A List of Helpful Resources to Track Federal Funding Opportunities

This newsletter notifies you when funding opportunities open from the Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act. Below are helpful resources to get started.

This Tracker will send you an update each time that the federal government releases the details of a new funding opportunity through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. I boil these new opportunities down into a simple, skim-able blurb so local leaders access funding opportunities that could meaningfully improve their communities. However, this Tracker should not replace your city’s, county’s, or state’s grant management system; it is meant as an additional tool to ensure that you receive timely information about and do not miss existing funding opportunities. There are already several great publicly available tools that can help you do other things. Some of the tools that we like the best include:

Inflation Reduction Act:

CTVC IRA Tracker: This simple spreadsheet lists all of the programs and provisions within the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s a great overall “snapshot” of what’s in the legislation, but it doesn’t provide much detail on individual programs.

Holland & Knight Summary: The Law Firm Holland & Knight published a 43-page guide that provides more detail (e.g., several bullet points) for each clause or program in the new legislation. While it is far more descriptive than the CTCV tracker, it is harder to navigate or skim.

Wilson Sonsini’s Clean Energy and Climate Solutions Federal Funding Database: Database of currently available funding opportunities related to clean energy, from the IRA, IIJA, the CHIPS Act, and other programs. It’s a comprehensive guide, but a bit difficult to navigate or search / filter.

The White House’s Clean Energy website: The White House has launched a website to help consumers understand tax credits for consumers from the Inflation Reduction Act.

Full Text of the IRA: If you want to read the full text of the Act, you can do so here. It is 273 pages long.

CHIPS and Science Act:

Commerce Department’s Strategic Plan for the Implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act: The Department of Commerce released its strategy for the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act which includes information on eligibility, key initiatives, and governance of the program.

Covington CHIPS Funding Overview: This short article summarizes many of the funding opportunities in the CHIPS Act. However, it does not provide significant detail and can be a bit difficult to skim.

JD Supra’s CHIPS Act basics for Semiconductor Companies: This guide provides in-depth information for the $39B to be disbursed to nonprofit and for-profit semiconductor companies. While the intended audience is not local public leaders, it can be an important resource for local officials trying to bring new semiconductor manufacturing to their locality or determine whether a particular site would be a good fit. However, it does not contain in-depth information about funding opportunities from the rest of the Act. JD Supra also has a separate guide for companies hoping to benefit from CHIPS Act funding opportunities.

CHIPS and Science Act Website: This website for the new law contains several helpful resources, like a breakdown by priority, a section-by section summary, and the full text of the Bill (see below).

Section by section summary: This 39-page PDF is a summarized version of the entire text of the Act. It is not organized by funding opportunity but instead by the structure of the law, which can be difficult to navigate.

Full text of the CHIPS and Science Act: The full text is 1034 pages.

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bipartisan Infrastructure Law):

For the official White House list of programs:

The White House’s Infrastructure Guidebook is the official roadmap to the funding available under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The Guidebook contains information on each of the many funding programs, including the amount of funding, eligible applicants, and anticipated timelines. The guidebook even has an accompanying searchable database of all the programs and their details. This is a great starting point to understand the contents of the Law; however, many of the details and timelines were still in development when this Guidebook was released and are therefore only quite rough (e.g., “Fall 2022”).

For a full list of available funding opportunities:

Government Finance Officer’s Association IIJA Tracker (GFOA): This IIJA tracker has a simple list of all the funding opportunities and the relevant information you want (e.g., deadline, eligible applicants) as well as a list of opportunities that are currently open. (Their website occasionally seems to have a bit of trouble loading that page, but if you see an error just reload the page or try again in a few minutes).

Local Infrastructure Hub (National League of Cities, Results for America, and US Conference of Mayors): The Local Infrastructure Hub has a searchable database of funding opportunities. The Hub also has several other resources and tools to help cities and towns of all sizes and from all regions to access this once-in-a-lifetime funding opportunity. The Hub is set to launch on July 12, 2022.

For an overall analysis and insightful commentary on the funding opportunities:

Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act: A Guide for Local Leaders (Drexel): This guide contains an overview of the funding opportunities contained within the new Law as well as several tips for local leaders in making the most of the new law’s implementation.

For vetted technical assistance opportunities:

Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Technical Assistance Guide (White House): This guide identifies over $700M of funding for technical assistance programs meant to help state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments navigate, access, and deploy infrastructure resources.

Other helpful tools:

HR&A’s Funding Eligibility Tool: HR&A Advisors created a tool that helps you identify which federal funding opportunities, if any, could be a match for your local infrastructure project.

If you have or know of other tools that could be useful for cities, towns, counties, states, and tribes, please email them to iijatracker@gmail.com and we would be happy to consider adding them to this page.