Assistance program
National Guard ChalleNGe Program
$1.5 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Dept of the Army, Dept of Defense
- Assistance
- Formula Grants
- CFDA number
- 12.404
- What it does
- This is a non discretionary program. The Secretary of Defense, acting through the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, has authorized the conduct of this Program, and the use of the National Guard to provide military-based training, including supervised work experience in service to the community and conservation projects, for civilian youth who are credit deficient and/or cease to attend secondary school before graduating so as to improve the life skills and employment potential of such youth.
- Who benefits
- Civilian youth 16-20 years of age who are credit deficient and/or cease to attend secondary school before graduating so as to improve the life skills and employment potential of such youth.
- Who applies
- This is a non-discretionary program. The Secretary of Defense shall provide for the conduct of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program in such States and U.S. territories and possessions as the Secretary considers to be appropriate.
- Authorized by
- 32 U.S.C. § 509
- Program site
- https://ngchallenge.org/ ↗
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