Dirty Words, a Sordid Past, But a More Accessible Pathway to Federal Dollars?
It’s earmark season! Is your organization looking for alternative pathways to funding? If so, you may want to consider pursuing earmarked funding. The process starts this month!
You may have heard about earmarks. Or, if you’ve only been in the grants space for the last few years, maybe you’ve heard about Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) or Community Projects Funding (CPF). This blog will help you decide whether your organization wants to pursue earmarks and how to get started.
As an aside, when I first jumped into learning about federal grants, I got really annoyed that every piece of education started with “And here’s where we were a decade ago, here’s where we were five years ago, and here’s where we are now.” I just wanted to learn what I needed to know to do my job well.
With that in mind, I’m skipping the history. If you’d like to know the history (and other great information), I recommend “Federal Appropriations—They’re Back with a New Name” from the Fundraising HayDay podcast. On the episode, the hosts interview Tonia Brown-Kinzel. She’s a wealth of information and worked with earmarks before I even entered the grants field! She is a go-to for education around appropriations strategy.
So, back to earmarks.
What They Are
Earmarks, now more commonly referred to as "Community Project Funding" in the House and "Congressionally Directed Spending" in the Senate, are federal appropriations legislation provisions allowing lawmakers to allocate funding to specific organizations within appropriations legislation. In short, earmarks allow Congress to direct funding to targeted projects, bypassing the competitive grant process. I’ll keep using “earmarks” language because I want you to understand this is all the same stuff, and I bet you have a reference point for earmarks. But, when you talk with your legislators about this funding mechanism, use Community Projects Funding (House) and Congressionally Directed Spending (Senate).
Why You Should Care
My business mission is to help organizations traditionally struggling to access federal funding. So, with that in mind, I care, and you should care because this process is NONCOMPETITIVE and outside of the traditional RFP process. You don’t have to write the best proposal in eight weeks, fit your project into a specific RFP, and beat out 300 other applicants.
What you do need to do is build relationships with your congressional leaders and identify allies of your work.
Best case scenario, you will apply for work that is already planned or is work that would be catalyzing. Think of assets that don’t have annual ongoing expenses.
A renovation
The purchase of property
Funding to outfit low-income residences with solar panels
Timeline
This is a long process.
March/April - Projects are due to your delegate, who will submit a subset of those proposed for consideration.
May through federal budget approval - Your delegate will advocate for the inclusion of their projects throughout committee meetings up until final budgets are both submitted and reconciled across the Senate and the House.
October (hopefully) - The budget will be approved by the president. In more recent years than not, a federal budget has not been passed on time, putting earmarks in limbo until a budget is passed.
An application (post federal budget approval) - Shoot! There is actually a full application due to the agency that will grant you the funds. If your funding makes it through the entire process, you’ll still need to work with the agency overseeing your award. You’ll be asked to submit an official project narrative and line item budget for approval. But at this point, that application isn’t competitive, it’s for compliance.
In years where the federal budget process is delayed, it would not be uncommon for the process - from initial submission to award agreement - to take 18+ months. This is an important factor in conceptualizing a request.
What you can do now
Accessing earmark funding requires a bit of sleuthing, strategy, and relationship-building. Here’s how you can get started:
1. Identify Your Delegates
Locate your U.S. Senators and House Representatives. You can use tools like House.gov and Senate.gov to find your delegates based on the location of your project.
Get creative in researching whether your Senators and Representatives participate in the earmark process. Some legislators do not participate in the process, some publicly say they don’t like it but do participate, and some hold open calls for project ideas. Spend an hour or two digging up this information: read blogs, press releases, social media posts, and no information is better than hearing directly from them - call their offices (local and DC)!
2. Research Available Accounts and Understand Where Your Delegates Have Power and Interest
Review the appropriations accounts relevant to your project. CPF/CDS funding spans various areas, including transportation, health services, education, housing, and environmental initiatives. Align your project with the appropriate account to increase its chances of approval.
Next, review which committees your participating delegates sit on and research their history and interests. If your delegate had a career as a nurse, sits on a housing committee, and has co-sponsored bills about homelessness, your project about integrating primary care services into a new transitional living facility might be a good fit for their interests.
Research your delegate’s past CPF/CDS requests to understand their priorities and project preferences.
3. Build Relationships Early
Engage with your delegates’ staff by setting up meetings, sharing annual reports, or inviting them to events or site visits. Building rapport ensures that your nonprofit’s mission and impact are on their radar before the appropriations process begins.
If you plan to apply in 2025, contact your delegates now and express your interest in submitting a request and ask about their process. If you will not apply in 2025 but want to consider future opportunities, start engaging your delegates over the summer recess when they are more likely to be available in their local office.
Prepare letters of support. You’ll also likely need to submit letters of support from other community organizations or local elected leaders. If you think you may want to work with a delegate to receive funding, you’ll want to prep some supporters that you’ll be asking for a letter of support from them once you’ve had a chance to assess which project will make the most sense with the funds in place (once they are announced…see more below).
4. Identify Processes and Track Timelines and Deadlines
Most CPF/CDS deadlines occur in March and April. Monitor your delegates’ announcements for application windows and submit requests on time.
This is more challenging if your delegate(s) do not participate in the process in a public way. What I mean by this is that some delegates accept proposals but do not hold an open call. So you wouldn’t know they are “accepting” proposals unless you reach out directly to them/their staff to ask.
Challenges to Be Aware Of (Or the Hidden “Gotchas” That Are All Too Common in Navigating Federal Funding)
Congress sets its own rules, and we will likely see the rules change in 2025 because party control of the Senate has shifted. For example, when party control in the House shifted in 2022, suddenly, nonprofits were not eligible for funding in certain categories from their representatives.
Who is participating may change. Some senators and representatives who previously did not participate may decide to participate in the process. They may change tactics because they believe they can make a larger impact with earmarks, thanks to Republicans controlling the process in both the House and Senate.
Timelines are challenging to navigate. In recent history, delays in rule-making have shortened the application window.
With all this in mind, have your idea(s) ready to go so that when the rules are finalized, the process opens, and you have just two weeks to gather materials for submission, you’ve already done the planning and writing. This allows you to focus entirely on strategy and shoring up letters of support for the idea.
Who is best equipped for this strategy?
Like almost all grant opportunities, the best-positioned organizations are those whose projects align most closely with the instructions or the people who are making the final decisions. Earmarks are no different. Focus on ensuring that the rules in any given year are conducive to your organization receiving funding and being eligible. And second, make sure that your delegate is interested in supporting the type of work you propose.
Maybe this isn't the right strategy for you in 2025. Tracking the process and understanding where it shifts and changes from year to year can help you annually consider this a potential funding stream.