Assistance program
Affordable Connectivity Outreach Grant Program
$16.5 Million committed in FY2023–FY2025
- Agency
- Federal Communications Commission, Federal Communications Commission
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 32.011
- What it does
- Millions of low-income households experience difficulty paying for broadband service needed to participate in 21st Century society, including for work, education, healthcare, and civic engagement. Addressing affordability is a critical component of closing the digital divide. On November 15, 2021, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act) was enacted, providing $14.2 billion for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The ACP plays an integral role in helping to bridge the digital divide, which is an ongoing top priority for Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). To date, a significant number of qualifying households have not yet enrolled in the ACP. Recognizing the importance of outreach to eligible households, Congress expressly authorized the FCC to conduct outreach to encourage households to enroll in the ACP, including providing grants to outreach partners. The FCC establishes the Outreach Grant Program to provide eligible entities grant funds to conduct outreach in support of the ACP. Through this Outreach Grant Program, the FCC seeks to enlist partners around the country to help inform ACP-eligible households about the program in their local communities, and to provide those partners with the funding and resources needed to increase participation among those Americans most in need of affordable connectivity.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- Types of entities eligible to participate in the Outreach Grant Program include, but are not limited to: tribal governments and subdivisions thereof, as well as tribal organizations; state governments and subdivisions thereof; local governments and subdivisions thereof (including county, borough, municipality, city, town, township, parish, local public authority, special district, intrastate district, council of governments, and agencies or instrumentalities of multi-regional or intra-state or local government); public housing authorities; social service providers; education organizations such as schools and other institutions of higher education; workforce development training organizations; nonprofit organizations; community-based organizations; community anchor institutions; public service organizations; and consortia of listed entities.
- Authorized by
- 47 U.S.C. § 1752(b)(10)(c)
Committed by fiscal year
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