Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) Alaska Native Serving Program CFDA Number 84.031N | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) Alaska Native Serving Program, CFDA 84.031N, is a discretionary grant competition run by the U.S. Department of Education under Section 317 of the Higher Education Act of 1965 (as amended). Its core purpose is to provide financial support to eligible institutions of higher education so they can strengthen their institutional capacity and, in practical terms, improve how well they serve Alaska Native students (and, in the broader ANNH statutory umbrella, Native Hawaiian students through a related track). Funded projects are meant to help institutions plan, develop, or implement improvements that build long-term organizational strength, rather than only short-term student aid.

This opportunity was offered as FY 2015 new awards and was structured to make institutions focus on clear, evidence-informed project design. The Department emphasized that applications would be evaluated in part on whether the proposed work is backed by a logic model that meets the competition's "strong theory" standard. In other words, applicants were expected to clearly explain how proposed activities lead to measurable outputs and outcomes, and why that chain of results is credible based on research, prior data, or well-supported reasoning. The notice also pointed applicants to a federal education lab resource on building logic models, signaling that project clarity, evaluation readiness, and evidence-based decision-making were central to how proposals would be scored.

Funding was provided through grants and cooperative agreements, with an estimated total program funding level of $5,267,500 and an expected 8 awards. The maximum award amount (ceiling) was $800,000, and the competition did not require cost sharing or matching funds, which can reduce barriers for institutions with limited discretionary budgets. The funding activity category was education, and the CFDA listing is under "Higher Education Institutional Aid."

Eligibility was limited to institutions of higher education that meet specific statutory and regulatory requirements to qualify as an Alaska Native or Native Hawaiian Serving Institution, and that had already been designated as eligible by the Department through a prior designation process. For Alaska Native Serving Institutions, the institution needed to have at least 20 percent undergraduate Alaska Native enrollment at the time of application (per 34 CFR 607.2(e)). For Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions (covered under the parallel CFDA 84.031W track), the threshold was at least 10 percent undergraduate Native Hawaiian enrollment (per 34 CFR 607.2(f)). Beyond the enrollment thresholds, the institution also needed to be accredited or pre-accredited by a nationally recognized accreditor accepted by the Department, legally authorized by its state to operate as a junior/community college or to offer bachelor’s degrees, and designated as "eligible" based on serving needy students and having low average educational and general expenditures per FTE undergraduate student (as defined in 34 CFR 607.3 and 607.4). Importantly, only institutions that applied for and received that eligibility designation by the earlier federal deadline could apply for the grant competition itself.

The notice also included restrictions related to overlapping federal Title III/Title V grant funding, which is a common compliance issue for institutions that participate in multiple capacity-building programs. For example, an institution already receiving a Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions (Title V, Part A) grant could not simultaneously receive a Title III, Part A grant such as this ANNH award. The notice also outlined rules for current grantees under other Title III programs (such as SIP, AANAPISI, NASNTI, and ANNH) regarding whether they could hold multiple awards across parts and sections of Title III, reflecting congressional and departmental intent to prevent duplicative capacity-building funding for the same institution in the same period.

On project structure, the competition allowed institutions to apply for different development grant types, including individual and cooperative arrangement development grants, with specific limits. An eligible institution could submit applications for both an Individual Development Grant and a Cooperative Arrangement Development Grant and could potentially receive both in the same fiscal year. However, the Department would not issue a second cooperative arrangement development grant to an institution for an award year in which it already held a cooperative arrangement development grant under ANNH. Cooperative projects required that the lead institution be eligible under the program, while partner entities or subgrantees did not have to meet the same eligibility definition, which is intended to encourage collaborations that bring in specialized expertise or services while keeping the program’s primary benefit centered on the eligible serving institution.

Applications had to be submitted electronically through Grants.gov. Applicants were expected to download the application package, complete it offline, and upload it through the portal; emailing an application was not allowed. A small but important technical instruction was included: applicants needed to search for the application package using the base CFDA number (84.031) and not include the letter suffix (so not "84.031N"). For this FY 2015 cycle, applications became available on April 10, 2015, and the deadline for transmittal was June 9, 2015 (with an archive date of July 9, 2015), meaning the submission window was roughly two months.

Finally, the opportunity pointed applicants back to the official Federal Register notice as the controlling document for full details on priorities, performance measures, selection criteria, and submission requirements. Contact information was provided for both technical Grants.gov support and program-level questions, including program managers associated with the Alaska Native Serving (84.031N) and Native Hawaiian Serving (84.031W) tracks.

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