Where federal grant money actually goes

What the numbers show

Federal grant spending is astonishingly top-heavy. Of 1,814 programs, just five account for 64.5% of all grant dollars and the top 20 for 76.9%. The other ~1,800 programs — the long tail most grant-seekers actually chase — split the remaining 23%.

And one program towers over the rest. Medicaid (CFDA 93.778) obligated $646.8B in FY2024 — 54.3% of every federal grant dollar and 11.5× the size of the No. 2 program, highway planning and construction ($56.4B). Within the top 20 alone, Medicaid is 70.6% of the money, and health-care programs — Medicaid, CHIP and ACA state-innovation waivers — are 74.2% of it.

Look down the list and a pattern emerges: these are formula and entitlement programs, not competitions. Medicaid, CHIP, the National School Lunch Program, TANF cash assistance, IDEA special education, WIC, transit and drinking-water funds all flow to states and localities by statutory formula. A second cluster is one-time infrastructure money from recent laws — the BEAD broadband program ($24.4B), the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Amtrak and airport grants. Almost none of it is the merit-reviewed research grant people picture.

Where is that research money? Far down the page. The largest program that looks like a classic competitive research grant — the NIH’s Allergy & infectious diseases research (NIAID) — ranks #30 at $4.1B, about 0.3% of all grant dollars and roughly 158.8× smaller than Medicaid. The National Science Foundation’s entire grant portfolio — all 11 of its programs combined — came to $7.7B (0.6%), less than a single childcare block grant and about 84.2× smaller than Medicaid.

A caution on the word “competitive.” In this data the legal instrument (block, formula, project grant, cooperative agreement) does not equal “merit-reviewed research.” Roughly 23.9% of all grant dollars move through project grants and cooperative agreements, but that bucket includes Head Start, FEMA disaster aid and BEAD — none of them open research competitions. Inside the top 20, 87.5% of the dollars are formula or block grants distributed by statute.

For an organization seeking funding, the practical takeaway is about composition, not headlines: the $1.19T “federal grants” number is dominated by money that is already spoken for by formula. The pool you can actually write a proposal for is a much smaller, and much more crowded, slice further down the list. This analysis counts grant-type federal assistance only — no loans, contracts or direct payments — for FY2024, the most recent complete year. Full methodology, caveats and reconciliation are below.