Basic and Applied Scientific Research — CFDA 12.300
$4.50 billion in federal obligations is indexed on USAspending.gov for Basic and Applied Scientific Research (CFDA 12.300). The listing carries 4,802 awards, 755 recipients, and a 52-state geographic count. Those dollars are assistance obligations, not Treasury outlays and not a count of laboratories, papers, or experiments. A research file at this density posts thousands of award rows to a few hundred named organizations.
Key figures
- CFDA 12.300 shows $4.50 billion in USAspending obligations for Basic and Applied Scientific Research.
- The listing covers 4,802 awards and 755 recipients.
- Awards are coded to 52 states in the USAspending geographic count.
- Totals are obligations, not outlays or study counts.
A $4.50 billion science-assistance book
USAspending.gov records $4,499,819,874.68 in obligations under CFDA 12.300. Four thousand eight hundred two awards produce that stock. A simple average is about $937,000 per award — in the range of multi-year research grants rather than a handful of capital construction awards. That average is a quotient of two packet totals, not a typical laboratory budget.
The assistance-listing title is BASIC AND APPLIED SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. CFDA 12.300 is the identifier. Other science listings tagged under other CFDA numbers are not mixed into the $4.50 billion. Combining those codes would invent a combined research total this packet does not contain.
USAspending.gov records the $4,499,819,874.68 obligation stock for CFDA 12.300 together with 4,802 awards, 755 recipients, and 52 states. Keep Basic and Applied Scientific Research on 12.300 when quoting these four facts. Outlays remain a separate column.
755 organizations, thousands of award rows
Seven hundred fifty-five recipients share 4,802 awards, or about 6.4 award records per recipient on average. Splitting $4.50 billion evenly would assign about $6.0 million per recipient. That pattern matches a research portfolio in which campuses and labs hold several concurrent awards. The packet does not name the 755. Recipient count is the organizational headcount, not a census of principal investigators.
Fifty-two states in the geographic count show nationwide coding without claiming every coded jurisdiction in the USAspending state field. Research dollars still concentrate at large science campuses. The state count does not flatten those differences. Place-of-performance amounts are on the program table.
Award count is not a project census
Among research listings, 12.300 is a dense file: 4,802 rows against 755 recipients. Competing renewals and supplements can inflate award count relative to unique projects. Award count is therefore a weak proxy for “number of science studies.” Recipients (755) tell you how many named organizations sit on the extract; awards (4,802) tell you how many assistance rows were stored.
The packet does not report publication counts, instrument days, or student enrollments. Citing 4,802 as experiments or papers would be a unit error. Keep the units straight: dollars, awards, recipients, states.
Obligations versus research outlays
The $4.50 billion is an obligation total from USAspending.gov. Outlays — cash paid against these science awards — are not in the packet. A laboratory can show a large obligation stock while draws follow a multi-year grant calendar. Deobligations and upward adjustments both move the total. A remaining-balance question is an outlay question this extract does not answer.
Use CFDA 12.300 to size the Basic and Applied Scientific Research listing in the assistance file. Do not use it as a scientific-progress scorecard. Publications and datasets live in other series. This page reports the obligation book tagged 12.300.
What the 12.300 tables omit
The Basic and Applied Scientific Research hub lists award-backed obligations from USAspending.gov. It is not a publication index, not a lab roster, and not a classification of basic versus applied work beyond the listing title. Series that never appear as assistance awards will not show up in the $4,499,819,874.68. That omission is definitional rather than a gap in the 4,802 award rows.
Place-of-performance on 52 states is a coding field. Read the program page before treating those cells as equal shares. Recipient dollars, if shown on the hub, are still obligation amounts, not cash already spent on instruments or staff.
Where the 12.300 table lives
The Basic and Applied Scientific Research program page overlays these four facts. The all-programs index ranks 12.300 among other assistance listings. Agency pages show awarding-agency rollups that may include this CFDA among other science listings. For 12.300 only, start on the program page.
CFDA 12.300’s 4,802 awards spread $4,499,819,874.68 across 755 recipients and 52 states. Quote award count as a record count, recipient count as the organizational headcount, and dollars as obligations from USAspending.gov. About 6.4 award records per recipient is the density story on this listing. Outlays remain a separate column. Source: USAspending.gov assistance awards.
CFDA 12.300 is indexed at $4,499,819,874.68 in obligations, 4,802 awards, 755 recipients, and 52 states on USAspending.gov. Basic and Applied Scientific Research should be cited on that CFDA row alone. The $4.50 billion figure sizes the listing in the assistance file. It does not convert obligations into outlays, and it does not convert award count into a service, patient, student, or project census.
Readers who need the overlay tables should start on the program page for CFDA 12.300, then rank the listing on the all-programs index. Agency pages show awarding-agency rollups that may include this CFDA among other listings; they do not replace the $4,499,819,874.68 obligation stock. Keep the four facts together when quoting Basic and Applied Scientific Research: dollars as obligations from USAspending.gov, award count as a stored-row count, recipient count as the organizational headcount (including 0 when the extract stores none), and the state figure as a geographic coding count.
Questions
- How much is obligated for Basic and Applied Scientific Research?
- USAspending.gov records $4,499,819,874.68 in obligations for CFDA 12.300. SpendingVault indexes 4,802 awards, 755 recipients, and 52 states. The figure is an obligation sum from assistance awards, not an outlay and not a study count. CFDA 12.300’s $4.50 billion is the USAspending obligation stock.
- How many awards does CFDA 12.300 carry?
- The listing shows 4,802 awards against 755 recipients, or about 6.4 award records per recipient. A simple average is about $937,000 per award. Award count is not a publication or experiment count. Recipient dollars are on the program page. CFDA 12.300’s $4.50 billion on 4,802 awards, with 755 recipients and 52 states in this aggregate, is the USAspending obligation stock.
- How many organizations receive 12.300 awards?
- The extract lists 755 recipients. Those are organizational recipients on assistance awards tagged 12.300. Geographic coding covers 52 states. The packet does not name the 755 or publish scientific output. Recipient count is the organizational headcount. CFDA 12.300’s $4.50 billion on 4,802 awards, with 755 recipients and 52 states in this aggregate, is the USAspending obligation stock.
- Is $4.50 billion already spent on this research?
- Not necessarily. Obligations are commitments. Outlays are payments. CFDA 12.300’s indexed total is the obligation stock from USAspending.gov. This page does not report cash drawn, remaining balances, or research results. The $4.50 billion on 4,802 awards is the obligation figure.
CFDA/Assistance Listing numbers from USAspending assistance awards on SpendingVault.