NOFO (Notice of Funding Opportunity)

The Notice of Funding Opportunity is the American call document. It announces that money exists, states who may apply, sets the deadline, and (unlike a European topic fiche) contains essentially everything you need in one place. Older names for the same thing still circulate: funding opportunity announcement, request for applications, program announcement.

It follows a standard structure, and knowing it saves hours. Section A describes the programme. Section B gives the award information: total funding, the ceiling and floor per award, the expected number of awards, and the instrument. Section C states eligibility. Section D covers content and submission. Section E is the review criteria. Section F covers award administration and reporting. Section G names the people to contact.

Read C, B and E first, in that order. Eligibility in a US notice is frequently narrow and absolute (a specific class of institution, a geography, a designation you either hold or do not) and no amount of quality survives failing it. Section B tells you whether the money is worth the effort, and Section E tells you what you will actually be scored on.

The review criteria in Section E are usually weighted with explicit point values. That is a gift compared with European practice: you can allocate your writing in proportion to the marks, and a reviewer's score sheet often mirrors the section headings exactly.

Notices are amended after publication. Deadlines shift, eligibility is clarified, budgets change, and the amendment is published as a new version on the same listing. Applicants who downloaded the document in week one and wrote for two months regularly submit against superseded terms.