July 7, 2026
The Fall 2026 Grants Calendar Every US Consultant Should Bookmark
Eleven verified deadlines between July and December 2026 — plus the perennials that aren't running
A consultant’s worst professional nightmare is a client deadline that slipped between engagements. Here’s insurance for the second half of 2026: the major US deadlines from July through December, each verified against the funder’s own page — plus, just as important, the perennials that are NOT running this fall, so you can answer “what about T-Mobile?” without looking it up.
July
July 9 / July 21 — NEA Grants for Arts Projects (FY2027 cycle 2). $10,000–$100,000, 1:1 match. The gotcha every consultant should tattoo somewhere: Part 1 (Grants.gov) closes July 9, Part 2 (NEA portal) closes July 21, and missing Part 1 locks your client out of Part 2. Challenge America — the simplified $10,000 track for small orgs serving underserved communities — rides the same deadlines. GAP · Challenge America.
July 1 to August 3 — M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust (LOI window 1). The Pacific Northwest’s cornerstone funder (AK, ID, MT, OR, WA) for program, staff and capital grants. A second LOI window runs October 15 to November 20. Process.
August
August 1 to November 30 — Walmart Spark Good Local Grants, Cycle 3. $250–$5,000 per facility. Small, but for food banks and community orgs it’s the most reliable quick win on this list. Guidelines.
August 26 — HUD Continuum of Care Competition (FY2026). $4+ billion for homeless services, submitted through local CoCs — which means your clients’ real deadlines are the CoC-internal ones, weeks earlier. If you have housing clients, this is the fall’s center of gravity. Competition page.
October–November
Expected October 1 — National Trust Preservation Funds. $2,500–$5,000 planning money for preservation nonprofits; three cycles yearly (February, June, October). Details.
November 13 — IMLS Museums for America and Inspire! Grants for Small Museums. MFA runs $5,000–$350,000 with 1:1 match; Inspire! is the simplified small-museum track at $5,000–$75,000. IMLS’s own pages carry “tentative, pending FY2027 NOFO” language — link your clients to the live page, not your memory. MFA · Inspire!.
December
December 9 — NEH Public Humanities Projects. Planning up to $75,000, implementation up to $750,000, for exhibitions and historic-place interpretation. Details.
December 15 — NEH Collections Stewardship. Up to $350,000 (single org) for preserving humanities collections. Details.
Rolling all year
USDA Rural Development Community Facilities. Direct loans plus grants (grant share up to 75% for the smallest, lowest-income communities) for essential rural facilities — clinics, food banks, community centers. Applications go through your state RD office on an ongoing basis. For rural clients, this program is chronically under-applied. Program.
NOT running this fall — save yourself the email
- T-Mobile Hometown Grants — program concluded; final deadline was March 2026.
- Lowe’s Hometowns — 2026 window closed March 20.
- Bank of America Charitable Foundation — both 2026 RFP cycles closed before July.
- AARP Community Challenge — opens each January.
- Home Depot Foundation Community Impact Grants — delisted from their page; appears paused.
- AmeriCorps State & National — FY2027 notice not yet posted.
Half the client questions you’ll field this fall are on this list.
Found the grants? Now win them
Every deadline on this calendar will attract a crowd. When a funder gets two hundred applications for twelve awards, the proposals that win are the ones that answer exactly what the funder asked, in the funder’s own priorities — and your clients hired you to be the person who delivers that, on every engagement at once.
That’s the part GrantOrb was really built for. It finds verified grants like these for every client in the background — and when it’s time to apply, it drafts a funder-aligned proposal in minutes from each client’s profile and the funder’s own requirements. Your quality bar stays where it is; your hours stop deciding your client count. Free to start, no credit card required.
Deadlines like these open and close all year. Subscribe to the newsletter to stay on top of new verified grants — and reach out to me on LinkedIn if you have any questions.
