Grant writing for Florida's tutoring, literacy, and college-access nonprofits.

The U.S. Department of Education is being broken up, and its grant programmes handed to other agencies: elementary, secondary and most postsecondary grants to the Department of Labor, Indian education to Interior, others to HHS and State. This is not commentary — the FY2026 TRIO Talent Search competition was actually run by the Labor Department on Education's behalf. And in December 2025, active Full-Service Community Schools grantees were told their funding would end — with seven days to appeal.

The money still exists. But the agency, the portal, and the reviewers have all moved, and a proposal written to last year's map lands in an empty building. Which is why the steadier path for a Florida nonprofit runs through the state pass-throughs — and the good news is that those are precisely the ones you can win without being a district.

21st Century Community Learning Centers is the big one: a $25 million statewide competition with awards from $75,000 to $500,000, and community-based organizations may apply directly — the RFP is blunt that the applicant "must be the operator" and that no entity may apply on another's behalf. That is your name on the award, not a district's.

Adult literacy runs on a clock that punishes the unprepared. Florida's consolidated adult education funding under WIOA Title II — where community-based and volunteer literacy organizations are explicitly eligible providers — is competed on a four-year cycle. Not annual. Four years. Miss the window and the next full competition is most of a presidential term away. And before your application is even scored you must clear a demonstrated effectiveness gate with real past-performance data. If you are going to be ready for that, you start collecting the data now, not when the RFP drops.

Full-Service Community Schools looks like it was designed for you. It is a substantial federal programme, the community-school model is exactly the wraparound work you do, and nonprofits appear right there in the eligible-entity list. Do not write it.

Read the eligibility properly and the trap opens up: the eligible entity is a consortium of one or more school districts and one or more community organizations. You cannot apply alone. A nonprofit without grants staff is being asked to assemble and govern a multi-district consortium on a competition timeline — a political project, not a writing project, and one that will eat your autumn.

And the programme is in retreat regardless: no open competition is posted, and existing grantees were cut off. You would be assembling a consortium to compete for a competition that is not running.

A second, quieter one worth your time: do not write the 21st CCLC application until you have checked that the schools your students come from are on the Department of Education's LEA-Determined Schools List. That list is not yours to influence, it changes mid-cycle, and priority points key off free-and-reduced-price-meal percentages. Confirming it takes twenty minutes. Discovering it afterwards costs you the whole proposal.