Community project funding for FY2028: the calendar and what a request needs

Almost everyone who has ever wanted a federal earmark has learned about the deadline after it passed. That is not bad luck. The request window for a fiscal year opens in late winter and closes inside three or four weeks, member offices shut their own intake weeks before the Appropriations Committees shut theirs, and none of it is announced anywhere a prospective applicant would think to look. In the FY2027 cycle, the House portal opened on February 25, 2026 and the subcommittee deadlines fell in the second half of March — and the President’s Budget, which most people assume starts the process, did not arrive until April 3, after the House window had already closed.

First, whether there is a window at all

Earmarks are not permanent. They were banned for a decade, restored in FY2022 as Community Project Funding in the House and Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate, and then wiped out again in FY2025, when a full-year continuing resolution funded the government without them. They came back in FY2026 at roughly $15.5 billion across nine bills. They were permitted again in FY2027.

A full-year continuing resolution eliminates earmarks entirely. That happened as recently as FY2025, and it is the risk sitting underneath every request in a year when the bills are late.

As of mid-September 2026, no FY2028 guidance exists. Neither committee has published a page, a cap, a deadline or a per-member limit. Everything below is the FY2027 rule set, which is the only responsible template — and which changes in detail every year. FY2027 itself is unfinished: the government is running on a continuing resolution through December 11, 2026, no full-year FY2027 bill has been enacted, and the final decisions have been pushed past the November midterms.

The calendar, as it actually ran

House Appropriations released FY2027 guidance on February 25, 2026 and opened its submission portal the same day. Subcommittee deadlines for Community Project Funding ran from March 13 through late March, with the public-posting deadlines that follow them stretching from March 27 to April 17. Senate Congressionally Directed Spending deadlines ran later and were staggered by subcommittee: Agriculture April 7, Commerce-Justice-Science April 9, Financial Services and Interior April 15, Energy and Water and Homeland Security April 16, Transportation-HUD April 20, Labor-HHS-Education April 21, MilCon-VA April 28.

Those are the committee deadlines, and they are not the ones that matter to you. Each member office runs its own intake and closes it early enough to write up what it receives. In FY2027, Representative Danny Davis’s office closed on March 6 for three bills and March 13 for the rest. Senator Tim Kaine’s office closed on March 23 at nine in the morning. There is no central list of these dates; you check each office’s website, one at a time, and you check early.

The planning assumption for FY2028 is therefore that member-office windows close somewhere in late February or March 2027, with committee deadlines in March and April. That is an inference from the last two cycles, not a published date, and it should be treated as one.

Who is eligible — and the asymmetry nobody expects

For-profit entities cannot receive this money. Not in the House, not in the Senate; in the Senate a senator must affirmatively certify that no requested recipient is a for-profit entity. Eligible recipients are state, local and tribal governments and, in some accounts, particular categories of nonprofit.

Eligibility is set account by account, not in general. In the FY2027 round, the Agriculture bill’s nonprofit eligibility ran only to fire stations; Labor-HHS-Education took state, local and tribal governments plus rural health clinics, federally qualified health centers and critical access hospitals; Transportation-HUD took states, territories, tribal governments, counties, cities and public colleges. Museums, memorials and commemorative projects were out.

Then there is the split between chambers. Eight of the twelve House subcommittees accepted Community Project Funding in FY2027 — Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor-HHS-Education, MilCon-VA and Transportation-HUD. The Senate declined only three: Defense, Legislative Branch, and State and Foreign Operations. Financial Services and General Government accepts Congressionally Directed Spending in the Senate and does not accept Community Project Funding in the House. A request that has no House path may still have a Senate one, and that is a strategy question worth asking before you write anything.

The caps, which are the real constraint

The House holds Community Project Funding to one half of one percent of discretionary spending; the Senate holds Congressionally Directed Spending to one percent. Within that, the House capped each member at 20 projects in FY2027, up from 15 in FY2026 and 10 in FY2022. Senate limits are per subcommittee rather than global: 65 requests each for Labor-HHS-Education and Transportation-HUD, 40 for Interior, 35 for Commerce-Justice-Science, 25 for Agriculture, 15 for Financial Services, 10 for Homeland Security.

Twenty slots per House member is the number to hold in your head. You are not competing against the federal budget. You are competing for one of twenty lines on one member’s list, against every other organization in the district.

What the paperwork actually requires

House Rule XXI requires the requesting member to file a written statement naming the member, the intended recipient and address, the purpose of the earmark, and a certification that neither the member nor the member’s spouse has a financial interest in it. The committee adds a member financial disclosure certification and a federal nexus statement, and requires every request to be posted online in searchable form. Senate Rule XLIV requires the parallel certification that neither the senator nor the senator’s immediate family has a pecuniary interest, and requires the list to be publicly available at least 48 hours before a vote.

What you supply into that: an official project name, a short public description, a written justification covering need and populations served, a budget broken out by category and phase, a full accounting of what other money is already on hand, a completion timeline, proof of nonprofit status where applicable, and documented community support.

What separates a funded request from a filed one

Three things, consistently, in the committees’ own language. A federal nexus — the project has to belong in the account it is requested from, which is a question about the agency’s mission, not about local merit. Readiness — the committee looks favorably on projects that can be initiated within the fiscal year, and several accounts make that a hard gate: military construction requires 35 percent design completion, and highway and transit projects must already sit on the state or tribal transportation plan. And match — many programs carry mandatory non-federal cost shares, 20 percent for EPA water projects, 25 percent for FEMA pre-disaster mitigation and rural water, dollar for dollar for the Historic Preservation Fund. The match does not have to be in the bank, but there has to be a plan for it, and it generally cannot come from another federal source.

Community support means documents, not enthusiasm: letters from elected officials, resolutions passed by a county or city, inclusion in a published capital or development plan, local press and editorial support. Committee guidance says in as many words that submission does not guarantee funding, and that projects are selected on availability of funds, demand and merit.

What this means if you are starting now

The work that decides an FY2028 request is being done this fall, not next March. It is identifying which account your project actually belongs in, getting the readiness and match evidence into a form a subcommittee staffer can verify in five minutes, assembling the support documents, and being known to the member office before the form appears on their website. By the time the portal opens, the list is largely written.

This piece describes how the process works; it is not legal advice. Apollo Counsel prepares and works federal funding requests through both chambers’ appropriations processes, on the calendar the process actually runs on.