Block grant
A large, broadly defined grant from a federal agency to a state or other government, which then decides how to distribute it within wide statutory limits. If you are a nonprofit, the money you can apply for from one is usually a state subaward rather than the block grant itself.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Block funding
In detail
The consequence for an applicant is that the money arrives through a different door. The federal notice announcing a block grant is not an opportunity you can apply to; the state agency’s subsequent solicitation is, and it is published on the state’s own systems.
Because states are given latitude, the same block grant produces very different programmes in different states. Reading the federal statute tells you the ceiling of what a state may do, not what yours has done.
Against a discretionary grant
A discretionary grant is competed and awarded by the federal agency itself. A block grant is distributed to a state by formula and re-competed, if at all, by the state. In our catalogue the two arrive through different feeds and land on different funder records, which is why the funder on a record is worth reading before the amount is.
How GrantTrove stores it
- The funder on every record is the entity that publishes the opportunity, stored with its own `funder_id`, and a state agency passing through federal money appears as itself rather than as the federal agency behind it.
- `elig_entity_types` records who the notice says may apply. On a federal block grant notice that is normally a government, and the record says so rather than implying a nonprofit could apply.
Common questions
Can my nonprofit apply for a block grant?
Almost never directly. You apply to the state programme the block grant funds, which is a separate solicitation with its own eligibility.
Do you hold state subawards from block grants?
Where the state publishes them on a feed we have connected, yes. Which feeds those are is on the data sources page.
Is a block grant competitive?
At the federal level, usually not — it is distributed by formula. At the state level, frequently yes.