House Appropriations Committee Issues Fiscal Year 2026 Community Project Funding Guidance

Overview

On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) of the House Appropriations Committee issued guidance to House Members on submitting requests for programmatic language and Community Project Funding requests for fiscal year 2026. Each Appropriations Committee will release specific guidance for each of the 12 appropriation bills. Request from Members open on Monday, April 14, and are limited to 15 projects per Member. The deadlines for each subcommittee can be found below:

Source: House Appropriations Committee, Full Committee Guidance

Background

The Appropriations Committee has 63 Members (35 Republicans and 28 Democrats) and is comprised of 12 subcommittees (e.g., Interior, Environment, and Related agencies; Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies; and Defense). While other House committees authorize federal agencies and programs, the Appropriations Committee, through the annual appropriations bills, decides how much funding each authorized federal government agency and program receives, primarily through 12 annual spending bills covering different areas of the federal government.

What is Community Project Funding?

Community Project Funding (formerly referred to as “earmarks”) allows Members of Congress to provide greater input on how funding will be directed to specific state or local governments or eligible non-profit recipients. These funding requests generally seek to direct funding within an existing program or account to a specific state, local government, or nonprofit recipient.

Once submitted to the Appropriations Committee, the proposal is evaluated by the Appropriations Committee staff and is voted on by the entire Congress to be included in the final spending bills passed by Congress and signed by the President. For fiscal year 2022 and fiscal year 2023, Congress designated funds totaling $24.4 billion for 12,196 projects. Most of which Congress designated to tribal, state, local, and territorial governments.

What should you and your organization do?

If you and your organization are not for-profit, you may work through a Member of Congress to request funding for state, local, or tribal governmental grantees and certain eligible non-profits, as allowed under federal law and subcommittee guidance. To maximize your request—and save time for staff—prepare evidence of your project’s merit, why it needs federal taxpayer funding, the federal authorization law, and documentation of community support before contacting the Member. This can include letters from local municipalities and elected officials offering support to the project. The importance of this front-end work is to alleviate the work done by congressional staffers when they submit project funding requests to House Appropriations staff with a written statement describing the federal nexus for each Community.