants.gov has become more central, not less. NIH, for example, stopped posting NOFOs in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts at the start of fiscal year 2026 and now uses Grants.gov as its single official source. If your alerts only watch an agency newsletter, set up Grants.gov notifications too.
Before anyone in your organization can submit against a NOFO, you need an active SAM.gov registration and a Grants.gov account with the right roles. Our guide to SAM.gov and Grants.gov registration covers that, and it takes longer than most applicants expect.
NOFO, FOA, RFA, RFP: what the names mean
You will meet several names for funding notices:
- Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO): the term used in 2 CFR 200 and now standard across most agencies.
- Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA): the older name. NIH formally switched to NOFO in 2023, but you will still see FOA in older materials.
- Request for Applications (RFA): an agency-specific name. NIH uses it for one-time initiatives with set-aside funds, and USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture renamed its RFAs to NOFOs in December 2025.
- Program announcement or program solicitation: names some agencies use for standing or recurring opportunities.
- Request for Proposals (RFP): in federal usage, usually a contract solicitation under procurement rules rather than a grant. Foundations use the term loosely for grant calls.
The name matters less than the instrument. Check whether the notice offers a grant, a cooperative agreement (a grant with substantial agency involvement), or a contract, because the rules that follow are different.
How to read a NOFO before you commit
Reading a 60-page notice front to back on the first pass wastes time if you turn out to be ineligible. Read it in this order instead:
- Basic Information: award size, number of awards, deadline. If the timing is impossible or the award is too small to cover the work, stop.
- Eligibility: organization type, geography, match, any limit on applications per organization.
- Application Review Information: the criteria and their weights. This tells you what the agency will reward and where the points are.
- Program Description: whether your project genuinely advances the stated purpose and priorities.
- Application Contents and Format, and Submission Requirements: everything you must produce, and the format rules that can get an application rejected before review.
- Post-Award Requirements: reporting, audits, and terms you are agreeing to if you win.
Then read the whole notice once more, carefully, and note anything ambiguous. Questions go to the contact named in the notice; agencies often post answers publicly, and some hold informational webinars. Also watch for modifications. Agencies amend NOFOs to change deadlines, page limits or forms, and Grants.gov will notify you if you subscribe to the opportunity.
Turn the notice into a compliance matrix
The professional habit is to convert the NOFO into a compliance matrix: a table with one row for every requirement the notice states, where in your application you address it, the page limit or format rule attached to it, who owns it, and whether it is done. Pull in every "must," "shall" and "required," plus each review criterion with its point value.
The matrix does three jobs. It guarantees that no required form or attachment is missing, one of the most common reasons applications are rejected before review. It maps each review criterion to a heading so reviewers can find and award every point. And it turns a dense document into an assignable work plan, so a team can divide the work without losing a requirement buried on page 40. Add every deadline to a grant deadline tracker, including internal ones for drafts and sign-off.
From there, the NOFO shapes everything that follows: the order of steps in applying for a federal grant, the forms such as the SF-424 cover form that the package requires, and the structure of the federal proposal narrative you write against the review criteria. If you win, the post-award section of the same notice becomes your compliance baseline, which is where grant management support comes in.
