Assistance listing

The identifier for a federal assistance programme, formatted as two digits, a full stop and three more — 10.766, say. It names the programme, not the opportunity, so one listing number covers every year that programme runs.

Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.

Also called CFDA number · Assistance Listing Number · ALN

In detail

It was the CFDA number until the catalogue was folded into SAM.gov, and both names are still in daily use. The first two digits identify the agency, which makes the number a quick way to tell whether two opportunities come from the same place.

Because it identifies a programme rather than a cycle, it is the join key for looking up what a programme actually awarded in past years, on the spending side. It is not a way to identify one notice.

Against our portal ID

`source_post_id` is the identifier the source portal gave to one posting, and it is what our deduplication runs on. An assistance listing number identifies the programme behind many postings across many years. They answer different questions: one tells you whether two rows are the same notice, the other whether they are the same programme.

How GrantTrove stores it

  • `source_post_id` and `source_fingerprint` are what a record is identified and deduplicated by. Both are stored, and both come from the source rather than from us.
  • We do not currently store the assistance listing number as its own column, so a record cannot be joined to spending history here. That is a gap, and it is stated rather than papered over with a partially populated field.

Common questions

Is CFDA the same as an assistance listing number?

Yes. The catalogue was renamed and moved to SAM.gov; the numbers did not change.

Can I search by listing number here?

Not today. We store the source’s posting identifier, not the programme’s listing number.

What do the first two digits mean?

The agency. 10 is Agriculture, 93 is Health and Human Services, and so on.