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. Member requests 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 several resources:
Reports describing the FY22 and FY23 provisions for which these funds were appropriated, as well as 19 reports each describing an agency’s plans for distributing and monitoring these funds;
Future oversight is planned. This includes two reports that will be issued in fall 2024 looking at the obligation and outlay data for FY22 and FY23 provisions, as of the end of FY2023, and describing the provisions for which funds were appropriated in FY24. We will also update the interactive map and make additional data available for download when these reports are issued.
Summary of Funding Provisions
In FY22, the Consolidated Appropriations Act designated funds totaling $9.1 billion for almost 5,000 projects. Eighteen federal agencies are responsible for distributing these funds to designated recipients and monitoring expenditure of those funds for projects funded in FY22. As of the end of FY22, the 18 agencies:
made legal commitments to pay recipients—such as signing contracts or awarding grants—for about one third of the funds (or half of the projects), and
distributed about 2 percent of the funds (for about 6 percent of the projects).
In FY23, the designated funds totaled $15.3 billion for about 7,200 projects. Other than the addition of one new agency in FY23—the Office of National Drug Control Policy—the same 18 agencies received funding for these provisions in both years.
What are the intended uses of these funds?
Federal spending is designated into broad purpose categories called Budget Functions, and the funding provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Acts cover a broad range of purposes. The top five purposes over both years are Community and Regional Development, Natural Resources and Environment, Transportation, National Defense, and Health.
Funding Provisions by Budget Function, of Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 and 2023
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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 both years, Congress designated the most provisions 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, in communities.
Recipients of the Funding Provisions in the Consolidated Appropriations Acts, Fiscal Years 2022 and 2023
Recipient type
Funding for provisions
Number of provisions
Tribal/State/Local/Territorial Government
$11,339.5
5,891
Federal Government
$5,363.0
687
Other Nonprofit Organizations
$4,946.3
4,207
Higher Education Organizations
$2,743.9
1,411
For FY22 and 23, funds were designated for projects in nearly all U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. See our interactive map for how the FY22 funds are being implemented across the states and territories.
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 one 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.
For the FY22 funds, agencies legally committed (or obligated) 99.2 percent of funds for provisions designated with one-year funding before they expired. For provisions designating funds with periods of availability longer than one year, agencies generally recorded fewer obligations.
For the FY23 provisions, 71 percent of the funds are available for agencies to obligate for a fixed period ranging from 1 year to 5 years. After the funds’ period of availability expires, agencies generally have 5 years to fully disburse the funds. The remaining 29 percent of funds are not time limited, so the funds will be available for obligation until they are spent. In some instances, the timeline that agencies set for recipients to spend funds may be shorter than what is specified in law.
For the FY22 funds, agencies legally committed (or obligated) 99.2 percent of funds for provisions designated with one-year funding before they expired. For provisions designating funds with periods of availability longer than one year, agencies generally recorded fewer obligations.
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 joint explanatory statement (JES) descriptions for the projects that moved forward with funding.
Examples of Fiscal Year 2022 Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending (CPF/CDS) Projects from Our Sample and Their Purposes
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Progress: About half of the recipients in our sample that reported spending data began spending FY 2022 funds by June 30, 2023, and 9 percent had spent all of their funds by this date.
Status of Funds Spent for Examples of Fiscal Year 2022 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 and 2023 Funds
Congress designated funding to 19 agencies for projects across various locations, and for differing purposes over the last two years. Use our interactive map and chart to track the funding by agency, location, state, period of availability, and other options for FYs 2022 and 2023.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy is the only agency to receive these provisions in FY23 that did not receive such provisions in FY22. A report on ONDCP's plans for distributing and monitoring the funds is listed below along with reports on the 18 agencies that received provisions in both FY22 and FY23. For updated information on the other 18 agencies' processes for monitoring and distributing funds, please see our report analyzing the makeup of the FY23 provisions.
