Tracking the Funds
Following Community Project Funding and Congressionally Directed Spending from appropriation, to agency, to recipient, to project completion.
As part of recent appropriations legislation, Members of Congress could request provisions designating an amount of funds to a particular recipient—such as a local government or nonprofit organization—for a specific project. Members can request directed funds for specific projects that generally would otherwise have been left to agencies' discretion. These provisions are called "Congressionally Directed Spending" in the U.S. Senate and "Community Project Funding" in the House of Representatives.
To help Congress oversee these funds, we have issued the following resources:
Reports describing the obligation and outlays of the FY22 and FY23 provisions, an overview of the FY24 provisions, and 19 reports each describing an agency’s plans for distributing and monitoring these funds;
For FY22 and FY23, Congress designated funds totaling $24.4 billion for 12,196 projects. Nineteen federal agencies are responsible for distributing these funds to designated recipients and monitoring expenditure of those funds. As of the end of FY23, the 19 agencies:
Made legal commitments to pay recipients—such as signing contracts or awarding grants—for 59% of the funds (for 74% of the projects), and
Distributed 7% of the funds (for 18% of the projects).
In FY24, the designated funds totaled $14.6 billion for 8,098 projects. The same 19 federal agencies are responsible for the funds.
What are the intended uses of these funds?
Federal spending is designated into broad purpose categories, called Budget Functions, and the funding provisions cover a broad range of purposes—such as community and regional development, natural resources and the environment, and transportation.
Funding Provisions by Budget Function, of Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022-2024
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aThe category “Other” includes the General Government and Income Security budget functions, as well as provisions and funding spread across multiple functions.
Who are the designated recipients?
Across the last 3 years, Congress designated the most provisions in numbers and dollars to tribal, state, local, and territorial governments. These entities may later distribute the funds to subrecipients (such as nonprofits) to implement the projects. In other cases, a federal agency was designated to directly undertake projects, such as dam-building or river-dredging.
Recipients of the Funding Provisions for FYs 2022-2024
Recipient type
Funding for provisions (in billions)
Number of provisions
Tribal/State/Local/Territorial Government
$18.4
10,334
Federal Government
$8.5
1,076
Other Nonprofit Organizations
$8.0
6,724
Higher Education Organizations
$4.1
2,160
Total
$39.0
20,294
How long will the funds be available?
Congress generally gives budget authority to an agency for a specific period, referred to as "the period of availability." Time-limited authority can be provided for 1 or multiple years, while some budget authority never expires. After the funds' period of availability expires, agencies generally have 5 years to fully disburse the funds. In some instances, the timeline that agencies set for recipients to spend funds may be shorter than what is specified in law.
Here is what we found:
Appropriations for 4,289 provisions, representing $5.23 billion, expired as of the end of FY23. Agencies legally committed (or obligated) about 99% of funds for these provisions (and about 99% of the provisions). For provisions designating funds with periods of availability longer than 1 year, agencies generally recorded fewer obligations.
For the FY24 provisions, about 65% of the funds are available for agencies to obligate for a fixed period ranging from 1 year to 5 years. The remaining 35% of funds are not time limited, so the funds will be available for obligation until they are spent.
Purpose: Generally, recipients planned to use the funds for their intended purposes. We found that the recipients' descriptions of projects' purposes were broadly consistent with the descriptions of the project in the congressional report accompanying the appropriation law.
Progress: Of the recipients in our sample that reported spending data, about half began spending FY22 funds by June 30, 2023, and 9% had spent all of their funds by this date.
Purpose and Status of Funds for Examples of FY22 Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending (CPF/CDS) Projects
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Note: The percentage of funds spent on each project is reported as of June 30, 2023. Information about project status—reported as of either September or October 2023—is reported based on the date of our interviews with project representatives.
Challenges: Most recipients reported that they faced challenges completing the steps necessary to receive and implement the funds. Among these, some recipients reported difficulty navigating the agency application processes and lack of clear or timely agency communications. We will look further at these types of issues as part of future oversight of CPF/CDS funds.
Oversight: We found that agencies intended to conduct oversight for almost all projects in our sample. For one project, the agency reported it had an agreement with a state entity to conduct project oversight.
Explore the FY 2022-2024 Funds
Congress designated funding to 19 agencies for projects across various locations, and for differing purposes over the last 3 years. Use our interactive chart to track the funding by agency, location, period of availability, and other options.
