USDA Opens $9M Intermediary Relending Program FY2026 With June 30 Quarterly Cutoff

Rural and tribal nonprofit lenders, faith-anchored loan funds, and community development corporations have until 4:30 p.m. ET on June 30 to compete for the first slice of USDA's $9 million FY2026 Intermediary Relending Program authority, noticed in the Federal Register on June 18 under document 2026-12270.

The filing is short — twelve pages in pre-publication format — but it locks in the only fiscal-year window for what is arguably the cheapest unrestricted growth capital available to rural community lenders anywhere in federal finance: 1% money, 30-year terms, three years of interest-only payments, and a re-lending mandate broad enough to cover everything from a tribal grocery store to a parochial-school daycare expansion.

A short notice with a long tail

The Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBCS) published the FY2026 Intermediary Relending Program NOFO on June 18, 2026, under Assistance Listing 10.767. The notice carries the document control number 2026-12270 and was signed out by Rural Business-Cooperative Service Administrator Dr. Karama Neal's successor office at USDA Rural Development. It does not represent new authority — Congress reduced the program's loan ceiling to $9 million in the FY2026 appropriations bill and provided $7 million in budget authority for loan subsidy and administrative costs, according to the Congressional Research Service's April 2026 update — but it does open the only formal application channel intermediaries will have until the next fiscal year.

Three quarterly cutoffs are specified in the notice: March 31, 2026 (already past), June 30, 2026, and September 30, 2026, each at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Applications that miss a cutoff roll into the next quarter, but they compete against a shrinking pool. Last year, the program's second-quarter window absorbed the bulk of the available authority; intermediaries that waited until September were left rebidding against each other for whatever the agency could rescind from incomplete files. The lesson, repeated by RBCS state directors at every NRHA, OFN, and Native CDFI Network briefing this spring, is the same: file in the first window you can support, not the last one you can survive.

If you need a fast orientation to the federal newsjacking calendar around this filing — including the rural-development NOFOs that typically cluster on its heels — Granted's news desk is tracking the cycle in real time.

The economics that make this notice unusual

On the face of it, $9 million in nationwide loan authority is small. USDA's Business and Industry Loan Guarantee program clears that figure in a single Midwestern manufacturing deal. What makes the IRP outsized relative to its dollar number is the leverage embedded in its design.

An approved intermediary borrows from USDA at 1% fixed for up to 30 years. The first three years can be interest-only. The intermediary then re-lends those dollars into a revolving loan fund (RLF), charging whatever rate covers its own operating costs — typically 4% to 7% in 2026 — to ultimate recipients. As ultimate-recipient loans amortize, the cash returns to the RLF and gets re-deployed, often three or four times before the USDA note finally matures.

The headline parameters specified in the notice and the underlying 7 CFR Part 4274, Subpart D regulations:

• $2 million maximum new IRP loan to any single intermediary per fiscal year.
• $15 million lifetime cap on outstanding IRP debt to any one intermediary.
• $400,000 maximum ultimate-recipient loan, or 50% of the IRP advance to the intermediary, whichever is less.
• $250,000 cap on the IRP-funded portion of any single ultimate-recipient loan.
• 75% ceiling on IRP financing of any one ultimate-recipient project (the rest must come from the intermediary's own capital, another lender, or recipient equity).
• 1% fixed interest rate to the intermediary; 30-year maximum term.

In practical terms, a $1 million IRP advance to a rural CDFI throws off roughly $50,000 a year in net interest spread after the third year, capitalizes a revolving fund that can finance 25 to 40 small-business deals over its life, and costs the intermediary $33,000 a year in debt service. That is a structurally profitable product for any nonprofit lender with a working underwriting shop.

Who actually qualifies as an intermediary

The NOFO does not loosen the eligibility list, but it is worth restating because most community-based organizations underestimate how broad it is. Under 7 CFR 4274.310, an intermediary may be:

1. A private nonprofit corporation, including a 501(c)(3) faith-affiliated community development corporation or a denominationally sponsored CDFI.
2. A federally recognized Indian tribe or tribal entity, including tribally chartered CDFIs and tribal economic development authorities.
3. A public agency, including a state, county, municipality, or special-purpose authority with statutory lending power.
4. A cooperative, including agricultural cooperatives organized under state law.

The practical test is not corporate form but operating history. RBCS underwriting requires that an intermediary demonstrate it has "legal authority, financial strength, and sufficient expertise" to operate a revolving loan fund. The program's scoring rubric assigns priority points to applicants serving persistent-poverty counties, federally recognized tribal lands, places identified on USDA's Distressed Energy Community list, and rural areas with population under 50,000. An applicant from a non-distressed metro fringe can win an award, but the math is harder.

For faith-based applicants, two notes from the agency's most recent program guide bear attention. First, the IRP statute and implementing regulations are agnostic to religious affiliation — a 501(c)(3) Catholic Charities economic development arm or a Mennonite Economic Development Associates affiliate is eligible on the same terms as a secular CDFI. Second, ultimate recipients cannot use IRP proceeds to finance "inherently religious activities," but the intermediary's own status is not at issue. This has been settled USDA practice since the Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships expansion in the early 2010s and is repeated in the 2026 notice without modification.

What ultimate recipients can do with the money

The re-lending universe is wider than most outside the program assume. Ultimate recipients must be located in a rural area — defined as any place outside a city or town of 50,000 or more — and the financed activity must "facilitate community development" or "establish new or improve existing businesses." Inside that frame, the agency has historically funded:

• Working capital and equipment financing for rural small businesses, including farm-to-table processors and value-added agricultural ventures.
• Acquisition, construction, conversion, or renovation of commercial real estate.
• Healthcare facilities, including rural primary care clinics and behavioral health offices, where the operator is for-profit or nonprofit but not a unit of state or federal government.
• Childcare centers — a category that has expanded sharply since 2023 as USDA, HHS, and Treasury have coordinated on rural childcare access.
• Transportation, including small fleet acquisitions for paratransit and elder services.
• Community facilities that generate revenue, including faith-affiliated daycares, community kitchens, and co-working spaces.

Explicitly off-limits: agricultural production loans (USDA's Farm Service Agency owns that lane), residential mortgages, refinancing of existing federal debt without new project equity, and any business engaged in gambling, lending, or speculation.

Strategy for the June 30 and September 30 windows

The practical question for a community-based organization reading this between now and the next deadline is not whether to apply but how to sequence the application against the agency's quarterly review tempo. Three observations from talking to RBCS state office staff over the past month:

First, the June 30 window will be competitive but not crowded. The March 31 cutoff drew a smaller-than-usual pool because the FY2026 NOFO had not yet been formally noticed; many state offices were still operating off continuing-resolution guidance and discouraged speculative filings. The agency is expected to obligate roughly 35% to 40% of the $9 million in this quarter. Filing now puts an intermediary at the front of the line without forcing it to compete against the year-end September rush.

Second, the agency strongly favors intermediaries that can show a pipeline of ultimate-recipient loans ready to close. A blank revolving fund is harder to fund than one with three or four signed letters of intent from rural small businesses. Faith-based CDFIs and tribal lenders that already have a deal pipeline through their existing CDFI Fund or Treasury programs are particularly well-positioned because the underwriting work is already done.

Third, applicants in persistent-poverty counties — defined by USDA using the Economic Research Service's classification of counties where 20% or more of the population has lived below the federal poverty line for three decades — should explicitly invoke that designation in the narrative. The priority-point structure is mechanical, but the reviewer-discretion section of the scoring rubric gives state directors latitude to break ties in favor of geographies with documented capital-access gaps.

Getting the file ready

The application package itself is administered through the RBCS state office in the intermediary's headquarters state, not through Grants.gov. The required documents — Form RD 4274-1, a board resolution authorizing the application, a comprehensive RLF work plan, three years of audited financials, an intermediary's relending plan with proposed underwriting policies, and evidence of the matching capital required for ultimate-recipient deals — track closely to the package required by Treasury's CDFI Fund for FA awards. Lenders that have completed a CDFI Fund application within the last two years can typically repurpose 70% to 80% of the supporting documentation.

For community-based organizations that have never operated an RLF, the most efficient on-ramp is a partnership application with an experienced intermediary as the lead and a new entrant as a sub-recipient or technical-assistance beneficiary. The notice does not formalize this structure, but state directors have approved it in past cycles and will discuss it pre-application.

Next step: Search Granted for live USDA Rural Development opportunities your organization can stack on top of the IRP — community facilities loans, RBDG grants, and Rural Energy for America Program awards all pair cleanly with IRP-funded revolving capital. Start at grantedai.com/grants?q=USDA+rural+development&utm_source=newsjack-curated. The June 30 cutoff for the IRP notice itself is hard; the agency does not grant extensions for federal-holiday calendars or technical filing problems on the intermediary's end. File the package by close of business on June 29 if at all possible, and keep the September 30 window as a fallback rather than a plan.