Almost every eligibility check an applicant runs is a check on the applicant. Are we a 501(c)(3). Are we in the right county. Do we have the audit, the registration, the years of operating history. That question is easy to answer and it is usually the wrong one to answer first.
This week’s five open programs decide something else before they decide anything about you. They decide what the money is allowed to touch. A facility you have to own, or hold on a long lease. A design, rather than the construction the design is for. A downtown improvement that has to end up publicly owned. A contaminated site you may study in detail and may not clean. In each case an organization that passes every applicant test can still be holding a project the grant cannot pay for.
That distinction is easy to miss because of where it lives in a notice. Who may apply gets its own heading. What the funds may be used for is further down, often phrased as budget administration, and it is the sentence that sends a finished application back. Below are the five, ordered by deadline, with that line named in each one.
This week from OpenGrants
TD Charitable Foundation: what it funds and how much
A long-running corporate program keeps its name, its reputation and its annual total while quietly rewriting what it buys. We put two consecutive cycles of the same housing competition side by side out of the records and the comparison is the whole piece: the total held steady, the individual award doubled, the number of recipients halved, and the theme moved from eviction prevention through early intervention to housing stability built on renter income.
Three consequences follow for an applicant and none of them are in the announcement. The ask you model on last year is wrong, because a fixed-amount award is not a ceiling you can land under. The competition is narrower rather than easier, because the slots halved across a footprint running the length of the East Coast. And an eviction-diversion program that fit the prior theme has to explicitly bridge to income advancement now; the reviewer will not infer it. The profile also surfaces a second, much smaller regional door into the same foundation, with an earlier deadline, that most coverage never mentions — and which is the realistic entry point for an organization with no housing-plus-workforce model.
How many SBIR proposals you can submit, by agency
Coverage of this year’s SBIR reauthorization has been about dollar ceilings. The open FY2027 solicitations carry a constraint almost nobody has written down: a per-firm submission limit, expressed in a different unit at every agency. NSF counts projects under review — one at a time, plus two Project Pitches in any twelve months and two full proposals per fiscal year. DOE counts pitches, three per company, and a declined pitch cannot be resubmitted. NASA counts proposals per appendix, two, with the count resetting when a new appendix opens. The Army counts per topic, one, and a second submission replaces the first rather than adding to it.
For a company with more than one fundable idea, that unit is the binding constraint, and it is never printed in the award table. The piece also covers the Air Force, where the limit is not a count at all but the published topic list and whether you hold the customer memorandum half the topics require, and the invite-only tier above Phase II, where the gate is a program officer’s recommendation and a committed co-funder rather than a deadline.
Five worth a look
Healthy Senior Grant Program
Funder: Mary E. Bivins Foundation Deadline: December 1, 2026 Award: $2,500–$50,000 Who can apply: organizations running wellness programs for older adults in the top 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle
The program supports wellness work for older adults across hunger and food security, transportation, social connection, overall health and caregiver support, with the stated aim of helping seniors age with dignity and maintain independence. Per the record, preference goes to projects addressing senior hunger, food security and nutrition.
What makes it worth a look is the breadth of what the grant will actually buy. Alongside programming, the record names capital improvements, equipment purchases, education and wellness classes, and accessibility equipment as fundable. Small regional foundations frequently restrict themselves to program expense and leave an applicant to find the capital elsewhere; this one will pay for the thing as well as the service. The geography is a hard line rather than a preference — 26 named counties — so that is the first thing to check, not the last.
Creative Places Arts Facilities Grants
Funder: Alabama State Council on the Arts Deadline: December 1, 2026 Award: Up to $40,000 for enhancement, $75,000 for design, $100,000 for construction Who can apply: Alabama 501(c)(3)s or municipalities with a documented year-round arts programming record and either ownership or a use agreement of ten years or more for the facility
This is a facilities program for arts organizations — performing arts centers, art museums and galleries, multi-purpose arts centers, artist residency facilities and outdoor venues — and it runs in three tracks. Enhancement grants buy equipment such as sound, lighting and seating. Design grants produce blueprints or schematics. Construction grants cover new building, major renovation, repairs and ADA improvements. One request per organization, so the track is a choice rather than a sequence you can file all at once.
The eligibility turns on the building, not the applicant. You need ownership or a use agreement running ten years or more, and the record is specific about what falls outside: for-profit venues, historic homes, office space, non-art museums, PreK-12 and post-secondary schools, grantees with past-due reports, and organizations receiving direct legislative appropriations. The exclusion list on uses is just as firm — real estate purchase, operating costs, marketing and debt payments are all ineligible — which means this grant will improve a facility you already control and will not help you acquire one. Requests over $25,000 need a notarized disclosure form, and grant agreements must be signed online by late April 2027.
FY27 Watershed Assistance Grant Program
Funder: Chesapeake Bay Trust Deadline: December 9, 2026 Award: $75,000–$150,000 Who can apply: applicants in Maryland, in the part of West Virginia inside the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and in the Octoraro Creek and Conowingo Creek watersheds in Chester and Lancaster Counties, Pennsylvania
This program funds the design, not the dirt. Design requests cover nonpoint source best management practices, including stream restoration and stormwater BMPs. Planning requests cover watershed characterization, surveys, assessments, action plans, studies, program development and financing strategies. If your need is construction money, this is the wrong window — but if you have a restoration idea with no engineering behind it, this is the step that makes the next funder’s application possible.
Four bodies sit behind it as a partnership: the Chesapeake Bay Trust, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, the Maryland Department of the Environment and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Note the geography carefully. It is not two states and a bit of a third; it is all of Maryland, only the Chesapeake-watershed portion of West Virginia, and two named Pennsylvania creek watersheds inside two named counties. A watershed boundary and a state boundary are different shapes, and here the watershed is the one that governs.
Rural Downtown Economic Development Grant
Funder: North Carolina Department of Commerce Deadline: January 7, 2027 Award: See listing Who can apply: local governments, for a publicly owned improvement in a rural North Carolina downtown district that serves a community-wide use
Eligible activities are public infrastructure such as streetscapes, alleys, waterfronts and parks, renovation or additions to public buildings, and mixed-use development on publicly owned property. The record carries no award figure, so treat the amount as something to confirm on the program page rather than to plan around.
Two terms decide most applications here. First, the grant is based on job creation and retention, which means a job projection goes in with the application alongside an Environmental Review — the award is sized by an employment outcome rather than by what the construction costs. Second, funded projects must be publicly owned and controlled. A downtown revitalization built around a privately held building does not become eligible by having strong community support; the ownership of the asset is the test. Applications go through the Rural Connect portal, and first-time users register before they can start one.
FY27 Brownfield Assessment Grants (Community-wide, States and Tribes)
Funder: Environmental Protection Agency Deadline: January 21, 2027 Award: Up to $1,000,000 Who can apply: state agencies under the direct control of the governor or another elected executive, federally recognized Tribes outside Alaska, Intertribal Consortia, Alaska Native Regional and Village Corporations, and the Metlakatla Indian Community
This is the clearest version of this week’s pattern. The grant pays to prevent, inventory, assess and plan for the cleanup and reuse of brownfield sites: developing inventories, prioritizing sites, conducting community involvement, planning, running site assessments, and writing site-specific cleanup plans and reuse plans. A portion of the funding must go to site assessments. And the record states plainly that the funds may not be used to conduct cleanup activities. You are being paid to establish what is there and what should happen, not to make it happen.
Three more terms shape the work. Site-specific activity is capped at $200,000 per approved site, so a million-dollar award is a portfolio rather than one large job. Recipients must assess a minimum of ten sites across their geographic boundaries. And EPA determines site eligibility after the award, throughout the project period, against the CERCLA § 101(39) definition of a brownfield site — which means the sites in your application are candidates, not commitments, and the program’s own eligibility screen runs on the sites after the money is yours.
One eligibility note that catches people: state and Tribal universities and colleges are not eligible for this particular track, though they may apply for other types of Assessment Grants if they qualify another way, such as 501(c)(3) status.
One thing to take from this week
Add a second question to your eligibility screen. After “may we apply,” ask “may this project be paid for.” They are different tests, they live in different parts of the notice, and the second one is the one that fails late — after the narrative is written, after the budget is built, after someone has spent three weeks on it.
The quickest version of that check is to find the sentence in the notice that begins with what funds may not be used for, and read it before you read anything else. In this week’s five that sentence is doing the real work: no cleanup, no real estate purchase, no operating costs, no privately held asset, design only.
If you want this read on the programs opening in your area each week, subscribe to Funding Friday — five open grants and two pieces of plain analysis, every Friday morning.