Grants.gov is a centralized, federally sponsored Web site designed to simplify the process of finding, applying for and managing grants across all 26 federal grant-making agencies. Established as part of the E-Gov initiative, grants.gov went fully operational in the fall of 2004, according to Rebecca Spitzgo, director of the Grants.gov program.

The major grants for the fire service are pooled under the Department of Homeland Security, of course, but the waterfront of federal funding is much bigger. Currently about 900 federal grant programs award money to state and local governments, nonprofits and academic organizations, giving out a total $360 billion a year.

Spitzgo suggests two ways fire officials can use the service to find and apply for grants. “No.1, they can use the search features to search it online,” Spitzgo says. “Under what we call the ‘advance search’ feature, you can put in specific text words to search the entire site, so they could put in ‘fire department’ or put in whatever is specific to the type of funding they’re looking for and search all grant programs.”

A keyword search for "fire department" at grants.gov turns up 900 results, with the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant program in the top spot. The Office for Domestic Preparedness is taking grant applications through June 28 for $65 million in direct grants to help fire departments hire firefighters and provide incentives for volunteer recruitment and retention.

Fire officials can also sign up to receive e-mail updates from grants.gov to stay on top of grant news and new funding opportunities. “They are different ways to sign up for that subscription service,” Spitzgo says. “They may even want to consider just signing up for all grant notices. They’ll get an e-mail once a day, and they can scan through those – there are usually 10, 15 max, posted each day -- and see if anything pops out at them. And [in the email] they’ll get a title in that, the agency name and a link which takes them right to the grant opportunity, which takes them right to the site where they can view more information.”

Spitzgo says most users of the subscription service say it takes 10 to 15 minutes a day, “and that’s if they see something they want to look into further. And, if they do see something, they can send it on to someone else. It’s already got the links in it. It’s just a real easy way for them not to have to remember to search each day and wonder if they missed something.” 

According to Spitzgo, grants.gov currently gets 1.5 million visitors a week and has more than a million subscribers to its e-mail bulletins.

“This takes you across all the programs in the federal government.… You don’t have to figure out which agency has pots of money. If you do the text search or you just get all announcements, you’ll very easily cover the entire waterfront,” says Spitzgo.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for on the Web site, grants.gov’s customer service center provides help by e-mail at support@grants.gov and by telephone at 800-518-4726. The customer support center is open Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.