Assistance program
Rural Business Development Grant
$281.7 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Rural Business Cooperative Service, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 10.351
- What it does
- To promote sustainable economic development and facilitate the development of small and emerging private business, industry, and related employment for improving the economy in rural communities.
- Who benefits
- Rural communities and small and emerging private business enterprises which will employ 50 or less new employees and have less than $1.0 million in projected gross revenue. Government entities, private nonprofit corporations, and Federally recognized Indian tribes that receive the grant to assist a business type operation. Grants are not made directly to a business.
- Who applies
- Applicants eligible for RBDG grants are government entities, Indian tribes or nonprofit corporations serving rural areas such as States, counties, cities, townships, and incorporated towns and villages, boroughs, authorities, districts and Indian tribes on Federal and State reservations which will serve rural areas. Rural area for this program is defined as a city, town, or unincorporated area that has a population of 50,000 inhabitants or less, other than an urbanized area immediately adjacent to a city, town, or unincorporated area that has a population in excess of 50,000 inhabitants.
- Authorized by
- 7 U.S.C. § 1932
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments