Granted Research
Which states win the most federal grant money per resident
Data: FY2024 federal grant obligations by state (federal awards). Last verified July 2026.
In fiscal year 2024 the federal government obligated $1.19T in grants and cooperative agreements to recipients across the country. Measured against population, that money is anything but evenly spread. In FY2024 Alaska received $9,304 per resident — about 2.7 times the national average of $3,437 — and more than any other state, according to Granted’s federal awards database.
$9,304
Alaska, per resident
No. 1 of 50 states
$3,437
National average
per resident
$1.19T
Total FY2024 grants
all recipients
23%
Competitive share
project + coop grants
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Federal grant dollars per resident, FY2024. Top 15 states, then the five lowest. The District of Columbia is shown for reference but ranked separately (see note below).
| # | State | Per resident | vs. U.S. avg | Total (FY24) | Competitive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | $9,304 | 2.71× | $6.9B | 48% |
| 2 | New Mexico | $5,921 | 1.72× | $12.6B | 22% |
| 3 | New York | $5,632 | 1.64× | $111.9B | 26% |
| 4 | West Virginia | $5,328 | 1.55× | $9.4B | 28% |
| 5 | Vermont | $5,137 | 1.50× | $3.3B | 31% |
| 6 | Maryland | $5,099 | 1.48× | $31.9B | 53% |
| 7 | Kentucky | $5,018 | 1.46× | $23.0B | 15% |
| 8 | Louisiana | $4,945 | 1.44× | $22.7B | 20% |
| 9 | Oregon | $4,744 | 1.38× | $20.3B | 25% |
| 10 | Rhode Island | $4,717 | 1.37× | $5.2B | 30% |
| 11 | Maine | $4,567 | 1.33× | $6.4B | 32% |
| 12 | Montana | $4,562 | 1.33× | $5.2B | 36% |
| 13 | Massachusetts | $4,215 | 1.23× | $30.1B | 27% |
| 14 | California | $4,121 | 1.20× | $162.5B | 14% |
| 15 | Hawaii | $4,059 | 1.18× | $5.9B | 39% |
| ranks 16–45 omitted — see the full CSV | |||||
| 46 | Alabama | $2,467 | 0.72× | $12.7B | 20% |
| 47 | South Carolina | $2,316 | 0.67× | $12.7B | 15% |
| 48 | Georgia | $2,103 | 0.61× | $23.5B | 21% |
| 49 | Texas | $1,990 | 0.58× | $62.3B | 18% |
| 50 | Florida | $1,894 | 0.55× | $44.3B | 16% |
| reported separately | |||||
| — | District of Columbia * | $38,469 | 11.19× | $27.0B | 79% |
* The District of Columbia is a federal district, not a state, and its recipient-location figure is inflated by nationally focused organizations headquartered in Washington. It is excluded from the 50-state ranking. “Competitive” = the share of a state’s grant dollars that came through project grants or cooperative agreements.
What the numbers show
Behind Alaska, the states drawing the most federal grant money per resident are a mix of small, high-need, and research-heavy places: New Mexico ($5,921), New York ($5,632), West Virginia ($5,328) and Vermont ($5,137). Each pulls in well above the $3,437 national average.
One place tops even Alaska — but it isn’t a state. The District of Columbia shows $38,469 per resident, roughly 11 times the national average. That figure is an artifact of how the data records geography: awards are attributed to the recipient organization’s address, and hundreds of national nonprofits, universities and associations are headquartered in Washington even when their work reaches every state. For that reason we rank DC separately from the fifty states.
Raw dollars tell a different story than dollars per person. By total money, California leads by a wide margin at $162.5B, followed by New York ($111.9B) and Texas ($62.3B). But dividing by population reshuffles the board. Texas and Florida — third and fifth by total dollars — fall to 49th and 50th per resident ($1,990 and $1,894), while small states with large federal footprints rise to the top.
Most federal grant money is not competitive. Of the $1.17T flowing to the fifty states and DC, only about $269.8B (23%) came through project grants and cooperative agreements — the kind organizations write proposals to win. The remaining ~77% moved through formula and block grants distributed to state and local governments by statute, led by Medicaid. That competitive share swings widely by state: it is 53% in Maryland (home to the NIH and Johns Hopkins) and 48% in Alaska, but under 15% in Kentucky and California.
For organizations seeking funding, the takeaway is less about geography than composition: the pool you actually compete for is a fraction of the headline trillion. This analysis counts grant-type federal assistance only — no loans, contracts or direct payments — for fiscal year 2024, the most recent complete year. The full methodology, exclusions, and reconciliation to the FY2024 total are below.
Methodology & sources
- Data source
- Federal financial-assistance awards from USAspending.gov, as mirrored in Granted’s federal awards database (687,607 FY2024 award actions). We sum
federal_action_obligation— net new obligations (new obligations minus downward adjustments) — by recipient state. - What counts as a “grant”
- Every FY2024 row in this dataset is grant-type assistance: block grants, formula grants, project grants, and cooperative agreements. Loans, direct payments, insurance, and procurement contracts are not included. “Competitive” refers to project grants and cooperative agreements, which are generally awarded on merit; formula and block grants are distributed by statutory formula.
- Geography
- Awards are grouped by the recipient organization’s state. Place-of-performance is not populated in this dataset, so recipient location is the only geography available. This inflates the District of Columbia, where many nationally focused organizations are based; DC is therefore reported separately and excluded from the 50-state ranking. U.S. territories are listed in the CSV but excluded from the per-capita ranking.
- Per-capita denominator
- Population figures are U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates (NST-EST2024-POP), July 1, 2024; released December 2024. The U.S. resident total used for the national average is 340,110,988 (50 states + DC).
- Fiscal year
- Federal fiscal year 2024 (Oct 1, 2023 – Sep 30, 2024), the most recent fully closed fiscal year in our dataset at the time of analysis. FY2025 records are excluded so the totals reflect one complete, stable reporting year.
- Reconciliation
- Total FY2024 grant obligations across all recipients were $1.19T. The 50 states + DC account for $1.17T (98.08%); U.S. territories add $17.0B and awards with no recorded recipient state $5.8B (0.5%).
- Reproducibility
- Every number on this page is generated by a committed analysis script (
scripts/research-studies/federal-grants-per-capita-by-state/analyze.py) and published in full in the downloadable CSV. See our data methodology for how Granted sources and maintains this data.
Free to cite and republish with attribution to Granted AI (grantedai.com/research/federal-grants-per-capita-by-state). Questions or corrections: nathan@grantedai.com.