Don’t Believe Everything You See On TV or Government Websites: The FY ’24 HRSA NAP NOFO Shows Why Forecasted RFPs Aren’t A Sure Thing

?New LinkedIn Newsletter from Seliger + Associates: Go to?www.seliger.com?to sign up for FREE GRANT ALERTS and click on BLOG to read more than 600 posts about grant writing at Grant Writing Confidential. Update: this post was written in January 2024. When the NAP NOFO was finally published, the deadline was revealed as September 30, so the original HRSA forecast was off by nine months!

Some federal agencies, like the Department of Education and the Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA), but not all, publish forecasts of when certain funding opportunities will be issued, usually before the start of the federal fiscal year on October 1. Case in point: Last July 3, HRSA published a forecast on grants.gov that the?FY 2024 New Access Points (NAP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO, which is HRSA-speak for RFP), would be published on December 12 with a February 2024 deadline. A new NAP NOFO is a big deal, as they are only published every three years or so and NAP is the best way for an FQHC to expand or for a nonprofit healthcare provider to become an FQHC. Unsurprisingly, when the NOFO did not appear on December 12, our FQHC clients started sending “what gives” e-mails. We guessed it had something to do with the screwed up FY ’24 federal budget process, and this was confirmed when one FQHC client reached out to her HRSA Program Officer and received the following response: “Although FY24 NAP funding has been forecasted, HRSA does not currently have a NAP funding opportunity open and does not plan to post it until we have a better sense of the FY 2024 budget.” So, when congress finally reconciles the different versions of the FY 2024 budget passed in December by the Senate and House, there will be a deluge of RFPs published quickly, with grant-writing chaos ensuing. HRSA recently undated their grants.gov NAP forecast, with the NOFO now expected to published on February 12 and has an April 12 deadline. Potential applicants can curse the federal government and those lying forecasters, but the sad reality is that the “Golden Rule” of grant seeking is that those with the gold make the rules. Click here to continue reading.