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Key Points

• Congress established the TANF Contingency Fund in 1996 to provide temporary, supplemental grants to states facing economic distress.
• States qualify for contingency funds by meeting “needy state” triggers based on either unemployment rates or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) caseload growth relative to fiscal year (FY) 1994 or 1995 baselines.
• Since the 2008 financial crisis, most states have qualified every month, as SNAP caseloads remain permanently above the 1990s benchmarks, regardless of current economic conditions.
• The Fund’s maintenance-of-effort (MOE) test, fixed to FY1994 spending levels in nominal dollars, has lost over half its real value due to inflation, lowering the effective standard for eligibility.
• In practice, the Fund has evolved from an emergency reserve to a predictable annual transfer, with nearly 75% of all funds going to a small number of states and New York alone receiving over 40% of all funds since inception despite representing just 6% of the United States population.

ACF policy providing guidance to applicants on how to submit an exemption from required electronic submission of their application.

A Home for Every Child

Become a Foster Parent 

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The Important Tips for OLDC is a tool to assist grantees/recipients with utilizing the GrantSolutions Online Data Collection (OLDC) system to submit the OMB approved Real Property SF-429 suite of forms.

The Real Property Prior Approval Guidance document is a guide to assist grantees/recipients with submitting real property requests for approval.