News Release

SAMHSA Implements New Grant Announcement Process

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is implementing a new approach to announcing grant opportunities.  Rather than publishing individual detailed grant announcement (usually known as a Request for Application or Program Announcement) for each funding opportunity, SAMHSA will instead publish a brief Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) linked to a standard grant announcement.

The NOFA will detail the total funding available to address a specific issue or target population.  In addition, the NOFA will provide information about the expected size and number of grant awards for a particular funding opportunity, the application deadline, and any special programmatic requirements. 

Each NOFA will refer to one of four new standard grant announcements that provide basic program design and application instructions for: Services Grants; Infrastructure Grants; Best Practices Planning and Implementation Grants; and Service-to-Science Grants.  These standard announcements will allow potential applicants to more effectively anticipate program requirements for SAMHSA grants.  This, in turn, will allow applicants to better plan their grant applications.

In general, service grants will fund substance abuse and mental health services.  Infrastructure grants will fund identification and implementation of new systems, but are not designed to fund services.  Best practices planning and implementation grants will help communities and providers identify effective practices to meet local needs, develop strategic plans for implementing or adapting those practices, and pilot-test practices prior to full-scale implementation.  Service-to-science grants will document and evaluate innovative practices that address critical substance abuse and mental health service gaps, but have not yet been evaluated.

SAMHSA’s goal is to have all applications qualify for review.  Applicants are urged to adhere to all requirements listed in both the NOFA and the appropriate standard grant announcement.  The entire funding announcement should be read before preparing an application.  

Because SAMHSA will continue to fund some programs that do not fit within the four standard grant announcements, SAMHSA will continue to publish some Requests for Application (RFAs) and Program Announcements (PAs), as it has done in the past. 

SAMHSA’s web site has complete documents of the standard program announcements as well as funding information from NOFAs and RFAs.  For more information, please contact Cathy Friedman at 301-443-4111 or cfriedman@samhsa.hhs.gov.

 

This page was last updated on 08 March, 2004
SAMHSA is An Agency of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services