grants-mcp

Every active federal grant opportunity, filterable by agency, deadline, and award ceiling.

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What Is This?

The federal government distributes more than $800 billion in grants annually through over 1,000 grant programs administered by 26 federal agencies. Grants.gov alone lists 10,000+ active opportunities at any given time, and the native search interface — while functional — returns flat, hard-to-filter results that require significant manual triage. Nonprofit development directors, university research offices, and foundation grant writers spend dozens of hours per month just identifying which opportunities are worth pursuing.

This actor provides a clean, programmable interface to Grants.gov's public API with automatic fallback to SAM.gov for supplementary opportunity data. Filter by funding agency, CFDA program number, opportunity status, deadline range, award ceiling, and keyword — and get back normalized opportunity records with every field your grant pipeline needs: opportunity ID, opportunity number, title, agency, deadline, award ceiling, and full description text. No Grants.gov account required.

It runs in Batch mode for pipeline integrations (feed a nonprofit CRM, trigger deadline alerts, export to a grants calendar) and MCP server mode for live grant research inside Claude Desktop or any MCP-compatible AI assistant. Research offices at universities use it to monitor agency funding priorities in real time. Individual grant writers use it to surface opportunities their clients would never find manually.

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Who Uses This

Nonprofit Development Directors You manage a portfolio of 15 active grants and need to identify 8 new opportunities in the next quarter across HHS, DOL, and HUD. The Grants.gov interface gives you paginated results with no way to filter by award ceiling or deadline proximity. This actor returns every open opportunity matching your agency and keyword filters, sorted by deadline, in one structured call — ready to share with your board in a formatted report.

University Research Office Staff You support 200+ faculty across 30 departments, each chasing funding in different agencies and CFDA programs. Manually monitoring Grants.gov for new postings in each area isn't sustainable. This actor lets you run a nightly batch query per department, alerting faculty only when new opportunities appear in their specific program areas — turning a 20-hour/week monitoring task into an automated feed.

Federal Grant Writers (Freelance and Firm) You specialize in writing applications for USDA rural development and HHS community health grants. You need to know the moment a new NOFA drops — before your clients' competitors see it. Set up a monitored batch run against your target agencies and have new opportunities pushed to your workflow the same day they're posted.

Foundation Program Officers You're a private foundation looking to co-fund with federal agencies — a common structure for education and workforce programs. You need to know which federal opportunities allow third-party co-funding and what the award ceilings look like, so you can structure your grants to complement federal dollars. This actor surfaces that data without manual triage.

AI Agent Developers Building Grant Research Tools You're building an AI assistant for a nonprofit that needs to answer "what grants are we eligible for this quarter?" This actor's MCP interface gives your agent live access to Grants.gov data — no scraping, no stale exports, no hallucinated program names.

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Key Features

Feature	Detail
Data coverage	10,000+ active federal grant opportunities
Primary source	Grants.gov REST API (official)
Fallback source	SAM.gov Contract Opportunities API
Filter: Agency	Any of 26 federal grant-making agencies
Filter: CFDA number	Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance program number
Filter: Opportunity status	Open, Forecasted, Closed, Archived
Filter: Deadline range	Open opportunities closing within N days, or date range
Filter: Award ceiling	Min/max award ceiling in USD
Filter: Keyword	Full-text search against title + description
Output format	Normalized JSON with all required opportunity fields
MCP server mode	Live tool-use in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, any MCP client
Batch mode	One-shot runs with full result sets
SAM.gov fallback	Automatic retry via SAM.gov when Grants.gov returns incomplete data

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Quick Start

Batch Mode

Input:

{
  "mode": "batch",
  "agency": "Department of Health and Human Services",
  "keyword": "community health center",
  "opportunity_status": "open",
  "deadline_within_days": 60,
  "award_ceiling_min": 500000,
  "max_results": 20
}

Output (truncated to 2 records):

[
  {
    "opportunity_id": "HHS-2024-HRSA-MCH-0042",
    "opportunity_number": "HRSA-24-042",
    "title": "Maternal and Child Health Community Integration Program",
    "agency": "Health Resources and Services Administration",
    "parent_agency": "Department of Health and Human Services",
    "cfda_number": "93.994",
    "deadline": "2024-08-15",
    "posted_date": "2024-06-01",
    "award_ceiling": 2500000,
    "award_floor": 250000,
    "expected_awards": 12,
    "description": "HRSA is soliciting applications for the Maternal and Child Health Community Integration Program to fund community health centers providing integrated prenatal and postnatal services in rural and underserved communities...",
    "eligibility": "Nonprofits, state governments, tribal governments, institutions of higher education",
    "url": "https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/HHS-2024-HRSA-MCH-0042"
  },
  {
    "opportunity_id": "HHS-2024-SAMHSA-CMHS-0019",
    "opportunity_number": "SM-24-019",
    "title": "Community Mental Health Services Block Grant Supplemental Funding",
    "agency": "Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration",
    "parent_agency": "Department of Health and Human Services",
    "cfda_number": "93.958",
    "deadline": "2024-07-30",
    "posted_date": "2024-05-28",
    "award_ceiling": 1800000,
    "award_floor": 100000,
    "expected_awards": 25,
    "description": "SAMHSA announces the availability of supplemental funding through the Community Mental Health Services Block Grant program...",
    "eligibility": "State mental health authorities",
    "url": "https://www.grants.gov/search-results-detail/HHS-2024-SAMHSA-CMHS-0019"
  }
]

MCP Server Mode

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grants": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/grants-mcp",
        "--token", "YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Then in Claude: "Find open USDA grants for rural broadband infrastructure closing in the next 90 days with an award ceiling above $1M."

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MCP Tools Exposed

search_grant_opportunities

Search active federal grant opportunities with filters.

{
  "tool": "search_grant_opportunities",
  "arguments": {
    "agency": "Department of Education",
    "keyword": "STEM workforce development",
    "opportunity_status": "open",
    "award_ceiling_min": 200000,
    "max_results": 30
  }
}

get_opportunity_detail

Retrieve full opportunity record including all attachments metadata and eligibility details.

{
  "tool": "get_opportunity_detail",
  "arguments": {
    "opportunity_id": "ED-GRANTS-060124-001"
  }
}

list_closing_soon

Return all open opportunities closing within N days, optionally filtered by agency.

{
  "tool": "list_closing_soon",
  "arguments": {
    "days": 30,
    "agency": "National Science Foundation"
  }
}

search_by_cfda

Return all opportunities under a specific CFDA program number.

{
  "tool": "search_by_cfda",
  "arguments": {
    "cfda_number": "47.076",
    "opportunity_status": "open"
  }
}

agency_funding_summary

Return total available funding and opportunity count by agency for a given keyword or status filter.

{
  "tool": "agency_funding_summary",
  "arguments": {
    "keyword": "climate resilience",
    "opportunity_status": "open"
  }
}

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Input Schema

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	"batch"	"batch" or "mcp"
agency	string	—	Federal agency name (partial match supported)
cfda_number	string	—	CFDA program number (e.g., "93.994")
keyword	string	—	Full-text keyword search (title + description)
opportunity_status	string	"open"	"open", "forecasted", "closed", "archived", "all"
deadline_within_days	integer	—	Return only opportunities closing within N days
deadline_from	string	—	ISO 8601 date — opportunities closing after this date
deadline_to	string	—	ISO 8601 date — opportunities closing before this date
award_ceiling_min	number	—	Minimum award ceiling (USD)
award_ceiling_max	number	—	Maximum award ceiling (USD)
eligibility_type	string	—	Filter by applicant type: "nonprofit", "university", "state", "tribal", "individual"
max_results	integer	100	Maximum records to return (up to 5,000)
sort_by	string	"deadline"	Sort field: "deadline", "award_ceiling", "posted_date"
sort_order	string	"asc"	"asc" or "desc"
include_description	boolean	true	Include full description text in results

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Use Case Recipes

Recipe 1: Deadline Alert Feed for a Nonprofit Portfolio

Find all HHS and DOL opportunities closing in the next 45 days with award ceilings above $250K:

{
  "agency": "Department of Health and Human Services",
  "opportunity_status": "open",
  "deadline_within_days": 45,
  "award_ceiling_min": 250000,
  "sort_by": "deadline",
  "sort_order": "asc",
  "max_results": 50
}

Outcome: Sorted deadline calendar — pipe this to a Slack alert, email digest, or CRM task creation workflow.

Recipe 2: University Research Office Program Scan

Surface all NSF opportunities in CFDA 47.076 (STEM Education) currently open:

{
  "cfda_number": "47.076",
  "opportunity_status": "open",
  "eligibility_type": "university",
  "max_results": 100
}

Outcome: Complete current funding landscape for a specific NSF division — share with department chairs.

Recipe 3: Climate Funding Landscape by Agency

Compare available climate-related funding across all agencies:

{
  "keyword": "climate resilience adaptation",
  "opportunity_status": "open",
  "sort_by": "award_ceiling",
  "sort_order": "desc",
  "max_results": 200
}

Outcome: Cross-agency climate funding map with award ceilings — use agency_funding_summary tool for a rolled-up view.

Recipe 4: Rural Development Grant Pipeline

USDA rural development grants for broadband and infrastructure:

{
  "agency": "Department of Agriculture",
  "keyword": "rural broadband infrastructure",
  "opportunity_status": "open",
  "award_ceiling_min": 1000000,
  "max_results": 30
}

Outcome: Active USDA broadband grant opportunities — cross-reference with your jurisdiction's eligibility before applying.

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Connecting to Claude Desktop / Claude Code

Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grants": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "apify-actor-mcp",
        "--actor-id", "your-username/grants-mcp",
        "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"
      ],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "grants": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["apify-actor-mcp", "--actor-id", "your-username/grants-mcp", "--token", "apify_api_YOURTOKEN"]
    }
  }
}

Sample prompts once connected:

• "What NSF grants are available for machine learning research closing in the next 60 days?"
• "Find USDA grants for food banks with award ceilings above $500K."
• "Summarize available HHS funding for substance abuse treatment programs."

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Pricing

Volume	Price
First 1,000 results	$0.50
1,001 – 50,000 results	$0.40/1k
50,000+ results	$0.30/1k

ROI context: A professional grant writer charges $75–$150/hour. Identifying 10 eligible opportunities manually from Grants.gov takes 3–5 hours. This actor does it in under 30 seconds. If even one application succeeds at $500K, the research cost is 0.0001% of the award.

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Data Source and Freshness

• Primary: Grants.gov REST API — official federal grant opportunities database managed by HHS
• Fallback: SAM.gov Contract Opportunities API — used when Grants.gov returns incomplete records
• Update frequency: Grants.gov updates continuously; this actor reflects data within 1–4 hours of posting
• Coverage: All federal grant opportunities across all 26 grant-making agencies; CFDA-registered programs only
• Historical data: Closed and archived opportunities available for research purposes

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Technical Notes

• Grants.gov API requires no authentication for public opportunity searches
• SAM.gov fallback requires no API key for basic opportunity data
• Large result sets (1,000+) paginate automatically; full traversal may take 15–45 seconds
• Description fields are returned as plain text (HTML stripped); original HTML available on request via include_raw_html: true
• CFDA numbers should be formatted as "XX.XXX" strings (e.g., "93.994")
• Award ceilings are in USD integers; null indicates no stated ceiling (formula grants, open-ended programs)

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Support

• Issues: File a GitHub issue on the actor repository
• Apify Community: community.apify.com
• Grants.gov API docs: grantsgovprod.grants.gov/grantsGov/v2/rest
• SAM.gov docs: open.gsa.gov/api/sam