On September 4, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released the FY 2025 Rural Cooperative Development Grant (RCDG) Request for Applications (RFA). The program provides a total of $5.8 million in funding to support the development of rural cooperatives through technical assistance. Eligible entities must submit an application by 5:00 P.M. EST on September 15, 2025.
What is RCDG? What’s different this year?
Congress appropriated $5.8 million in FY 2025 for the RCDG program to provide grants to cooperative development centers. The program has historically been administered by the Rural Business Cooperative Service within USDA’s Rural Development Mission Area. But in January, the Administration issued a government-wide review of federal grant programs to ensure alignments with Administration priorities. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is responsible for the RCDG application process, including uptake, review and awarding for FY25.
Applicants should carefully review the FY 2025 program notice and Grant Application Guide on NIFA’s website.
Info on the FY 2025 Request for Applications
The purpose of the RCDG program is to enable nonprofit institutions to establish and operate centers for rural cooperative development (Center). The primary objective of the program is to improve the economic condition of rural areas by helping nonprofit organizations who in turn provide technical assistance to start, expand, or improve cooperatives and mutually owned businesses in rural areas.
Centers funded under RCDG should aim to facilitate the creation of jobs in
rural areas through the development of new rural cooperatives, value added processing, and rural businesses.
FY 2025 awards will range from $0 – $1,000,000.
Applicants will be evaluated on a basis of 115 points in the following areas:
- Experience in technical assistance, including cooperative development; and effectiveness in accomplishing outcomes (30 points)
- Workplan and Budget Details (30 points)
- Commitment to Underserved and Economically Distressed Areas (15 points)
- Networking with other centers including joint technical assistance may take the form of a sector partnership, which designs and deploys training solutions at a regional or state-wide scale (10 points)
- Qualifications of Key Personnel (10 points)
New Scoring Criteria Include:
- Matching Funds: Applicants who meet the 25 percent in-kind, cash, or combination match will receive full points (5 points)
- Regional and National in Scope: The Agency has established an additional merit criteria and will award 1 to 25 points if the Applicant demonstrates multi-organizational, multi-State, and/or national Cooperative Development approaches, with additional points awarded for the larger the scope of the approach. 0 points will be awarded if the application does not address this criteria (25 points)
Eligible Activities Include: Establishing or operating a Center, providing technical assistance and cooperative development, and providing loans and/or grants. See full list of eligible uses here.
USDA will not accept competitive applications that include activities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion advocacy; racial justice; or support for mobile home cooperatives. Other ineligible activities may be found here.
Definitions of key terms in the FY25 RFA such as Cooperative Development, Matching, Mutually Owned Business, and New Cooperative Approach may be found here.
New Terms Specific to the FY25 Notice:
New Application – An application not previously submitted to a program.
Sector Partnership – A partnership of businesses from the same industry who join with other strategic partners to train and place workers into jobs that the businesses need filled and intend to fill through the partnership. The strategic partners should include education and training institutions, such as community and technical colleges, and can also be comprised of public, private, and non-profit organizations. A sector partnership is focused on one specific industry and one or more specific roles within that industry. The lead entity of a sector partnership (i.e., Backbone Organization) serves as an intermediary across all the partners in the sector partnership. Sector partnerships are effective because: they are carefully built to include necessary partners before workforce solutions are designed; they cut across traditional economic development, workforce, education, and social services system silos; they are targeted to in-demand sectors with jobs; and they consider the economic realities of a regional or state-wide industry in assessing workforce demand and training needs.
The full FY 2025 RFA may be found here.
NIFA Contact Information
For specific RCDG program information, please contact:
Edwin Lewis, Ph.D., NIFA National Program Leader Edwin.Lewis@usda.gov
Izabella Jablonska, NIFA Program Specialist Izabella.Jablonska@usda.gov
For more information, or if you have questions about Grants.gov or Workspace Grants.gov, please contact: Support@Grants.gov.
For general questions about the NIFA grant application process, please contact the NIFA Office of Grants and Financial Management (OGFM) Support via GrantApplicationQuestions@
Reposted from the National Cooperative Business Association, who we thank for their diligence in tracking RCDG Developments.
For additional support, fill out our Cooperative Workforce Form
As centers work toward applying to RCDG and beyond, the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives is reaching out to our community of coop developers and service providers to track ways we can support the retention of long-term, skilled cooperators through career transitions within our movement. If you anticipate needing to find new or supplemental work within the cooperative sector, please fill out this survey.
