On March 14, 2024, three Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO) for Head Start Expansion, Early Head Start Expansion, and Early Head Start – Child Care Partnership (EHS-CCP) grants were posted on grants.gov. Grant applications are due May 14, 2024.
Details on the grants open for competition, funding amounts, estimated number of awards, and anticipated project start dates are listed below. These details have not changed since the grants were forecasted earlier this month.
Head Start Expansion, EHS Expansion, and EHS-CCP Grants
- Funding: $102,127,361
- Expected number of awards: 60
- Anticipated project start date: September 30, 2024
American Indian and Alaska Native Head Start Expansion, EHS Expansion, and EHS-CCP Grants
- Funding: $9,262,875
- Expected number of awards: 5
- Anticipated project start date: September 30, 2024
Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Expansion, EHS Expansion, and EHS-CCP Grants
- Funding: $14,658,024
- Expected number of awards: 7
- Anticipated project start date: September 30, 2024
If your program is considering applying for one of these grants, we encourage you to do a thorough read through of the NOFO. In particular, pay attention to how the NOFO defines expansion versus partnership and which approach(es) apply to your program. There are also details in this NOFO that have not appeared in past EHS Expansion and EHS-CCP NOFOs. For example, the NOFO states that up to 5 priority points will be awarded to applicants that propose to serve “high poverty neighborhoods,” further described below.
ACF will grant priority points to applicants that propose services located within high-poverty census tracts. Census tracts generally have a population size between 1,200 and 8,000 people, and usually cover a contiguous area.
For the purposes of this NOFO, high poverty census tracts are defined as those where at least 30 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level. In order for applicants to determine whether or not they will qualify for these priority points, ACF is providing a mapping tool Priority Points Mapping Tool (arcgis.com) that allows an applicant to enter their service location address(es) to determine if any proposed locations fall within a high-poverty census tract.
From the timeline perspective, note that this is an 8.5 -week turnaround for grant applications, which is typical for Head Start/Early Head Start grant competitions. Grants.gov goes down for scheduled maintenance every month, and you will not be able to access grants.gov during an outage. There are two scheduled outages during the application timeline – March 16-19, 2024 and April 20-23, 2024.
Foundations for Families offers a variety of Consulting Services to support programs in applying for expansion or partnership funding. If your program has the capacity to write its own grant application but needs help with the timeline, template, and process, consider Foundations for Families’ HS Expansion, EHS Expansion, and EHS-CCP Toolkit. We also offer quality assurance reviews of applications to strengthen compliance and competitiveness. Please be in touch to learn more. We would be glad to speak with you about your program’s needs.
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