USDA_FNS_DCI-FY 2017 | DCI17

Opportunity Information: Apply for DCI17

USDA_FNS_DCI-FY 2017 (Opportunity Number DCI17) is a discretionary grant program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) that focuses on improving "direct certification" for free school meals in the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). Direct certification is the process that allows children to be approved automatically for free school meals when they are in households receiving SNAP benefits, without requiring families to fill out and return a separate school meal application. In practice, this is usually done by securely matching data from school enrollment records with SNAP eligibility records held by State public assistance agencies. The goal is to make access to free meals faster and more accurate, while reducing paperwork for families and administrative burden for schools.

The opportunity is rooted in several federal laws that built and strengthened direct certification requirements over time. The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 required local educational agencies to have direct certification systems in place by school year 2008-2009. The 2008 Farm Bill then required FNS to evaluate how well States and localities were doing and to report annually to Congress on State progress, using calculated direct certification rates. These rates compare an estimate of the number of school-age SNAP participants (ages 5-17) to the number of children from SNAP households who were actually directly certified for free meals. FNS has published these results in annual Reports to Congress on Direct Certification, and the notice highlights that the national calculated rate reached 91 percent in SY 2014-2015, up from 87 percent in SY 2013-2014, showing improvement but also leaving room to close remaining gaps.

Funding for the Direct Certification Improvement Grants comes from an appropriations directive that set aside money specifically to help States with the lowest direct certification rates improve their performance. Congress, through Section 749(h) of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-80), required FNS to issue grants to State agencies that administer NSLP and have comparatively low rates of directly certifying eligible children. The central purpose of the FY 2017 competition is to support State agency planning and implementation projects that raise direct certification rates and help States reach and maintain the direct certification benchmarks required under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA).

Eligible applicants are State governments, specifically the State agencies responsible for administering the National School Lunch Program. Awards are made as cooperative agreements, which typically means FNS expects substantial involvement during the project period, such as ongoing coordination, technical guidance, and oversight rather than a hands-off grant. The opportunity lists an award ceiling of up to $1,000,000 per award and anticipates around 20 awards, indicating a program designed to fund multiple States with targeted improvement efforts rather than one large national project.

The funding is intended to pay for practical, capacity-building work that removes barriers to accurate and timely data matching. Examples of supported activities include technology improvements (such as upgrading data systems, automating matching processes, improving data quality, or strengthening secure data transfers), providing technical assistance to local educational agencies (helping school districts refine procedures, troubleshoot matching issues, and improve follow-up processes), and implementing new or revised direct certification systems at the State or local level (including redesigning workflows, changing how matches are conducted, or expanding and refining matching strategies). Taken together, the program is meant to help States modernize the infrastructure and processes that connect SNAP participation to school meal eligibility, so more eligible children are certified automatically and fewer families are missed due to system limitations, timing issues, or inconsistent data.

Key administrative details from the notice include the funding activity area (Food and Nutrition), CFDA number 10.579, and the timeline shown in the posting (created August 15, 2017, with an original closing date of February 15, 2019). Overall, USDA_FNS_DCI-FY 2017 is best understood as a performance-focused improvement grant: it targets States that need to raise their direct certification rates and provides resources to build better data matching, stronger local implementation, and more reliable systems so eligible children can receive free school meals automatically and consistently.

• The Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service in the food and nutrition sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "USDA_FNS_DCI-FY 2017" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 10.579.
• This funding opportunity was created on Aug 15, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Feb 15, 2019. (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 $1,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 20 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments.

Apply for DCI17

[Watch] Creating a grant proposal using the step-by-step wizard inside the applicant portal: