Assistance Listing (ALN, formerly CFDA)

Every US federal assistance programme has a catalogue number in the format ##.###: 93.243, 47.041, 84.305. The first two digits identify the agency, the last three the programme. The system was called the CFDA for decades and is now the Assistance Listings, published on SAM.gov; both names still appear in documents.

It identifies the PROGRAMME, not the notice. One listing number can produce many notices over many years, so it is the stable handle for tracking a funding line across time: what it funded before, at what sizes, to whom. Awards data is searchable by it.

It matters administratively at the other end of the process. Every federal award you receive must be reported in your Schedule of Expenditures of Federal Awards by its listing number, and that schedule is what determines whether a single audit is required. An organisation that cannot map its awards to listing numbers cannot produce the schedule.

The listing entry itself is worth reading before applying. It records the programme's authorising legislation, its objectives, its eligibility, its typical award sizes and its historical funding levels, context that the individual notice usually omits.

For a non-US organisation the number is also the quickest way to check whether foreign entities have ever been funded under a programme, which is far more informative than the notice's eligibility language on the subject.