Assistance program
International Broadcasting Independent Grantee Organizations
$3.1 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- United States Agency for Global Media, BBG, United States Agency for Global Media, BBG
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 90.500
- What it does
- To promote freedom and democracy and enhance understanding through multimedia communication of accurate, objective, and balanced news, information, and other programming about America and the world to audiences overseas.
- Who benefits
- Direct beneficiaries of these grants are three nonprofit entities based and incorporated in the United States. The grants allow these three United States-based entities to provide an objective and balanced alternative source of news, opinion, and information related to the U.S. and U.S. policy to overseas populations. Secondary beneficiaries of these grants are overseas listeners who benefit from an alternative news source that provides objective information.
- Who applies
- Grants are currently only available to three existing nonprofit organizations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks as identified in authorizing or appropriations language. Grants are not available to State or local governments or the general public.
- Authorized by
- Public Laws: 103-236 as amended
- Program site
- http://www.bbg.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