The Federal Funding Streams for Children and Youth Services database contains fiscal and descriptive information about more than 400 federal funding sources that support programs or services for infants, toddlers, children, youth, and their families. The database includes federal fiscal year obligations for these funding streams from 2019 to 2025 and will include additional years as complete fiscal year data becomes available from the federal government. The term “obligation,” as it pertains to public spending, refers to the legal liability to disburse funds. In other words, the obligated dollar amounts shown in this database represent the money the federal government has transferred to funding recipients for the included child- and youth-serving programs. Read additional details about our fiscal data below in the section Additional Categories and Data on the National Overview and State Pages.

The database contains the following pages:

• The National Overview, which is the first page of the database, provides a summary of all federal funding streams and annual funding obligations for each of these funding streams from 2019 to 2025. 
• The Funding by State page, which is the second page of the database, provides a view of the same federal funding streams broken out into the 50 states and the District of Columbia. This view allows users to see funding that program beneficiaries and service providers in a state received. While the National Overview shows all funding reported at the federal level for each program, some of this funding does not appear on the Funding by State page. The data on the Funding by State page does not show funding received in any of the U.S. territories nor funding retained by the federal administering agency for administrative purposes. The Funding by State page also does not distinguish funding received by federally recognized Tribes from other funding that landed in states. Any funding received by Tribes is included in the funding for the state that corresponds to the address of the Tribal funding recipient listed in the federal data. 
• The Funding and Policy Changes page, which is the third page of the database, provides information about changes that have affected any federal funding streams in the database. This page tracks changes implemented since January 2025, a time when our nation has experienced rapid changes in our federal government. Each entry on this page represents a distinct change, so some funding streams may appear multiple times if they have experienced multiple changes such as changes to staffing, overall funding designated to the funding stream, or allowable uses for the funds. We update the information on this page frequently and to the best of our current knowledge, but it may not always be completely up to date. If a change or piece of information included here does not reflect your experience or knowledge, please contact  Esther Grambs, manager, federal fiscal data, at [email protected] with questions, comments, and suggestions.

Searchable Categories

Users can filter the funding streams on the National Overview and Funding by State pages of the database within six categories. Additionally, users can filter funding streams by state on the Funding by State page. We grouped funding streams into these categories based on uses allowed under current laws and regulations; but, not every dollar was spent on the specific programs, services, or groups that we have tagged for a given funding stream. For example, many of these funding streams are very large and have multiple parts to which different rules and restrictions apply. It may be that only a small portion of the funding shown in the database was spent on a specific activity, or spent on children in general. We try to capture these nuances in our program descriptions. (See the section Additional Categories and Data on the National Overview and Funding by State Pages for additional information.)

1. Administering Agency 
   

   This refers to the federal agency that is designated to administer the funding stream by the law that established the funding stream. This agency typically issues program regulations and guidance, program funding opportunities, and makes payments to grant recipients and program beneficiaries. This filter also allows users to sort by subagency by clicking on the arrow to the right of the agency name. For example, you can search all funding streams administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, or just those administered by the Administration for Children and Families, which is a subagency of Health and Human Services. 

2. Specific Eligible Programs and Services
   This filter allows users to sort the federal funding streams by 60 specific services and programs for which funds may be used. Children’s Funding Project, along with experts across a diverse set of disciplines from our communities of practice, developed these 60 service and program categories based on our observations about (1) what the federal government funded and (2) the programs and services for which we believe potential users would search in this database. This list includes services and programs across educational, social, and community-based services like tutoring, arts and cultural programs, mental and behavioral health services, foster care, health care, prenatal health services, recreational activities, and many more.
3. Eligible Funding Applicants
   This filter allows users to sort by the entities that are eligible to apply for each federal program in the tool. Sometimes these entities are the direct beneficiaries, such as when a family receives federal nutrition benefits or a child care provider is reimbursed for participating in a public child care program. Other times this is a pass-through entity, such as a state, local, or Tribal government agency that receives federal funding and then distributes that funding to families or direct service providers, usually retaining some funds to cover the agency’s administrative costs in the process. This list of eligible applicants also includes businesses and for-profit organizations, community-based organizations and nonprofits, K-12 schools, colleges and universities, museums, medical institutions, and other program or service providers.
4. Beneficiary Eligibility Criteria
   

   This refers to the criteria that identifies the group or groups for which the funding is intended to primarily or exclusively benefit, such as income status, juvenile justice involvement, American Indian/Alaska Native, youth involved in foster and kinship care, children and youth with disabilities, and more. There is also a category for all children and youth for those programs that are intended to provide a benefit that is universal or not limited to a specific population. We collected this data from SAM.gov, although we have adjusted the federal government’s language to categorize beneficiaries with more person-first language and to capture greater nuance in the beneficiary populations targeted by these funding streams.

5. Age Range
   This category filters all funding streams by age group or groups. Users may also select “no age group target” to include funds for which all age groups qualify, including adults. The database groups funding streams into the following age ranges:
   • Prenatal
   • Birth – 2 years old
   • 3 – 4 years old
   • 5 – 12 years old
   • 13 – 17 years old
   • 18 – 24 years old
   • No age group target
6. Grant Type
   This refers to the form of assistance provided by the federal government. The federal government uses 15 different types of assistance, although only 11 appear in our tool. The four most common types are defined below. You can find the definitions for the others in the Annual Publication of Assistance Listings on SAM.gov.

• • Project grant: Funding awarded, usually through a competitive process, to fund a specific project for a set period of time.
  • Formula grant: Funding disbursed according to distribution formulas set forth in the authorizing law or the program regulations. This includes block grants.
  • Cooperative agreement: Funding awarded to a nongovernment agency to carry out specific services or implement a specific program. This differs from a project grant in that there is significant government involvement in the project.
  • Direct payment for specified use: Funding distributed to encourage or subsidize a particular activity, on the condition of the recipient meeting performance metrics and expectations. These may be awarded competitively, on a first-come-first-served basis, through a formula, or be noncompetitive but still contingent on an application.

7. Years Funded

This filter allows users to view funding streams by the year that there was active funding for program activities. The federal government has many programs that are not funded every year. For example, a program may not receive new funding after it finishes a grant cycle and it is awaiting Congressional reapproval. Some programs are discontinued by their agencies when leadership establishes new policy priorities or an evaluation signals that the program was not effective. Our database does not remove funding streams if they are discontinued. In this way, it acts as a tracker of not just current funding, but of historical funding as well. If you wanted to look at only more recently funded programs, you could filter for the most recent fiscal years. If you wanted to see what was funded seven years ago, you could filter for just fiscal year 2019.

8. State

On the second page of the database, which features the state-by-state view, users can filter the funding streams within the seven categories mentioned above as well as in an additional category: state. This filter allows users to view funding that landed in individual states and the District of Columbia, in conjunction with other filters.

The Funding and Policy Changes page allows users to filter the data in five different ways. 

1. Funding Stream Name

This is the federally designated name of the funding stream (also referred to as federal grant, assistance listing, budget line item, or special fund name). This is the official funding stream name in federal government data, but funding streams may be known by several different or more common names. For example, the Special Education Preschool Grants program is an official funding stream name, but it is commonly referred to as IDEA Part B or IDEA section 619. If you have trouble locating a specific program in the tool or are unsure about the official name for a funding source, try searching for the fund’s common name or a term specific to the program using the keyword search bar at the top of each page. 

2. Type of Change
This filter allows users to see the type of change that occurred to the funding stream. They are listed and defined below. 

• • Funding: Refers to the elimination, reduction, reorientation, or introduction of funds based on the priorities of the presidential administration. 
  • Staffing: Refers to changes in department staffing that include reductions in force, deferred resignations, incentivized early retirement, hiring surges, and other personnel policy changes.
  • Eligibility: Refers to changes that may limit or increase participation in or eligibility for federal services and benefits by adding or removing eligibility categories, or creating barriers such as work requirements, more frequent applications, or verification of citizenship.
  • Allowable uses: Changes to how recipients can use funds, usually in accordance with the administration’s priorities.
  • Structure: Changes in the process by which the federal government generates and allocates funding. This includes changes to the type of funding (ex. formula grant, project grant, cooperative agreement), the grant cycle length, the funding formula, and the administrative path that the funding follows from the federal agency down to the beneficiary.
  • New program: Refers to an entirely new program introduced via legislation with new funding attached, or via agency action as a subprogram within an existing funding stream. 
  • Privatization: Shifts the administration of services traditionally provided by public agencies to private contractors.
  • Moved agencies: Indicates that the program is administered by a different agency than the one that administered the program prior to January 2025.
  • Other: Includes any other changes to federal policy implemented since January 2025 that affect federal funding streams for children and youth but that do not fall into one of the above categories.

3. Authority of Change
This filter allows users to sort the policy and funding changes by the various methods the federal government uses to change policy, each with its own level of permanency, enforcement power, and scope.

• • DOGE: The acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency, the advisory agency created by executive order in January 2025, tasked with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” 
  • Funds withheld: Also known as impoundment, this refers to when the executive branch of the federal government declines to disburse funds appropriated by Congress by a date mandated by federal law or regulation. 
  • Law: A bill passed by Congress and signed by the president that makes policy changes. This includes appropriations and tax bills.
  • Regulation: Federal agencies interpret and implement the laws passed by Congress through regulations. Regulations have the authority and force of law but are more easily altered. Regulations are published in the Federal Register and Code of Federal Regulations.
  • Agency guidance/authority: Federal agencies provide guidance for following regulations, and can take various actions to incentivize or inhibit behavior by funding recipients. Federal agencies also take direction from executive orders. Guidance and other nonregulatory agency actions typically have the lowest enforcement power and are easily altered.
  • Court ruling: Any court ruling or decision that affects federal policy. This includes Supreme Court rulings and rulings by federal judges. Courts generally have little power to enforce their rulings on their own, so court rulings often are paired with congressional or agency action for greater effectiveness.
  • Rescission: A specific type of law that Congress can pass to reverse or take back funding it previously authorized for spending.
  • Executive order: A written directive from the president to manage the operations of the federal government usually around policy priorities or federal agency actions. While executive orders have the force of law, they cannot override existing federal laws.
  • Other: Other vehicles for changing federal funding or policy that do not fall into one of the above categories..

4. Date of Implementation
This filter allows users to sort by the quarter and year that the change took effect or will take effect. Categories within this parameter are formatted as year-quarter (ex. 2025-Q1, 2025-Q2). Because of the nature of many of the funding and policy changes tracked in this database, more specific dates are not appropriate to capture an accurate timeline of events. If there are important specific dates, they appear  in the description of the change or are available in our cited sources.

5. Administering Agency

This filter functions the same as the Administering Agency filter on the other pages of the database. In the case where the type of change is “Moved agencies,” this filter will still reflect the agency that administered the funding stream prior to the policy change. This is because, as of May 2026, there have been no changes to statutory responsibility for administration of any of the affected programs. Technically speaking, much of the administration of these programs that have “moved agencies” still remains with the original agencies.  

Additional Categories and Data on the National Overview and Funding by State Pages

By scrolling to the right in the table on the first two pages of the data tool, users can see columns for several additional parameters used to categorize and organize the funding data. Some of the information in the columns comes directly from federal government sources, indicated by dark gray column headers. Other columns show categories based on our own interpretations of federal data and informed by our expertise in child and youth policy. These columns have blue headers.

Funding Stream Name
This is the federally designated name of the funding stream (also referred to as federal grant, assistance listing, budget line item, or special fund name). This is the official funding stream name in federal government data, but funding streams may be known by several different or more common names. For example, the Special Education Preschool Grants program is an official funding stream name, but it is commonly referred to as IDEA Part B or IDEA section 619. If you have trouble locating a specific program in the tool or are unsure about the official name for a funding source, try searching for the fund’s common name or a term specific to the program using the keyword search bar at the top of each page.

Program Description
This is the official program description for each funding stream. This information comes primarily from SAM.gov, although we have supplemented the content with additional information from federal agency websites and/or nongovernment policy research when necessary. The descriptions range in level of detail, but they typically describe the program’s purpose, goals, and allowable uses. For some funding streams we have provided additional detail to explain anomalous funding patterns, provide important legal or historical background, describe funding stream relationships, or explain funding structure nuances.

FY 2019 – FY 2025 Federal Funding (Obligations)
These columns show how much funding was obligated for a given program in a given fiscal year; in other words, how much money the federal government transferred to funding recipients. The amounts in these columns represent the total sum of the transactions recorded in each program’s account with the Department of the Treasury. Each federal fiscal year begins on October 1 of the preceding year and ends on September 30 of the indicated year. For example, federal fiscal year 2025 began on October 1, 2024, and ended on September 30, 2025.

Annual obligations have not been adjusted for inflation. Obligation amounts have also not been adjusted to show the proportion of funding spent exclusively on children and youth. Some programs, such as the Child Care and Development Block Grant or Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies exclusively benefit children. Many others, especially many large programs, such as Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefit people of all ages. When viewing any obligation funding amounts in this database, users should carefully read the program description and age range eligibility details to understand whether the funding shown is for children and youth exclusively or other age groups as well. 

Obligations are not the same as congressionally appropriated funding, and there are a number of reasons that obligation patterns or trends can differ from amounts appropriated in a congressional spending bill. While Congress will release funding to federal agencies, many agencies do not release funding until recipients complete program applications or submit plans., and then many programs operate on a reimbursement basis, requiring the recipient to spend their own money and then submit a request for reimbursement. Disasters or emergencies (such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a hurricane, or wildfire) also can affect the demand for funds or the ability of providers to deliver services. Finally, an agency may disburse program funding over multiple years, or all in one year and grantees will have a number of years to spend it. These reasons explain some of the fluctuations in funding amounts over time that you will see in the database as well as any discrepancies that appear between what is in a congressional appropriations bill and the funding data contained in this database.

It is fairly common for the federal government to take funding back from recipients or to deobligate funding. The federal government may deobligate funding for many reasons, including administrative errors, instances when the administering federal agency reduces the total amount of funding awarded, misuse of funds on the part of the recipient, efficient use of funds by the recipient, or failure of the recipient to use all of the funding within the grant cycle. Deobligation is not always bad. Every story behind deobligated funding is unique, so it is important not to make assumptions about negative total obligation amounts. Deobligations are factored into the funding amounts in the National Overview, but are zeroed out when the line-item sum is less than zero. On the Funding by State page, the line-item sums that are less than zero are shown to provide a more detailed view of the funding picture in the state.

Additionally, there are $0 values in the database. A $0 value does not necessarily mean that no funds were available to eligible recipients. For example, a $0 value in a given year may mean that a program is active, but all funds were awarded in previous years and the recipients are spending the funds. You can find more information about the length of time recipients have to expend their funds under the Funding Cycle column. Federal agencies also will use a $0 value award to indicate a nonfinancial change to an award, such as a recipient change of address, a spending deadline extension, or the close out of an award. If a state does not appear in the list of states that received funding from a given program, that indicates that no entities in that state participated in that program during the fiscal years we track.

This data was collected from USA Spending, a U.S. Department of Treasury website, which you can read more about under What Is the Primary Data Source for the Database and What Is Our Methodology for Collecting It? The numbers in our database may not directly reflect obligation amounts found using USA Spending’s advanced search function. The values shown in this database reflect the most recent data available as of December 5, 2025. Award amounts change over time as agencies make corrections, reconciliations, or adjustments to previously reported data. For the most up-to-date information on any specific award, please refer directly to USASpending.gov.

Funding Cycle
This refers to the length of time that funding recipients have to spend the full amount of program funding, and usually indicates how long they must wait until they can reapply for additional funding. This data comes from SAM.gov.

Program and System Building
This category of funding streams supports various background operations that supply service providers with the people, training, tools, and resources they need to do their jobs effectively. Funding for program and system building supports collaboration and coordination both within programs to maintain individual program quality, efficiency, and effectiveness, and between programs to expand and improve services for children across an entire community. The “yes” values in this column indicate that this funding stream has one or more of the following specific eligible services and programs that we consider to be program and system building:

• Community development
• Data and technology systems
• Evaluation and technical assistance
• Intermediary infrastructure
• Provider recruitment and professional development
• Strategic finance planning

Outcome Category
This refers to the general child and youth outcome the funding broadly supports. This is Children’s Funding Project’s interpretation of the funding’s intended outcome, and does not necessarily reflect any federal agency’s interpretation of its own funding. We have organized federal funding streams into the following outcome categories:

• Educated: Funding to support the education of children and youth, both in and out of school.
• Employable: Funding for workforce development and career readiness activities.
• Healthy: Funding to support the physical, mental, and emotional health and well-being of children and families.
• Safe: Funding that supports the safety and well-being of children and families.
• Supported and connected: Funding that provides financial, emotional, and social support to children and families and funding that helps children and youth connect to their communities.

Service Setting
This describes the general environment or location where beneficiaries receive services. Children’s Funding Project staff interpreted this data for each funding stream since this information is not always explicit in the program description.

Level of Intervention
This describes the intended impact and approach to supporting children and youth. This is Children’s Funding Project’s interpretation of the funding’s intended level of intervention, and does not necessarily reflect any federal agency’s interpretation of their own funding.

• Basic services: Funds that help meet the basic needs of a healthy life.
• Intervention: Funds directed to correct or mitigate an existing disparity and/or address population-specific needs to help children and youth thrive and succeed.
• Positive development: Funds focused on supporting the developmental needs of children and youth from cradle to career to ensure they thrive throughout all stages of life.
• Prevention: Funds directed to methods or activities that seek to reduce or deter specific or predictable problems, protect the current state of well-being, or promote desired outcomes or behaviors.

Federal Assistance Listing Number
This number, also known as a program’s Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) number, is a unique identifier that recipients or potential recipients can use to search for more information about a funding stream on USASpending.gov, SAM.gov, grants.gov, and a number of other federal websites. 

Additional Notes
This column includes additional explanatory notes that we felt did not necessarily fit in the main program description. This is where information will be if any categories under the parameters are listed as “Other.”

Funding Website Link
This column links to the SAM.gov page for the funding stream, where more information can be found on the funding stream’s background, including applicable laws, regulations, and information on applying to the program.

Additional Categories and Data on the Funding and Policy Changes Page

Description of Change
This column provides an overview of the policy change, how and when the change came about, the size of the change (in fiscal terms or population terms), and/or the expected effect the change will have on program beneficiaries.

FY 2024 Obligations
This is the same data that appears in the column titled FY 24 Federal Funding (Obligations) on the National Overview page. We include this number on the Funding and Policy Changes page to provide an idea about the relative size of the program being affected, using data from the last full fiscal year before the effects we are tracking would be seen in public fiscal data.

Federal Assistance Listing Number
This number, also known as a program’s Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) number, is a unique identifier that recipients or potential recipients can use to search for more information about a funding stream on USASpending.gov, SAM.gov, grants.gov, and a number of other federal websites.

Citation
The source or sources consulted for information about the funding or policy change.

Date Last Updated
The date that the entry was last updated by our staff.

Depending on a community’s needs, this database can provide a starting point for documenting the federal resources a community currently leverages; help communities identify additional funding streams for which their states, Native nations, localities, or organizations might be eligible (with details that help leaders decide whether to pursue those other opportunities); or aid leaders in starting their own localized or tribally focused fiscal maps. This database also acts as a historical record of federal funding for children and youth that can help advocates track changes to federal funding over time as well as changing policy requirements and circumstances for specific funding streams. 

For more information about how to use the search features of the database and how to download a customized spreadsheet based on your search, access the how-to guide from the upper right-hand corner of the tool, where it says “How to Use This Tool.” For information about other funding-related terms you may find, check out our glossary of terms.

Primary Data Source

Categorical and programmatic information in the database comes primarily from SAM.gov, a website maintained by the federal General Services Administration. It is a public website and provides detailed descriptions of federally funded programs.

When necessary, we supplement the information pulled from SAM.gov with additional information from federal agency websites and policy research produced by trusted nongovernmental organizations.

Fiscal information in the database comes from USAspending.gov, a website maintained by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service in the U.S. Department of Treasury that serves as the official source for spending data for the U.S. government. More specifically, the fiscal data in the database comes specifically from USAspending’s award transactions, which represent individual obligations or deobligations. USAspending receives award-level data from multiple source systems. Below are the source systems for the award data that underpins the bulk of our analysis.

• SAM.gov (File E) or the System for Award Management: This is where potential grant recipients register to receive federal prime funding awards. USASpending uses SAM.gov as its source for information on recipient names and codes, which we use to populate our Funding Stream Names and Funding Stream Descriptions columns.  
• File C (Account Breakdown by Award): This dataset tracks how much money federal agencies have obligated to specific funding awards over the lifetime of a given award. Monthly, each federal agency submits obligation and outlay data for all awards to USASpending as required by the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act. File C contains the financial information for award obligation.
• Federal Procurement Data System (File D1): This system provides transaction-level data, which includes initial contracts; grant, loans, or insurance awards; and any amendment or modification to an award about federal contracts amounts. The Federal Procurement Data System includes the following data:
  
  
  • Transaction-level data 
  • Data for contracts
  • Contract indefinite delivery vehicles  
  • Award transaction obligation 
  • Award transaction description
  • Action date 
  • Awarding agency
  • Recipient code 
  • Recipient location 
  • Place of performance
  • Industry/sector
  • Product or service
  • Set aside type
• Financial Assistance Broker Submission (File D2): This data captures all noncontract federal assistance including grants, direct payments, loans, and insurance programs. Most assistance program agencies are mandated to report their transactions within two weeks of issuing a financial award. File D2 data includes the following information: 
  
  
  • Assistance listing (CFDA numbers) 
  • Award amounts
  • Award transaction description
  • Action date
  • Awarding agencies
  • Recipient code
  • Recipient location
  • Place of performance (state)
  • Agencies providing assistance 
  • Recipient information

Information on the Funding and Policy Changes page comes directly from federal publications and announcements, including legislation, regulations, press releases, agency guidance, and more, and from trusted news sources, especially ones that specialize in topics such as child care, K-12 education, federal regulation and the law, and higher education.

Our Methodology

For the National Overview and Funding by State pages: 

1. Extract award data from USASpending.gov for the assistance listings we’ve designated as funding dedicated to children and youth.
2. Analyze funding obligations by aggregating federal action obligations by assistance listing, fiscal year, and place of performance.
3. Classify programs according to their purpose and target population. 

For the Federal Funding and Policy Changes page:

1. Monitor major news outlets and federal government sources for funding and policy changes that may potentially apply to the funding streams in our database. 
2. Verify these changes by cross-referencing our findings across multiple sources.
3. Classify changes by the authority of change and the type of change based on our definitions.

Data Limitations

While we consider this data to be comprehensive, this federal funding data has important limitations: 

1. Reporting delays and discrepancies: Time lags can exist between when funds are obligated and when they appear in USASpending data. Annual obligation totals also can change even several years after the fact.
2. Varying detail: Our most recent update for fiscal year 2024 represents a static snapshot of federal funding as of December 5, 2025, and may not include additional award data at the transaction level that could subsequently amend or modify award amounts.
3. Discrepancies across government platforms: The information listed on a federal government website and the information we have in our database may not reflect everyone’s experience with federal funding and programs. For example, substantial inconsistencies exist across federal grant information platforms about what entities are eligible to apply for or receive funding. We use eligible applicant and beneficiary information from SAM.gov, but that information may not reflect what appears on other platforms like grants.gov. If you see information in any of our data tools that does not reflect your knowledge or experiences with federal funding, please let us know!
4. Conflicting information: Ongoing litigation, reporting delays caused by a government shutdown, lack of transparency, and official statements that conflict with trusted news sources often create confusion about the status of recent federal policy and funding changes. If you see information in our database that does not reflect your knowledge or experience, please let us know!