Editorial policy
People make funding decisions from what we publish — whether to spend three weeks on an application, whether they are eligible, what to put in a budget. That makes accuracy the product, so here is how we get there and what happens when we fall short.
Every figure has a source, and a date
Funding rules change. Award ceilings move, thresholds are revised, programs lapse and get reauthorized. A number without a date is a liability, so figures that date carry both the primary source and the date we last verified them, shown on the page rather than buried in metadata.
Where a figure appears in a Current figures callout, that block is the authoritative version for the article and carries its own verification date. If the body and the callout ever disagree, the callout is the one we maintain.
We cite primary sources
Regulations, agency notices, statute and official program pages — not aggregators and not other people's summaries. Where we cite analysis rather than a rule, we say so and name the analyst. Where a claim circulates widely without a traceable source, we leave it out rather than repeat it.
We say when we do not know
Some things are genuinely unsettled — litigation in progress, a program mid-reauthorization, a rule that varies by agency. We describe the uncertainty rather than resolving it artificially. A confident answer that is wrong costs a reader more than an honest "this is contested."
Review and re-review
Articles are reviewed before publication and carry a named reviewer and review date. Each one also carries a next review due date, because reference content decays silently — an article that was correct in March can be wrong by September without anyone touching it.
What we do not do
- We do not sell placement. No funder, program or vendor can pay to appear in our content, and none has.
- We do not give legal, tax or financial advice. We explain how programs and rules work. Whether a specific rule applies to your organization is a question for your own counsel or accountant, and we say so where it matters.
- We do not publish what we cannot source. If we could not verify it, it is not in the article.
Corrections
We correct errors rather than quietly editing them away. If you have found something wrong — an outdated figure, a dead link, a rule we have misread — tell us on thecorrections page. Outdated figures are the most common report and the most useful.
AI and how this content is produced
We use AI tools in research and drafting, as most publishers now do. That does not change the standard: every figure is traced to a primary source and checked by a person before publication, and a named reviewer is accountable for the article. We do not publish unverified generated claims, and the citation trail on each article is there so you can check our work rather than trust it.