NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts

The NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts is the National Institutes of Health’s official publication for announcing grants-related policy, administrative, and (historically) funding-opportunity information. It is published online at grants.nih.gov/guide, and every NIH Institute, Center, and Office (IC) is required to route its official announcements through it rather than announcing them elsewhere. For research administrators, it functions the way a government gazette or federal register does for other agencies: it is the dated, permanently archived, citable record of when NIH announced something, which matters whenever a policy’s effective date or notice number needs to be verified or cited.

What the Guide actually publishes: Notices

The core content type in the Guide is the Notice — a short, numbered announcement covering things like a change to review criteria, an update to allowable costs, an administrative supplement opportunity, a request for information (RFI), a correction to a previously published document, or (as with the example below) a change to NIH’s own publishing process. Notices are NOT primarily solicitations applicants apply against — that document type is the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA), now called a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). The Guide’s relationship to NOFOs changed materially in FY2026 — see below.

The NOT-xx-xxx numbering convention

Every Notice gets a unique identifier in the pattern NOT-[IC code]-[fiscal year]-[sequence number] — for example, NOT-OD-25-143 is a Notice from the Office of the Director (OD), issued in fiscal year 2025, sequence number 143. Other common IC codes include CA (National Cancer Institute), AI (NIAID), HL (NHLBI), and GM (NIGMS), among others matching each Institute’s standard two-letter abbreviation. Older Notices predating the current convention sometimes appear without an IC code segment (e.g., NOT-98-084, a 1998 Notice on data and safety monitoring) — a legacy numbering format from before NIH standardized the IC-code segment. Because the number is unique and permanent, it functions as a stable citation: an institutional policy, a grants management office SOP, or a Grants Policy Statement footnote can reference a NOT-number the same way it would cite a CFR section, and the underlying document will not move or be renumbered.

Weekly Table of Contents and how people track it

The Guide publishes on a rolling basis and rolls new items up into a Weekly Table of Contents, typically released Friday afternoons, listing everything posted that week with direct links. NIH offers a subscription mechanism (email/LISTSERV-style alerts) so research offices, PIs, and grants administrators can get the weekly digest automatically rather than checking the site manually. Tracking the Guide — whether via the weekly TOC, a subscription, or a saved institutional search — is the standard way a research office stays current on NIH policy changes that affect active or pending awards, independent of any single funding opportunity.

The FY2026 change: NOFOs moved to Grants.gov

Per NOT-OD-25-143, NIH stopped posting new NOFOs in the Guide during fiscal year 2026; Grants.gov is now the single official source for NIH grant and cooperative agreement funding opportunities, not a mirror of the Guide and not one of two equally authoritative places to check. This was one piece of a broader FY2026 restructuring of how NIH issues funding opportunities — see CASRAI’s guide on the FY2026 NOFO overhaul for the full picture, including the shift toward fewer, broader parent announcements and the SimplerNOFO pilot format. The important distinction for this term specifically: the Guide did not stop publishing — it stopped publishing one category of content (NOFOs) while continuing everything else (policy Notices, administrative supplements, RFIs, correction notices). A research office that only ever watched the Guide for new funding opportunities needs to rebuild that monitoring workflow around Grants.gov; a workflow that watches the Guide for policy changes affecting existing awards is unaffected and should keep watching it.

Why this distinction matters operationally

Conflating “the NIH Guide” with “NIH funding opportunities” was always a slight oversimplification, and FY2026 made the gap concrete: the Guide is a publication vehicle for several document types, of which NOFOs were historically the highest-volume and highest-attention one, but never the only one. A research administration office’s monitoring setup should point at Grants.gov for new NOFOs and keep the Guide in view for the Notice types that never moved — policy changes, allowable-cost updates, deadline extensions, RCR/training requirement updates, and the notices (like NOT-OD-25-143 itself) that announce process changes like this one.

Who tracks this in a research administration office, and what a Notice’s effective date actually governs

Guide-tracking is usually assigned somewhere in the sponsored-programs or grants-management office — often split between a communications/policy-monitoring role that reads the Weekly Table of Contents for anything affecting institutional policy, and individual grants management specialists who flag Notices relevant to their own portfolio of active awards. The harder operational question a Notice raises is not whether it exists but what it actually reaches: a policy Notice sometimes states an explicit effective date and scope (e.g., applies to applications submitted on or after a stated date, or to all active awards as of a stated date), but many administrative Notices are less explicit, and NIH’s own convention is not perfectly uniform across Notice types. A Notice announcing a new training requirement, a reporting-format change, or a revised allowability position can be prospective-only (future competing applications), retroactive to all active non-competing awards, or something narrower (only awards from a specific IC or activity code) — and the research administration office, not the study team, is generally the one that has to read the specific Notice’s applicability language carefully rather than assume a default.

Checking this against the current guidance

Whether a specific Notice reaches your institution’s already-active awards or only future applications depends on that Notice’s own stated effective date and scope, and this term describes the Guide’s publishing mechanics in general rather than any one Notice’s applicability.

Ask CASRAI: An NIH Guide Notice announces a new reporting requirement without stating an explicit implementation date for currently active awards — does it generally apply automatically to our institution’s already-funded non-competing grants, or only to future applications received after the Notice’s publication date?

It searches CASRAI’s indexed corpus of research-administration guidance and cites the passage behind each claim, so you can open the source and check it rather than take its word — and it says so when the corpus does not cover something instead of guessing. CASRAI’s assistant does not itself monitor the NIH Guide for new Notices; the Guide’s own subscription/LISTSERV alert covers that. Two questions a day are free while you are signed out, no account and no card. Everything CASRAI publishes stays free to read.

Frequently asked questions

Is the NIH Guide the same thing as a Notice of Funding Opportunity?

No, not since FY2026. The Guide is a publication vehicle for several document types — policy Notices, administrative supplements, RFIs, correction notices — and NOFOs were historically the highest-volume of those, but starting FY2026 new NOFOs are posted on Grants.gov instead, per NOT-OD-25-143.

If I only ever checked the Guide for new funding opportunities, what do I need to change?

Point that monitoring workflow at Grants.gov instead, since that is now the single official source for NIH funding opportunities. Keep watching the Guide itself for the document types that never moved: policy Notices, allowable-cost updates, deadline extensions, and RCR/training requirement changes.

What does a NOT-xx-xxx number actually identify?

The IC code (issuing Institute/Center/Office), the fiscal year, and a sequence number — for example NOT-OD-25-143 is Notice 143 issued by the Office of the Director in fiscal year 2025. Because the number is permanent and never reused or renumbered, it functions as a stable citation the way a CFR section does.

Does every NIH Guide Notice apply immediately to active awards?

Not automatically. Some Notices state an explicit effective date and scope; others are less explicit about whether they reach already-active non-competing awards versus only future applications. The Notice’s own text, not a general rule, determines which awards it reaches.

How is the Guide different from the NIH Grants Policy Statement?

The NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIH GPS) is NIH’s standing, consolidated policy document, while the Guide is the ongoing publication vehicle that announces Notices — many of which amend or supplement the GPS between its own periodic revisions.

Related terms

• Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) — the solicitation document type, now called NOFO, that the Guide carried until FY2026.
• NIH Funding Opportunity Changes: The FY2026 NOFO Overhaul — the full FY2026 restructuring this Notice was part of.
• NIH Grants Policy Statement (NIH GPS) — the standing policy document that Guide Notices frequently amend or supplement.