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Federal grants search, with eligibility checked first.

samsearch is an AI platform for federal grants. It indexes every funding opportunity announcement published to Grants.gov. It reads the full announcement rather than the abstract. And it puts the two deciding facts at the top of the record. How much money is available, and whether your organisation is allowed to apply.

Search programmes in plain English. Get the review criteria before you write. Ask the announcement a question. Draft against the rubric reviewers actually score.

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Eligibility is a gate, not a preference

A grant you are not eligible for is not a long shot. It is a zero.

Contracts are competed. Grants are gated.

On a contract a weak match is a low probability. On a grant, if your organisation type is not on the eligibility list, the application is not reviewed at all.

Grants.gov eligibility guidance

Checked before it reaches you

samsearch reads the eligibility section of every announcement and checks it against your organisation type. A grant closed to you is visibly closed, not something you discover on page forty.

The money as fields, not prose

Award ceiling, award floor, expected number of awards and total programme funding. A $750,000 ceiling means something different when only three awards are expected.

Cost share surfaced

Whether a match is required, what it can consist of, and at what rate. A 50 per cent match changes the economics entirely, and it is usually buried in the announcement.

The announcement, read in full

A funding opportunity announcement runs to fifty or a hundred pages. The abstract on the search page is a paragraph.

AttachmentsRead on arrival5 files · 214 pages

PDFSolicitation W912DR26R001468 ppRead
PDFAttachment 1, Statement of work94 ppRead
PDFAttachment 2, Wage determination11 ppRead
XLSXAttachment 3, Pricing schedule4 ppRead
PDFAmendment 000237 ppRead

What it says

ScopeFacilities O&M across 14 buildings, 1.2M sq ft

EligibilityTotal small business set-aside, NAICS 561210

EvaluationTechnical significantly more important than price

WatchMandatory site visit added by Amendment 0002

214 pages, summarised before anyone opened the package.

Programme purpose and allowable activities

What the money is actually for, and what you are permitted to spend it on. Pulled from the whole document, not the summary field.

Review criteria, extracted

How the application will be scored and what weight each criterion carries. This is the single most useful thing in a NOFO and the most commonly skipped.

Required components listed

Project narrative, budget and justification, logic model, letters of commitment, indirect cost agreement. Everything the package must contain, as a checklist.

The deadline stack

Letters of intent, pre-applications, full application deadlines, and the registration prerequisites that take weeks. Missing one of those is the most common reason a submission fails.

Ask the announcement anything

Sammy reads the NOFO and its attachments, then answers with the page beside the answer.

SammyReading 5 attachmentsEvery answer cited

You

Do we meet the eligibility criteria, and what is the page limit on Volume I?

Sammy

Yes. This is a total small business set-aside under NAICS 561210 and your profile is registered small under that code. Volume I is capped at 30 pages, raised from 25 by Amendment 0002.

Section L p.41Attachment 1 p.12Amendment 0002 p.3

Amendment 0002, p.3

“Paragraph L.3.1 is revised to read: the Technical Volume shall not exceed thirty (30) pages, excluding…”

Questions worth asking early

Are indirect costs allowable, and at what rate
What can the match consist of
Are subawards permitted
Is a letter of intent required
Does this fund equipment or only personnel

Answered against

The full announcement and its attachments
Programme-specific instructions
Modifications, at the current version
Previous years' announcements for the same listing

With the receipts

Document and page on every answer
The phrase it came from, highlighted
An honest 'not stated' when it is not stated

Draft against the rubric, not the blank page

Reviewers score against published criteria. A draft structured any other way is fighting the scoring sheet.

Structured to the review criteria

The draft follows the criteria and required components extracted from the announcement, so reviewers find what they are scoring where they expect it.

Grounded in what you own

Written from your approved content, prior applications and organisational record. Nothing is invented from a model's general knowledge.

Requirements tracked live

Every required component is tracked against the draft, so what is still missing is visible weeks before the deadline rather than on the final weekend.

The narrative is still yours

It cannot supply your theory of change, your community relationships or the reason this programme should fund you. It gets you to a compliant first draft.

What is on every grant record

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a federal grant, and how does it differ from a contract?

A federal grant is financial assistance to carry out a public purpose, rather than a purchase of goods or services for the government's own use. That difference drives everything else. Grants have named eligible applicant types, are frequently restricted to nonprofits, governments or universities, are scored against published review criteria by peer reviewers, and often require cost share. A contract is competed on price and capability and is open to any registered business.

Where are federal grants published?

Grants.gov is the central publication point for federal discretionary funding opportunities across all awarding agencies, and it is free to search. Agencies also publish notices of funding opportunity on their own sites, and some programmes have forecast announcements before the full opportunity opens. samsearch indexes the announcements and reads them in full rather than presenting the abstract.

How do I know whether my organisation is eligible?

Every funding opportunity names the applicant types that may apply. samsearch extracts that list and checks it against your organisation type. The record shows who may apply, and whether you are on the list. This is the first thing shown rather than the last, because eligibility is binary: an ineligible application is not reviewed regardless of quality.

What is an assistance listing number?

An assistance listing number, previously called a CFDA number, identifies a federal assistance programme, for example 93.243. Every grant opportunity cites one. It is the most reliable way to find every opportunity issued under the same programme over time. That includes previous years' announcements, which tell you how competitive it has been.

What does cost share mean on a grant?

Cost share, or matching, is the portion of project cost the applicant must contribute rather than receive from the award. It may be cash, in-kind, or both. It may be a required condition or merely encouraged. It changes the economics of an opportunity substantially, so samsearch extracts it as a field rather than leaving it inside the announcement text.

Does samsearch summarise the full announcement?

Yes. Programme purpose, allowable activities, required project components, review criteria and reporting obligations, pulled from the whole document rather than the abstract. Every extraction cites the page it came from, so anything load-bearing can be checked against the source.

Can I ask questions about a funding opportunity?

Yes. Sammy reads the announcement and its attachments, then answers in plain English. Whether indirect costs are allowable, and at what rate. What the match can consist of. Whether subawards are permitted. Whether equipment is fundable. Each answer links to the source and highlights the phrase it came from.

Can small businesses apply for federal grants?

For some programmes, yes, and small business is a named eligible applicant type on many announcements. The largest dedicated route for small companies is SBIR and STTR, which funds research and development with commercialisation intent and runs on its own phase structure. Many general programmes, however, admit only nonprofits, governments or educational institutions.

Will I get alerted when a new grant matches?

Yes. Save a search by agency, assistance listing, category, eligibility type or plain-English description. You are notified when a new announcement matches, or an existing one is modified. Alerts are qualified with AI before they are sent. Modifications matter here as much as amendments do on contracts, because closing dates and eligibility language do change after posting.

How far ahead can I see grant opportunities?

Many agencies publish forecasted opportunities before the announcement opens, which gives the useful part of the lead time. Most competitive applications need a partner, a match commitment or an institutional review that cannot be arranged in the three weeks before a deadline. Forecasted opportunities are indexed alongside open ones and clearly marked as forecasts.

What registrations do I need before applying?

Federal grant applicants generally need an active SAM.gov registration with a UEI, and a Grants.gov account authorised to submit for the organisation. Some agencies require registration in their own system as well, such as eRA Commons for NIH. These take weeks rather than days, which is why samsearch surfaces registration prerequisites on the record rather than leaving them to be discovered late.

Does samsearch write grant applications?

It drafts against the announcement and your own approved content, section by section. The review criteria and required components are extracted from the funding opportunity first, so the structure matches what reviewers score. It does not submit for you. The programme knowledge, the theory of change and the narrative judgement are still yours.

Can I search grants alongside contracts?

Yes. Grants sit alongside federal contracts, SLED, education, DIBBS, GSA eBuy, SBIR and STTR, forecasts, recompetes and subcontracting as sources you can search together or separately. Organisations that pursue both revenue types generally want them on one pipeline, because they compete for the same proposal capacity.

How current is the grant data?

New announcements and modifications are ingested continuously and appear within hours of publication. Closing dates, modifications and archive status are tracked on records you are following, so an opportunity that closes early or has its deadline extended does not go unnoticed.

See which grants your organisation can actually apply for.

A demo filters live funding opportunities by your organisation type and your programme areas.

Book a Demo

Federal grants search, with eligibility checked first.

Search programmes in plain English. Get the review criteria before you write. Ask the announcement a question. Draft against the rubric reviewers actually score.

Book a Demo

Eligibility is a gate, not a preference