Organization: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Role: Design Lead (federal design oversight of Nava PBC contractor team)

Design Challenge

The federal grant application process is time consuming and often confusing, especially for new and lower capacity applicants who find themselves overwhelmed by the requirements.

The Office of Grants at HHS spent time researching some of the major challenges associated with applying, and started the Simpler Grants initiative to improve the process. The first two projects in this portfolio are:

• Simplifying Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs) for HHS

• The modernization of Grants.gov used by 26 federal agencies

The Grants.gov codebase hasn’t been updated since 2007. While there have been some improvements to the user interface, the information architecture and underlying structure are in need of major updates.

One of the biggest pain points for prospective applicants, is finding relevant matches for their search queries.

Design Response

We’re taking a phased, agile approach to building the new open source Grants.gov.

In December 2023, we launched simpler.grants.gov to create transparency around our process and roll out new product features as they are built.

First, came a new API.

Then, we soft launched a new search feature, which can be found at simpler.grants.gov/search. Usability tests on the new search feature are currently underway.

Additionally, we recently approved new branding for Grants.gov, which will be rolled out on simpler.grants.gov very soon!

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