Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
An NIH extramural R01 research project grant carries an Assistance Listing Number in HHS's 93.xxx series. That number appears on the Notice of Award, is entered on the SF-424 application in Grants.gov, and must be reported by the recipient institution to USASpending.gov under the DATA Act/FFATA subaward and executive-compensation reporting requirements.
- Is an instance
A university sponsored-programs office receiving an NSF award records the ALN, which falls in NSF's 47.xxx series, so its Single Audit team can match the award to the correct program entry in that year's <a href='https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/omb-compliance-supplement'>OMB Compliance Supplement</a> when testing compliance under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A private foundation grant, corporate-sponsored research agreement, or gift funding has no CFDA number or Assistance Listing Number at all -- the numbering system applies only to federal domestic assistance programs authorized and administered by a US federal agency, never to non-federal or philanthropic funding, even when an institution tracks it inside the same grants-management system as its federal awards.
Editorial commentary
The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (CFDA) was the government-wide listing of every US federal grant and assistance program, identified by a unique XX.XXX number. In May 2018, GSA retired CFDA.gov and moved the same listing to SAM.gov under the new name Assistance Listings; the numbering itself did not change.
From CFDA to Assistance Listings: What Changed in 2018
The CFDA was established under the Federal Program Information Act of 1977 and maintained by the General Services Administration (GSA). For decades it lived at the standalone site CFDA.gov, where each federal assistance program was published with a unique identifying number, a program description, eligibility criteria, and application procedures.
In May 2018, GSA retired CFDA.gov and consolidated the catalog into SAM.gov’s Assistance Listings, the same System for Award Management site that already hosted entity registration and (per SAM.gov exclusion screening) debarment and suspension records. The consolidation was administrative and structural, not a change to the underlying program data: agencies still publish the same program descriptions, eligibility rules, and application information, just under the Assistance Listings name and interface rather than the old CFDA one.
How to Read an Assistance Listing / CFDA Number
The identifying number itself did not change in the 2018 rename, and this is the detail that trips people up most: a program’s Assistance Listing Number (ALN) today is the same number it carried as a CFDA number before 2018. The format is XX.XXX:
- The first two digits identify the federal awarding agency (for example, 93 for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes NIH; 47 for the National Science Foundation; 84 for the Department of Education; 66 for the Environmental Protection Agency; 43 for NASA; 10 for the Department of Agriculture).
- The last three digits identify the specific assistance program within that agency, and stay fixed for the life of the program so awards, applications, and audits can be tracked consistently over time.
Because the number format carried over unchanged, any CFDA number you find in an older document remains a valid, lookup-able Assistance Listing Number on SAM.gov today.
Why the Number Matters in Grant Administration
The ALN/CFDA number is the primary mechanism for uniquely identifying which specific federal program funded an award, as distinct from identifying the award itself (that is the job of the Federal Award Identification Number, or FAIN) or the recipient organization (the Unique Entity Identifier, or UEI). A single federal agency can administer dozens of distinct assistance programs, each with its own eligibility rules, allowable-cost restrictions, and reporting requirements — the ALN is what tells an auditor, a funder, or a subrecipient-monitoring system which of those programs actually applies to a given award.
2 CFR 200.211 requires federal awarding agencies to publicize their assistance programs, including the applicable Assistance Listing, so that applicants and the public can identify what a program covers and who is eligible before applying.
Where You’ll Encounter the Number in Practice
- Notice of Award. The ALN is printed on the award document itself, identifying the specific program the funds come from.
- SF-424 application (Grants.gov). Applicants select or confirm the correct ALN when submitting a federal grant application, since the number determines which program-specific rules and forms apply.
- USASpending.gov / FFATA and DATA Act reporting. Federal spending transparency reporting is organized around the ALN, letting the public and oversight bodies see how much a given federal program has awarded and to whom.
- Subaward reporting. A prime recipient passing federal funds to a subaward recipient carries the same ALN through to the subaward documentation, preserving the program identification down the funding chain.
- Single Audit matching. Auditors performing a Single Audit under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F use the ALN to match each federal award tested to its corresponding program entry in that year’s OMB Compliance Supplement, which sets the specific compliance requirements to test for that program.
Common Points of Confusion
- CFDA number vs. Assistance Listing Number. These are the same number under two names — the pre-2018 and post-2018 labels for an identical XX.XXX identifier. Neither is more or less current in terms of the number itself, only the site and branding changed.
- ALN vs. FAIN. The ALN identifies the program (e.g., a specific NIH funding mechanism); the Federal Award Identification Number (FAIN) identifies the specific award made under that program to a specific recipient. Many programs fund thousands of distinct awards, each with its own FAIN, all sharing one ALN.
- ALN vs. UEI. The Unique Entity Identifier identifies the awardee organization, not the funding program — a research institution has one UEI but may hold awards under dozens of different ALNs simultaneously.
- Legacy systems and templates. Many institutions’ older subaward agreement templates, financial systems, and internal policy documents still say ‘CFDA number’ rather than ‘Assistance Listing Number.’ Both terms are still understood government-wide, and no re-numbering is required when a system or template migrates from one label to the other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the CFDA number still valid, or do I need a new number?
The number itself is still valid and in active use. Only the catalog’s name and hosting site changed in 2018 — from CFDA.gov to SAM.gov’s Assistance Listings. No re-numbering of existing programs occurred.
Where do I look up a current Assistance Listing Number?
SAM.gov’s Assistance Listings section (sam.gov/content/assistance-listings) is the authoritative, current source, replacing the retired CFDA.gov.
Does every federal award have an ALN?
Every federal domestic assistance award (grants, cooperative agreements, and similar mechanisms) has one. Federal procurement contracts are governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) rather than the assistance framework and are not assigned an ALN in the same sense.
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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