What This List Covers
Every entry below is a federal funding opportunity posted on Grants.gov that (a) is open, (b) has a stated due date between August 14 and October 31, 2026, and (c) names nonprofit organizations or 501(c)(3) entities among its eligible applicants. That last filter is the one that matters and the one most lists skip: a great many federal postings are open only to states, tribes, universities, or existing grantees, and reading a calendar that ignores eligibility wastes the scarcest thing a small nonprofit has, which is staff hours. This is a calendar, not a method. For how to qualify a program before you write, which legal applicant a competition actually wants, and how state pass-through lanes differ from direct federal ones, see our nonprofit grants guide. Everything below answers one question: what can your organization still apply for this cycle, and when is it due. Two honest caveats. First, "names nonprofits as eligible" is the floor, not the ceiling: several of these also require a research infrastructure, a state partner, or an existing federal relationship, so read the notice of funding opportunity before you invest in a proposal. Second, agencies extend and amend deadlines routinely, and a handful of these will move. The date on the official posting always wins over the date here.
The Calendar Is Front-Loaded, and Most People Read It Backwards
There is a widely repeated piece of advice that nonprofits should plan their federal applications for the fall. Our own data says the opposite, and it says so unambiguously. Count the 226 open deadlines by week and the shape is a wall, not a slope. The week of August 24 carries 41 deadlines. The week of September 28 carries another 41. Between them sit the weeks of August 17 (22), August 31 (22), September 7 (36), September 14 (14), and September 21 (18). Then October arrives and the four weeks of it carry 5, 12, 10, and 4. That second 41-deadline spike is not a coincidence. September 30 is the end of the federal fiscal year, and agencies clear obligations against it. 178 of the 226 open deadlines fall on or before that date. October looks like a month of opportunity and mostly is not. 48 deadlines survive into it, and 33 of those are National Institutes of Health research solicitations, which are open to nonprofits in the technical sense that a research institute is a nonprofit. Strip those out and October holds 15 deadlines for the rest of the sector. That is fewer opportunities in an entire month than in the single week of August 24. The practical read: if your organization is going to apply for federal money this calendar year, the decision window is the next six weeks, not the next six months.
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Closing in the Next Two Weeks: August 14 to August 31
79 of the 226 deadlines fall in this window. These are the ones with the broadest nonprofit eligibility and the largest posted award ranges. Award figures come from the posted solicitations as recorded in our database; where a range shows only a ceiling, the agency did not post a minimum. August 17: FY 2026 Basic Center Program, Administration for Children and Families. Emergency shelter and services for runaway and homeless youth. $100,000 to $350,000. August 17: Street Outreach Program, Administration for Children and Families. Street-based services for young people experiencing homelessness. $100,000 to $200,000. August 17: Healthy Cooking in Communities, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. Up to $10,000,000. August 18: OVW Grants to Improve the Criminal Justice Response to Domestic Violence, Office on Violence Against Women. $400,000 to $1,500,000. August 19: National Communication System for Runaway and Homeless Youth, Administration for Children and Families. $1,000,000 to $1,800,000. August 24: Community Services Block Grant Essentials for Improved Outcomes, Administration for Children and Families. $600,000. August 24: Regional Conservation Partnership Program Classic FY 2026, Natural Resources Conservation Service. $250,000 to $10,000,000. August 25: Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, National Science Foundation. STEM teacher preparation. $100,000 to $3,250,000. August 26: FY 2026 Continuum of Care Competition and Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, Department of Housing and Urban Development. Up to $25,000,000, the largest ceiling in this window. August 27: Economic Advancement Grants for Local Empowerment, Administration for Native Americans. $300,000 to $1,000,000. August 28: FY26 BLM Recreation and Visitor Services, Bureau of Land Management. $50,000 to $2,000,000. August 31: Healthy Homes Production Grant Program, Department of Housing and Urban Development. $1,500,000 to $4,000,000. August 31: Older Adults Home Modification Grant Program, Department of Housing and Urban Development. $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. August 31: OVW State and Territory Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Coalitions, Office on Violence Against Women. $106,581 to $343,065.
September: The Fiscal-Year Wall
September carries 99 of the 226 deadlines, and 41 of those land in the final week alone as agencies close out the fiscal year on September 30. September 1: OVW Tribal Sexual Assault Services Program, Office on Violence Against Women. $350,000 to $500,000. September 4: Addressing Dementia in Tribal and Urban Indian Communities: CAReS Program, Indian Health Service. $250,000 to $750,000. September 8: Community Economic Development Projects, Administration for Children and Families. Job creation for people with low incomes, one of the more broadly usable programs on this list. $100,000 to $800,000. September 8: National Resource Centers, Administration for Children and Families. $300,000 to $3,000,000. September 8: Wetland Mitigation Banking Program FY 2026, Natural Resources Conservation Service. $100,000 to $1,000,000. September 8: OVW Consolidated Grant Program to Assist Children and Youth Exposed to Violence, Office on Violence Against Women. $350,000 to $500,000. September 11: FY26 BLM Wildlife Resource Management, Bureau of Land Management. $10,000 to $2,000,000. The $10,000 floor makes this one of the few federal postings a very small organization can realistically scope. September 14: OVW Training and Services to End Abuse in Later Life, Office on Violence Against Women. $450,000 to $750,000. September 14: Lead-Safe and Healthy Homes Financing Demonstration, Department of Housing and Urban Development. $10,000,000. September 15: Diaper Distribution Demonstration and Research Pilot, Administration for Children and Families. $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. September 16: Collaborative Research, National Endowment for the Humanities. Up to $250,000. September 16: Scholarly Editions and Translations, National Endowment for the Humanities. Up to $1,000,000. September 29: Partnership Agreement Grants FY 2027, National Endowment for the Arts. $400,000 to $2,500,000. September 30: Partners for Fish and Wildlife FY 2026, Fish and Wildlife Service. Up to $750,000. September 30: Coastal Program FY 2026, Fish and Wildlife Service. Up to $500,000. September 30: Stand Down Grants, Veterans Employment and Training Service. Up to $10,000. The smallest award on this list and the one most within reach of an all-volunteer organization.
October: The Cliff, and the 15 Deadlines That Are Not NIH
48 deadlines fall in October. 33 of them are National Institutes of Health research solicitations: biomarker validation, precision-medicine AI centers, postdoctoral pathway awards, clinical trial methodology. They are genuinely open to nonprofit applicants, and they are genuinely irrelevant to a nonprofit that is not a research institution. Here is what is left, which is the part of October that most nonprofits can actually use. September 28: FY26 Bus Safety, Accessibility, and Innovation, Federal Transit Administration. Up to $10,000,000. Listed here because it opens the fiscal-year-end cluster that runs into October. September 29: Desalination and Water Purification Research Program, Bureau of Reclamation. $100,000 to $800,000. September 30: International Programs and Trade, Invasive Species Program, Forest Service. Up to $250,000. October 12: 2026 National Urban and Community Forestry Challenge Cost Share Grant Program, Forest Service. $200,000 to $750,000. October 13: Community Forest and Open Space Conservation Program, Forest Service. Up to $600,000. Land acquisition by nonprofits and local governments for community forests. October 16: Specialty Crop Multi-State Grant Program 2026, Agricultural Marketing Service. $250,000 to $1,000,000. October 16: FY26 BLM Youth Conservation Corps, Bureau of Land Management. $30,000 to $220,000. Another rare posting scoped for a small organization. October 19: Plant Protection Act Section 7721 FY 2027 National Clean Plant Network, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Up to $3,500,000. October 21: Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships, National Science Foundation. From $190,000. If none of those fit your mission, October is not your month, and that is the finding rather than a gap in this list.
How to Use a Deadline Calendar Without Burning Your Team
A federal proposal takes most small organizations three to six weeks of real work. Count backward from the dates above and the honest conclusion for a lean nonprofit reading this in mid-August is that the late-August cluster is already out of reach unless you have a draft in hand, and the realistic targets are the September 8 through September 30 group. Three things worth doing today rather than in October. Check your SAM.gov registration before anything else. It is required to receive a federal award, renewal is annual, and an expired registration is the single most common reason a completed application cannot be submitted. Renewal can take days to weeks. Pick one, not four. The base rate on open federal competitions is unkind, and four rushed applications reliably lose to one prepared one. Set a watch rather than a reminder. Agencies extend deadlines, amend eligibility, and post new opportunities continuously through the fiscal-year close, so a static calendar, including this one, is out of date the moment an agency files an amendment. Search the live corpus for what is open today, or set an alert so a change reaches you rather than waiting for you to check.