Grants will support citizenship preparation services for lawful permanent residents

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is now accepting applications for two funding opportunities under the Citizenship and Assimilation Grant Program. These are competitive grant opportunities for organizations that prepare lawful permanent residents for naturalization and promote civic assimilation through increased knowledge of English, U.S. history and civics. The two programs will provide up to $10 million in grants for citizenship preparation programs in communities across the country. Applications are due by Aug. 6.

USCIS wants to expand availability of high-quality citizenship preparation services throughout the country with these two opportunities:

• Citizenship instruction and naturalization application services: This opportunity will fund up to 36 organizations that offer both citizenship instruction and naturalization application services to lawful permanent residents. 
• Citizenship instruction only: This grant opportunity will assist nonprofit organizations in establishing new citizenship instruction programs or expanding the quality and reach of existing citizenship instruction programs. We expect to award up to 10 nonprofit organizations through this opportunity. In doing so, we want to encourage the expansion of the existing field of citizenship instruction programs, particularly those offered by small community-based organizations that have not previously received a grant from us.  

We expect to announce all 46 award recipients in September. 

Since 2009, we have awarded approximately $63 million through 308 grants to organizations that have provided citizenship preparation services to more than 170,000 permanent residents in 37 states and the District of Columbia.

To apply for this funding opportunity, visit grants.gov. For additional information on the Citizenship and Assimilation Grant Program for fiscal year 2017, visit uscis.gov/grants or email the USCIS Office of Citizenship at citizenshipgrantprogram@uscis.dhs.gov.

For more information about USCIS and its programs, please visit uscis.gov or follow us Twitter (@uscis), YouTube (/uscis), Facebook (/uscis) and Instagram (@uscis).