03 Jun Initial Impact on Grant Funding of the Longest Government Shutdown by Julie Assel, GPC

You can’t watch, listen to, or read any major news outlet without hearing about the federal government shutdown. There are many things being talked about already in the news like which federal offices are closed or affected. These include the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, State, the Treasury. But other less-known offices like the National Science Foundation are also closed.

Two vital pieces of information on what this means today:

1. If grant opportunities (RFPs) have already been posted with a due date, the due dates stand. gov is still open.  You still have to turn in your grant on time.
2. If you are waiting to hear about the result of a grant, you will need to keep waiting. There is no one there. Even offices which remained open for a couple of weeks with contingency funds from user fees, leftover funds, and other revenue have closed. New grant opportunities are not being released.

There are some organizations like universities and domestic violence shelters whose programs and services depend quite heavily on federal grant funding who are being affected right now. While you might think that universities can manage to keep people on staff, if the person is over 80% grant funded, they don’t just have that money sitting in their budgets to keep them going, especially if they are in a state that is already stripping money from higher education.  Some domestic violence shelters are also taking a significant hit. While their funding primarily comes as pass through to the states, the states are not making payments if there is no money there and they are not issuing new RFPs until they know how long the shutdown will last.

GPC Competency 1: Knowledge of how to research, identify, and match funding resources to meet specific needs.  Skill 1: Identify major trends in public funding and public policy.