How to Read a Grant Notice (the NOFO), Section by Section

The Notice of Funding Opportunity is the rulebook for one grant. What each section tells you, what to pull out of it, and the places applications get disqualified.

The document: Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), sometimes called the FOA or RFA
Where it is: Linked from every grant on Grants.gov
Usual deadline time: 5:00 PM Eastern, unless the notice says otherwise
Most common disqualifiers: Missing forms, page limits, wrong file format, late
Questions: Allowed, by the deadline in the notice

The notice is the contract before the contract

Everything on our grant pages, the deadline, who can apply, the award range, what it funds, comes from the notice. The notice has more: the full purpose, the required contents of the application, the page limits, the scoring and the terms you'll live under. Federal notices follow a standard layout with lettered sections, so once you've read one you can find your way around the rest.

Section A: what the program wants

The program description. Read it for the problem the agency is trying to solve and the words it uses to describe success. Reviewers are told to score how well you serve this purpose, so your narrative should speak this section's language back to it.

Section B: the money

Total funding, the number of awards expected, the award ceiling and floor, the project period (often one to five years) and whether it's a grant or a cooperative agreement. If the ceiling is $150,000 and your project needs $400,000, the answer is a different grant, not a smaller budget.

Section C: eligibility

Who may apply, cost sharing or matching, and any other requirement such as a service area, partners or a prior award. Also whether an applicant may submit more than one application. This is the section that disqualifies applications before anyone reads them, so settle it first.

Section D: what to submit and how

The list of forms and documents, page limits, fonts and margins, file formats, the system to submit through and the deadline with its time zone. Make a checklist from this section and tick it off; a missing attachment or a narrative one page over the limit can end the application regardless of its quality. Note any earlier dates: a letter of intent, a registration cutoff, a question deadline, a webinar.

Section E: how it's scored

The review criteria and their point values, and the review process. Write your narrative in the order of the criteria, with headings that match their names, so the reviewer finds each point where they expect it. If 'evaluation plan' is worth 20 of 100 points, give it a fifth of your pages.

Sections F to H: after the award, contacts, and the rest

F covers the award notice, the terms and the reporting schedule. G names the people to ask questions, and most notices allow written questions until a stated date, with answers posted for everyone. H holds anything else, often the one odd requirement that trips people up. Read all the way to the end.

Sources

Grants.gov, Notice of Funding Opportunity standard format
2 CFR 200.204, Notices of funding opportunities
Agency NOFO examples from HHS, DOJ and USDA

Checked October 2026. Thresholds and rules change; each source above is the official page.