Assistance program
Office of Science Financial Assistance Program
$12.3 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Energy, Department of, Energy, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Cooperative Agreements)
- CFDA number
- 81.049
- What it does
- SC is the Nation’s largest Federal sponsor of basic research in the physical sciences and the lead Federal agency supporting fundamental scientific research for our Nation’s energy future. SC is an established leader of the U.S. scientific discovery and innovation enterprise. Over the decades, SC investments and accomplishments in basic research and enabling research capabilities have provided the foundations for new technologies, businesses, and industries, making significant contributions to our nation’s economy, national security, and quality of life. Additional descriptions of recent science discoveries can be found at https://science.osti.gov/Science-Features/Science-Highlights. SC accomplishes its mission and advances national goals by supporting: - Science for energy, economic and national security?building a foundation of scientific and technical knowledge to spur discoveries and innovations for advancing the Department’s mission. SC supports a wide range of funding modalities from single principal investigators to large team-based activities to engage in fundamental research on energy production, conversion, storage, transmission, and use, and on our understanding of the earth systems. - The frontiers of science—exploring nature’s mysteries from the study of fundamental subatomic particles, atoms, and molecules that are the building blocks of the materials of our universe and everything in it to the DNA, proteins, and cells that are the building blocks of life. Each of the programs in SC supports research probing the most fundamental disciplinary questions. - The 21st Century tools of science—providing the nation’s researchers with 28 state-of-the-art national scientific user facilities, the most advanced tools of modern science, propelling the U.S. to the forefront of science, technology development, and deployment through innovation.
- Who benefits
- None
- Who applies
- Except where a program solicitation establishes more restrictive eligibility criteria, individuals and organizations in the following categories may submit proposals: Institutions of higher education; National Laboratories; Nonprofit and for-profit private entities; State and local governments; and consortia of entities described above.
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.
How the money flows
Committed dollars by how this program's money is paid out.
Grants
$12.2B
99%
Other
$98.6M
<1%
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