Assistance program
National School Lunch Program
$227.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Food and Nutrition Service, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Formula Grants
- CFDA number
- 10.555
- What it does
- To assist States, through cash grants and food donations, in providing a nutritious nonprofit lunch service for school children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities.
- Who benefits
- All children enrolled in schools where this program is operating may receive a lunch daily. Eligibility for free, reduced-price, or paid lunches is determined based on the household income and size. Lunch is available free to children who are determined by the local education agency to have household income levels at or below 130 percent, and at a reduced price rate to children from households with incomes higher than 130 but at or below 185 percent of the Federal poverty line. Lunch is available at the paid rate to children who are not eligible for free and reduced-price meals. The Secretary prescribes the income eligibility guidelines for free and reduced-price meals by July 1. These guidelines are revised annually according to the Federal Income Poverty Guidelines. Children from households certified to receive benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, or Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and children in Head Start programs are automatically eligible for free meals. Homeless children, children in certain runaway and homeless youth grant programs, migrant children, and foster children are automatically eligible for free meals. All reimbursable meals served at the free, reduced-price, and paid categories get cash assistance.
- Who applies
- States, including the District of Columbia and U.S. Territories, as applicable, may apply to administer the National School Lunch Program and work in collaboration with public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions, to provide nutritious lunches for children. All participating schools and institutions must agree to operate a nonprofit food service that is available to all children regardless of race, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), color, national origin, age, or disability.
- Authorized by
- Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act, as amended
- Program site
- http://www.fns.usda.gov ↗
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