Granted Research
What happened to federal grants to charities in FY2025?
Data: FY2024 & FY2025 federal grant obligations to 501(c)(3) recipients (federal awards). Last verified July 2026.
In fiscal year 2025 the federal government obligated $36.3B in grants directly to 501(c)(3) charities that are not universities or hospitals — down from $43.5B in FY2024, a 16.5% decline, once one-time Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money is set aside. But that annual figure blends two very different periods: obligations ran above the prior year through January 2025, then fell sharply. Measured only over the months after the January 2025 change of administration, grants to these charities dropped 40.9% against the same months a year earlier, according to Granted’s federal awards database.
$36.3B
FY2025 charity grants
down from $43.5B in FY2024
−16.5%
Full-year change
ex-GGRF, ex-hospitals
−40.9%
After the transition
Feb–Sep 2025 vs 2024
−23.4%
Excluding rural co-ops
classic charities only
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<iframe src="https://grantedai.com/research/federal-grants-to-charities-2025/embed" width="100%" height="520" style="border:1px solid #e5e7eb;border-radius:12px" title="Monthly federal grants to charities, FY2024 vs FY2025 — Granted AI" loading="lazy"></iframe>“Federal grants to 501(c)(3) charities that are not universities or hospitals fell 16.5%, from $43.5 billion in FY2024 to $36.3 billion in FY2025, once one-time Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund money is set aside — and 40.9% over the months after the January 2025 transition (net obligations, USAspending, fiscal year Oct–Sep).”
Four ways to draw the line
“Grants to charities” depends on two choices: whether to count the one-time Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), and whether to count hospitals and health systems. The GGRF put roughly $22.3B into the FY2024 charity slice and essentially nothing into FY2025, so leaving it in manufactures most of the apparent collapse. The ex-GGRF, ex-hospitals row is the apples-to-apples comparison.
| Definition | FY2024 | FY2025 | Change | Share of all grants (FY25) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With GGRF · with hospitals | $72.0B | $42.5B | −$29.5B (−40.9%) | 3.4% |
| Ex-GGRF · with hospitals | $49.7B | $42.5B | −$7.2B (−14.4%) | 3.4% |
| With GGRF · ex-hospitals | $65.8B | $36.3B | −$29.5B (−44.8%) | 2.9% |
| Ex-GGRF · ex-hospitalsheadline | $43.5B | $36.3B | −$7.2B (−16.5%) | 2.9% |
Shares are of all federal grant obligations that fiscal year (net; $1.24T in FY2025). Because Medicaid alone is roughly $716.9B, the headline slice is a larger 8.0% → 6.9% of grants once Medicaid is excluded from the denominator.
Why the annual number understates the cut
Fiscal year 2025 began on October 1, 2024 — nearly four months before the change of administration on January 20, 2025. Those early months belong to the prior administration, and they were unusually active: obligations to these charities rose year over year through January, culminating in a $7.2B sprint in January 2025, more than triple the $2.1B obligated in January 2024. Across the four-month October–January window, obligations were up +105.3% ($7.3B → $14.9B).
From February 1 onward the picture inverts. Obligations to the charity slice fell to $715M in February — the lowest month in the two-year series — and stayed below the prior year for the rest of FY2025. Over the full post-transition window, February 1 to September 30, grants to these charities fell from $36.3B to $21.4B, a decline of −$14.8B (40.9%). Because the year mixes an above-trend Biden quarter with a well-below-trend remainder, the full-year −16.5% understates how far obligations fell once the new administration’s priorities took effect.
Where the money moved
The largest program-level swings within the charity slice (ex-GGRF), by dollar change from FY2024 to FY2025. Foreign aid, refugee admissions and international food programs fell hardest; refugee resettlement, environmental-justice grantmaking and veteran-family services rose.
Largest declines
| Program (CFDA) | FY24 | FY25 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| USAID foreign assistance for programs overseasCFDA 98.001 | $4.0B | $982M | −$3.1B−75.7% |
| Unaccompanied Children Program (ORR shelters)CFDA 93.676 | $2.9B | $1.1B | −$1.8B−60.9% |
| IRA Urban & Community Forestry *CFDA 10.727 | $607M | -$68M | −$675M−111.3% |
| Food for Education (McGovern-Dole)CFDA 10.608 | $627M | $0 | −$627M−100.0% |
| U.S. Refugee Admissions ProgramCFDA 19.510 | $735M | $187M | −$548M−74.6% |
| Health Center Program (community health centers)CFDA 93.224 | $2.6B | $2.3B | −$308M−12.0% |
| Food for Peace Development AssistanceCFDA 98.007 | $248M | $6M | −$242M−97.8% |
| Development of the TerritoriesCFDA 15.875 | $240M | $1M | −$239M−99.5% |
Largest gains
| Program (CFDA) | FY24 | FY25 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| New ERA — rural electric cooperatives *CFDA 10.758 | $1.8B | $4.4B | +$2.6B+142.5% |
| Refugee & Entrant Assistance (ORR resettlement)CFDA 93.566 | $1.2B | $2.0B | +$820M+70.8% |
| Environmental & Climate Justice Community Change GrantsCFDA 66.616 | $5M | $816M | +$811M+16,561% |
| VA Supportive Services for Veteran FamiliesCFDA 64.033 | $352M | $755M | +$403M+114.5% |
| Commercial Technologies for Maintenance ActivitiesCFDA 12.225 | $591M | $895M | +$304M+51.4% |
| Food for ProgressCFDA 10.606 | $17M | $271M | +$254M+1,503% |
* New ERA (CFDA 10.758) funds 501(c)(3) rural electric cooperatives, not classic charities — see below. IRA Urban & Community Forestry shows a net-negative FY2025 because recorded de-obligations exceeded new obligations. Percentages are net-obligation ratios; programs marked “new” had no FY2024 obligations.
A caveat: the biggest gainers aren’t charities
The single largest increase in the FY2025 charity slice is not a charity in any ordinary sense. USDA’s Empowering Rural America (New ERA) program obligated $4.4B to rural electric cooperatives in FY2025, up from $1.8B in FY2024. These co-ops — Great River Energy, Basin Electric, Tri-State Generation and Transmission and dozens of others — are organized as 501(c)(3) entities, so USAspending classifies them alongside food banks and refugee agencies, but they are electric utilities receiving clean-energy financing.
Remove New ERA and the FY2025 charity slice falls from $36.3B to $32.0B. On that basis — the closest proxy for classic charities — grants dropped from $41.7B in FY2024 to $32.0B in FY2025, a 23.4% decline — steeper than the headline. The January sprint is partly a co-op story too: about $4.2B of that $7.2B January 2025 peak was New ERA money, leaving $3.0B for everything else.
Reconciliation to the official totals
Every figure here is net obligations, fiscal year = October 1 – September 30 derived from each transaction’s action date, as of the 2026-07-08 ingest. These are prime awards only: money the federal government obligates directly to a recipient. Federal dollars that pass first to a state or another intermediary before reaching a nonprofit are recorded against that prime recipient, not the nonprofit, and are not counted here. Our derived-fiscal-year grand totals track the official USAspending figures (award types 02/03/04/05) closely:
| Fiscal year | Granted (derived FY) | USAspending official | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | $1191.7B | $1211.3B | −1.6% |
| FY2025 | $1240.8B | $1243.7B | −0.2% |
The labeled fiscal_year column in the raw data historically misfiled October 1 transactions into the prior year (corrected July 8, 2026) and is never used here; all fiscal years are derived from action date.
Methodology & sources
- Data source
- Federal financial-assistance awards from USAspending.gov, as mirrored in Granted’s federal awards database (award types 02 block, 03 formula, 04 project, 05 cooperative agreement). We sum
federal_action_obligationas net obligations — new obligations minus downward adjustments — so a program can print a negative monthly or annual figure when de-obligations exceed new money. - Who counts as a “charity”
- A recipient is in the charity slice when its USAspending
business_typescarries the “nonprofit with 501C3 IRS status” marker and is not classified as higher education or government, applying the precedence government > higher-ed > 501(c)(3). This keeps mission nonprofits while removing public and private universities, HBCUs, tribal colleges, state, county, city, tribal and special-district governments, and housing authorities. - Hospitals, health systems & clinics
- USAspending has no hospital recipient type, so the ex-hospitals variants remove recipients whose name matches a health-provider pattern — hospital, medical center, health system, health network, health center, healthcare, clinic, hospice, cancer center, cancer institute, infirmary, medical foundation (as whole words) — unioned with a hand-checked list of health systems (e.g. Mayo Clinic, Sloan-Kettering) that the pattern misses. Mission words like plain “health” or “medical” are deliberately not matched, so service charities such as International Medical Corps and Vibrant Emotional Health remain in the slice. Our companion study of the charity share of all grant dollars uses a lighter exclusion (hand-review of the top 100 recipients only, about $2.8B of FY2024 hospital money versus roughly $6.1B removed here), so its ex-hospitals figure runs a few billion dollars higher; neither is an error — the exclusion depth differs, and both are stated.
- Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund
- The ex-GGRF variants remove three CFDA programs at the row level: 66.957 (National Clean Investment Fund), 66.959 (Solar for All / Zero-Emission Technologies), 66.960 (Clean Communities Investment Accelerator). This one-time Inflation Reduction Act appropriation was obligated almost entirely in FY2024 (including roughly $20.0B across eight awards to green banks and community lenders, all dated August 8, 2024) and near zero in FY2025, so leaving it in would swamp the year-over-year comparison.
- Fiscal year
- Each transaction’s fiscal year is derived from its action date (October 1 – September 30). The raw
fiscal_yearcolumn historically misfiled October 1 transactions into the prior year (corrected July 8, 2026) and is never used. FY2025 covers October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 and therefore includes the final months of the prior administration — the reason this study reports the post-transition (February–September) window separately. - Scope & limits
- Prime awards only; pass-throughs from states to nonprofits are not attributed to the nonprofit. This measures obligations, not outlays. 501(c)(3)-organized rural electric cooperatives (USDA New ERA, CFDA 10.758) are 501(c)(3) by IRS status but are electric utilities; the study reports the slice with and without them.
- Reproducibility
- Every number on this page is generated by a committed analysis script (
scripts/research-studies/federal-grants-to-charities-2025/analyze.py) and published in full in the downloadable CSV. See our data methodology for how Granted sources and maintains this data.
Related research
Free to cite and republish with attribution to Granted AI (grantedai.com/research/federal-grants-to-charities-2025) under CC BY 4.0. Questions or corrections: nathan@grantedai.com.