OSHA Puts $12,787,000 on the Table for FY 2026 Susan Harwood Worker-Safety Training Grants — Community, Faith-Based, and Tribal Nonprofits Have Until July 31

Community-based, faith-based, and tribal nonprofits that train workers on the job now have a $12,787,000 target: OSHA's FY 2026 Susan Harwood Training Grant Program, published July 1 in the Federal Register (document 2026-13251), with applications due July 31.

For a program that spends its entire life cycle serving the hardest-to-reach workers — day laborers, immigrant construction crews, agricultural workers, tribal health aides — the Susan Harwood grants are one of the few federal opportunities written specifically with small, mission-driven organizations in mind. This year's notice keeps the door open, but only for four weeks.

What OSHA actually announced on July 1

The Federal Register notice does one plain thing: it declares that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has $12,787,000 available for FY 2026 Susan Harwood Training Grant Program awards and that the full funding opportunity announcements are live on Grants.gov. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance number is 17.502. Applications must be received electronically through Grants.gov no later than 11:59 p.m. Eastern on July 31, 2026 — the notice is explicit that anything not validated by Grants.gov by that moment is ineligible for consideration, full stop.

The program is named for Susan Harwood, the OSHA official who led the agency's health-standards work for more than a decade and helped write the rules on asbestos, benzene, formaldehyde, and bloodborne pathogens. Since 1978 the grants named for her have funded nonprofit organizations to deliver hands-on hazard training to workers and employers who are unlikely to get it any other way. That mission framing matters, because it shapes who wins: OSHA is not looking for a training vendor with slick decks. It is looking for organizations already embedded in a high-risk workforce.

Two announcements, and you must pick the right one

The $12.787 million is split across two distinct funding opportunity announcements, and OSHA is unforgiving about submitting to the wrong one. This is the single most common way otherwise-strong applicants disqualify themselves.

SHTG-FY-26-01 — Targeted Topic Training grants. This is the workhorse. It funds direct, in-person (or virtual instructor-led) training for workers and employers on a specific OSHA-designated hazard topic — think fall protection in residential construction, heat illness prevention for outdoor crews, or hazard recognition for warehouse and logistics workers. If your organization's plan is to put trainers in front of workers and count contact hours, this is your FOA.

SHTG-FY-26-02 — Training and Educational Materials Development grants. This one funds the creation of classroom-ready curricula and educational materials on an OSHA-specified topic, which the grantee must then test in an actual classroom environment before the materials are finalized. If your strength is developing bilingual, literacy-appropriate, culturally specific training content — say, a photonovela on trenching hazards for Spanish-speaking crews, or a plain-language module for tribal health workers — this is the lane.

The FOA numbering is not cosmetic. As OSHA's own application instructions state, "Applications submitted under the wrong FOA number are non-viable and will not be considered." In prior years the program also ran Capacity Building announcements (the FY 2024 cycle carried SHTG-FY-24-03 for capacity building and -04 for follow-on grants); this year's Federal Register notice announces the two FOAs above as the funded opportunities, so read each announcement on Grants.gov before you build a work plan around it. Match your organizational strength — delivery versus development — to the correct number before you write a single page of narrative.

Why rural, tribal, and faith-based organizations are the intended audience, not an afterthought

Most federal grant competitions quietly favor large, credentialed institutions. Susan Harwood is a rare inversion. Eligibility is restricted to nonprofit organizations, and the announcement spells out exactly which kinds: "Nonprofit organizations including qualifying labor unions, community-based, faith-based, grassroots organizations, employer associations, Native American tribes, tribal organizations, Alaska Native entities, Native Hawaiian organizations, and native-controlled organizations that are not an agency of a state or local government, and public/state-controlled institutions of higher education may apply."

Read that list again through the lens of a community-based organization. A rural workforce nonprofit, a faith-based day-labor center, a tribal government's environmental health office, a promotores network — every one of them is named or clearly covered. For-profit companies cannot apply at all. State and local government agencies are explicitly excluded. Community colleges and public universities are welcome, which gives CBOs a natural partnering path, but the center of gravity is the small nonprofit that already has trust with a vulnerable workforce.

That trust is the actual scoring currency. OSHA's evaluation criteria reward applicants who can demonstrate access to hard-to-reach, underserved, low-literacy, or non-English-speaking workers and a credible plan to train them on a hazard that genuinely threatens their industry. A tribal organization proposing heat and pesticide training for agricultural members, or a faith-based center proposing fall-protection training for immigrant roofers, is speaking the program's native language. The disadvantage a small CBO usually carries — no grants office, no matching institutional muscle — is neutralized here, because the whole program exists to reach the populations only those organizations can reach.

The four-week window is the entire competition

There is no soft version of the July 31 deadline. Grants.gov registration alone — obtaining a Unique Entity ID through SAM.gov, validating your organization, and creating a Grants.gov Workspace — routinely takes first-time applicants one to two weeks, and it cannot be rushed at the end. An organization that starts its SAM.gov and Grants.gov setup in the last week of July has, in practical terms, already missed FY 2026.

A realistic timeline for the remaining weeks looks like this:

• This week: Confirm your SAM.gov registration is active (it must be renewed annually) and your Grants.gov Workspace is set up. Download both FOAs — SHTG-FY-26-01 and SHTG-FY-26-02 — and read the eligibility, evaluation criteria, and required-content sections in full.
• Next: Choose one FOA. Pick a single OSHA-specified topic that maps to a hazard your workforce actually faces, and where you can document need with real injury or demographic data.
• The following two weeks: Draft the technical narrative, training projections (audiences, languages, contact hours), and the detailed budget with narrative. Assemble your nonprofit-status documentation and any partner letters.
• Before July 31: Submit through Grants.gov with at least 48 hours of buffer. Validation errors surface only after upload, and there is no grace period for a rejected package.

Questions about either announcement go to Monica McKenzie at HarwoodGrants@dol.gov, or OSHA at 847-725-7805, weekdays. Use that line early — a clarification on eligibility or allowable costs is far cheaper now than a non-viable application on August 1.

How to move before the window closes

If your organization already runs safety, health, or workforce programming for a high-risk community, the honest question is not whether you're eligible — the eligibility list above almost certainly includes you — but whether you can assemble a competitive package in four weeks. The way to find out is to read both FOAs today and pick your lane.

Granted maintains a live, searchable view of the same federal opportunities OSHA is announcing, so you can confirm the details and track related worker-safety funding without hunting across Grants.gov. Search active worker-safety and OSHA training grants on Granted to pull the Susan Harwood listing and adjacent occupational-health opportunities into one place, then use it to shortlist a topic and check deadlines before you commit narrative time.

If you're newer to federal grant mechanics — SAM.gov, Grants.gov Workspace, budget narratives, the difference between a delivery grant and a materials-development grant — start with the fundamentals on the Granted blog before the clock runs out. The organizations that win Susan Harwood grants are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones that started early, matched the right FOA number to the right strength, and could prove they reach the workers OSHA most wants reached. This year, the proof is due July 31.