Funding level
Which level of government or which kind of funder is putting up the money — federal, state, local, or a private funder. It predicts the application burden and the reporting obligations more reliably than the award size does.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Federal, state or local · Government level · Source level
In detail
The level is the best available proxy for what applying will cost you. A federal application normally means a registration process, a structured narrative, and audit obligations that scale with the award; a local or foundation program can be a two-page letter for a comparable sum.
It also predicts where the money originally came from, which is not always the same as who is handing it out. State agencies frequently pass federal money through, and the federal rules travel with it.
We derive the level from the source rather than from a claim in the notice, because a program page does not always say what it is, and the publisher is a fact we can check.
Against geographic eligibility
Level says who funds; geography says where the money may land. A federal program is not automatically nationwide, and a state program is not automatically limited to its own residents. Holding them as one dimension makes those two ordinary cases impossible to express, so they are stored and filtered separately.
How GrantTrove stores it
- Level is a first-class dimension in the eligibility table rather than a tag, so it can be combined with any other filter.
- It is derived from the source that published the record, not from wording in the notice, so it says something we can verify rather than something the page asserted.
Common questions
Does federal always mean harder to apply for?
Usually, and the burden is the reason to care about this field. It is a strong tendency rather than a rule, and the application-effort field carries what a specific program actually demands.
What about a state program funded by federal money?
That is a pass-through, and the federal requirements normally follow the money. The level reflects who published the opportunity; the notice is where the pass-through is disclosed.
Are private foundations a level?
They are a distinct kind of funder rather than a level of government, and they are held in the same dimension so that one filter can separate public from private money.