Here is how I would decide which open federal grants are worth your time.

After the failed Trump funding freeze, how do you know what grants are worth the risk? It's time for THE MONEY.

After this week’s failed Trump funding freeze, here is an example of something you will find on some—but strangely, not all—open funding opportunities on grants.gov:

*NOTE: The U.S. Department of Labor is reviewing all Funding Opportunity Announcements for consistency with the Executive Orders titled, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” issued on January 20, 2025, and “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” issued on January 21, 2025. The Department will take necessary action with the Funding Opportunity Announcement and issue additional guidance including adjusting the close date if appropriate.¹

If you’re a prospective grantee, what this means is that you may never know for certain if it is worth your limited time and resources to apply for this grant. And if you do, it may be too late in a great many ways.

For those not-grantee types reading this newsletter, that’s a bad way of doing business with a massive chunk of the economy.

Just like a business, grantees do not have unlimited time and money. They have to make hard decisions on whether going after a grant is worth it based on the type of project and the amount of time and energy it will take to meet all the requirements. Grantees could have to budget for things like grant-writers so the lengthy process of applying doesn’t interfere with their important—often essential—day-to-day work of serving people.

My original plan for this post (and all THE MONEY posts) was a list of every federal workforce grant² I could find. But if I were a potential applicant, that grant list would feel like a waste of time this week. Why care that all this money is out there if I don’t know if it’s even really available?

Don’t mistake me: that list is still coming—it’s a core component of this newsletter and a sorely needed service. But after everything this week, I am giving you some keys for evaluating federal grants and how much you’re risking your resources in applying.

To help you a little more, I’m going to use these keys as a guide to rate the riskiness of applying for three Department of Labor funding opportunities. All these grants published just before the Inauguration, which means they are Biden-Harris dollars under suspicion from the new Trump crew.

My keys below are based on what I have heard and seen about the Trump Administration’s review methodology—including what was in the now-rescinded freeze memo—as well as my own Trump-era experiences with federal grant programs.³