Earmark
Money Congress directs to a named recipient or project in an appropriations bill, outside any competition. There is no notice to answer and no deadline to meet; the route runs through a congressional office, months before the bill.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Congressionally directed spending · Community project funding
In detail
Each chamber runs its own request process with its own windows, forms and disclosure requirements, and those windows open early in the year for money that arrives the following autumn at best.
It is not a substitute for grant seeking and it is not open to everyone. It is worth knowing about because organisations frequently hear about "federal funding" for a peer project and cannot find the programme it came from — because there was not one.
Against a discretionary grant
A discretionary grant is competed against published criteria and announced in a notice anyone can read. An earmark is directed. Nothing about it is a published opportunity, so nothing about it can be in this catalogue — and that absence is a fact about the mechanism rather than a gap in coverage.
How GrantTrove stores it
- The catalogue holds opportunities published on the feeds listed on the data sources page, and that page states which feeds are connected and which are not.
- We do not manufacture records for funding routes that publish no notice. A row with no `source_url` would fail the rule every other row is held to.
Common questions
Can I apply for an earmark?
Not through a grant portal. Requests go through a congressional office on that office’s own schedule.
Why are none listed here?
Because there is no notice to link. Every record here carries a source URL and a verification date.
Is it the same as a formula grant?
No. A formula grant is calculated by statute for a class of recipients; an earmark names one.