Equipment Grants Program | USDA NIFA OP 008139

Opportunity Information: Apply for USDA NIFA OP 008139

The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Equipment Grants Program (EGP) is a discretionary grant opportunity designed to improve research capacity in the food and agricultural sciences by helping eligible institutions purchase a single major, shared-use piece of specialized equipment or an instrument. The core idea is to strengthen and broaden fundamental and applied research, while also supporting related training and extension goals, by making high-cost or otherwise hard-to-fund equipment accessible to multiple users. This program is focused on infrastructure improvement rather than supporting a specific research project, so it is best suited for institutions that can clearly show how one major equipment purchase will expand capability across several programs, labs, or user groups.

A key point of the EGP is what it will not pay for. It does not fund research projects themselves, even if the project would use the purchased equipment, and it does not pay for operating or maintaining facilities. It also avoids funding packages or suites of equipment intended to outfit an entire lab or allow multiple independent experiments to run at once. Likewise, it excludes common, general-purpose items that most labs would normally have, or equipment that is relatively easy for an organization to procure through other means. In practice, the program is aimed at special-purpose, higher-end equipment that meaningfully upgrades an institution’s research infrastructure and is shared across users rather than dedicated to a single investigator.

Eligibility is limited to specific types of institutions as defined in federal statute (7 U.S.C. 3103). Eligible applicants include accredited, public or other nonprofit colleges and universities (and their associated research foundations) that offer education beyond secondary school and award bachelors or higher degrees. The eligibility list also includes a range of State Cooperative Institutions, such as 1862 and 1890 land-grant universities, State-certified schools of forestry (under the McIntire-Stennis Act), State Agricultural Experiment Stations (under the Hatch Act), cooperative extension services established under the Smith-Lever Act, accredited veterinary medicine schools or qualified experiment stations conducting animal health and disease research under relevant federal authority, and Hispanic-serving institutions as defined in federal education law. Institutions in insular areas are also eligible, including Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The solicitation emphasizes strict compliance and screening. Applications must be submitted on time by an eligible institution and must follow the required content and formatting rules in the RFA, including page limits, required forms, and submission of all files in PDF format. The budget request must fit within the dollar ranges specified in the RFA, and there is also an institutional submission cap: no more than three applications may be submitted to the program from an eligible lead institution. Applications that fail any screening requirement are returned without review, and returned applications cannot be resubmitted under the same solicitation, even if revised.

Basic opportunity details provided include the funding opportunity title (Equipment Grants Program), funding opportunity number (USDA NIFA OP 008139), CFDA number 10.519, and an award ceiling of up to $500,000. The original closing date listed for the referenced posting was March 16, 2021, and the opportunity is administered by USDA NIFA under the Agriculture funding activity category.

• The National Institute of Food and Agriculture in the agriculture sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Equipment Grants Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.519.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2021-01-18.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2021-03-16. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $500,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for USDA NIFA OP 008139

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