Capacity Building Grants for Non-Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture Program | USDA NIFA NLGCA 008581

Opportunity Information: Apply for USDA NIFA NLGCA 008581

The Capacity Building Grants for Non-Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture (NLGCA) Program is a discretionary grant opportunity run by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) that is designed to strengthen the institutional capacity of eligible colleges of agriculture that are not part of the land-grant system. At its core, the program is meant to help these institutions build the people, tools, and foundational capabilities they need to be more competitive for future external funding and to expand their ability to deliver meaningful education, research, and outreach that responds to real-world agricultural and natural resource priorities at the national, regional, state, and local levels.

The allowable uses of funds emphasize practical capacity building with clear downstream benefits. Institutions can use grant support to position themselves to successfully compete for additional federal grants and other funding sources by developing or strengthening programs that address priority concerns in agriculture, renewable resources, and related fields. The program also supports dissemination of information to relevant stakeholder communities, including agricultural and renewable resource practitioners, the general public, and other interested organizations. Another key purpose is encouraging broader participation in priority education, research, and outreach efforts, including by offering matching support that can help leverage other grant funds. In addition, the program explicitly allows investments in certain types of infrastructure and workforce development, including purchasing or otherwise acquiring equipment and other infrastructure (while specifically excluding building alteration, repair, renovation, or construction), supporting faculty professional growth and development, and establishing or expanding graduate assistantships. Taken together, these uses reflect a focus on long-term institutional strengthening rather than short-term, one-off project activity.

Eligibility is tightly defined and hinges on official NIFA certification as an NLGCA at the time of application. Only institutions that appear on the current NIFA-certified NLGCA list can apply, and applicants must meet all requirements laid out in the request for applications (RFA). Institutions that were certified prior to December 21, 2018 must reapply for certification under updated criteria published via a Federal Register notice, meaning prior status alone is not enough unless it has been renewed under the newer standards. While the lead applicant must be an eligible, certified NLGCA, awardees are permitted to issue subawards to organizations that are not themselves eligible to apply, as long as those partners are necessary to carry out the proposed project.

To qualify for NLGCA designation in the first place, an institution must be a public college or university that offers at least a baccalaureate degree in agricultural sciences, forestry, or both, and that degree program must align with one or more of the specified areas of study recognized by NIFA. The opportunity lists 32 eligible areas, spanning a wide range of agriculture and natural resource disciplines, including (among others) animal sciences, plant sciences, soil sciences, food science, agricultural economics, agricultural engineering, forestry, natural resources management and policy, horticulture-related fields, aquaculture, range science and management, and wood science and wood products. Institutions unsure about whether they fit the definition are directed to use an eligibility flow chart provided by NIFA, which is intended to clarify whether they should seek the designation.

The certification process itself is administrative but mandatory. An Authorized Representative for the institution must submit a certification request through the designated NIFA webpage for non-land-grant university designation, including an NLGCA Certification Memo asserting that the institution meets the qualification standards. NIFA indicates it will respond within 30 days, providing either confirmation of certification to the listed administrative point of contact or an explanation of why certification is denied. A notable policy change reflected in the opportunity is that the 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act removed earlier opt-in/opt-out constraints that had affected Hispanic Serving Agricultural Colleges and Universities (HSACU) and McIntire-Stennis Colleges and Universities; those institutions no longer need to relinquish those statuses in order to pursue NLGCA designation.

The opportunity also clarifies how eligibility applies across multi-campus systems. Branches of a college or university that are separately accredited as degree-granting institutions, as shown on the official NIFA list of certified NLGCA institutions, are treated as separate institutions and can apply on their own. By contrast, campuses or branches that are not individually accredited as degree-granting institutions are not treated as separate institutions and therefore cannot submit separate applications. Any qualifying accreditation must come from an accrediting agency or association recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

On the application and award side, an eligible NLGCA institution may submit multiple applications as the lead in response to the RFA, but there is a cap on how many awards it can receive as the lead institution in a given cycle: no more than two lead awards per institution. The institution can still participate as a partner on other NLGCA-funded projects without the same limitation. In addition, there is a leadership constraint tied to project management: a Project Director is limited to one funded project, which effectively prevents a single individual from serving as PD across multiple funded awards in the same year and encourages distribution of leadership capacity across faculty and staff.

From the posted source data, the program is administered by USDA NIFA under CFDA number 10.326. The funding instrument is a grant, the opportunity category is discretionary, and the award ceiling listed is $750,000. The referenced funding opportunity number is USDA NIFA NLGCA 008581, and the closing date shown in the listing is November 24, 2021.

• The National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the agriculture sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Capacity Building Grants for Non-Land Grant Colleges of Agriculture Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.326.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-09-23.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-11-24. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $750,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for USDA NIFA NLGCA 008581

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: