Disaster Grants – Public Assistance — CFDA 97.036 obligations

What $217.15 billion on 716 awards means

Assistance listing 97.036 is titled DISASTER GRANTS - PUBLIC ASSISTANCE (PRESIDENTIALLY DECLARED DISASTERS) in the USAspending.gov files this site indexes. The obligation total on that code is $217,152,975,613.33. An obligation is a recorded federal commitment on an award. It is not an outlay. Treating $217,152,975,613.33 as cash already paid to states and localities mixes two series. SpendingVault keeps the label as obligations.

716 awards sit under that dollar book. Dividing $217,152,975,613.33 by 716 produces a mean near $303 million per award record. That quotient is derived from the two packet totals. It is not a typical project worksheet and not a per-household recovery amount. Presidentially declared public-assistance dollars often sit on large state and territorial awards, which is why a modest record count can carry a large sum.

The 87 recipients in the extract are organizational recipients stored on those award rows, not a count of disaster survivors. 56 states appear in the place-of-performance coding. None of those volume stats converts the $217,152,975,613.33 total into a damage estimate.

87 recipients across 56 states

CFDA 97.036 lists 87 recipients and 56 states against 716 awards. Recipient count is not unique households. It is how many organizational recipients the assistance extract stores for this listing. A state emergency-management agency can appear on multiple awards; 87 is not a headcount of governors. The 56-state span is a coded-jurisdiction count, including whatever jurisdictions USAspending stores in the state field.

Because 716 awards are few relative to the dollar total, a handful of large declarations can move $217,152,975,613.33 without a matching jump in the 87-recipient count. Extra project modifications can lift award volume while dollars barely move. The public-assistance hub keeps dollars, awards, recipients, and states visible so one statistic is not inferred from another.

Obligations versus disaster outlays

USAspending.gov publishes obligations on assistance awards. The $217,152,975,613.33 figure for CFDA 97.036 can include multi-year public-assistance commitments that will disburse later. FEMA obligation reports on individual declarations, Stafford Act outlay tables, and a single fiscal year’s DHS appropriation are different publications. This page does not translate the obligation total into those series.

If a number you expected is missing, the usual cause is a different reporting concept. Start from the obligation definition, then open the 97.036 program page. Do not stretch 716 awards or 87 recipients to cover every federal dollar that touches a disaster.

What the 97.036 tables omit

The Disaster Grants - Public Assistance hub lists award-backed obligations from USAspending.gov. It is not an Individual Assistance roster, not an insurance-loss file, and not a county damage map. Series that never appear as assistance awards will not show up in the $217,152,975,613.33. That omission is definitional rather than a gap in the 716 award rows.

Place-of-performance on 56 states is a coding field. A statewide grantee coded to one cell can dominate geography while projects sit in many counties. Read the program page before any state split.

How to cite CFDA 97.036

A complete citation is $217,152,975,613.33 in obligations for CFDA 97.036, covering 716 awards, 87 recipients, and 56 states, drawn from USAspending.gov assistance awards on SpendingVault. Name the series as obligations. If the question is concentration rather than dollars, lead with 716 awards and 87 recipients, then the dollar total.

Start with the Disaster Grants - Public Assistance program page, then the all-programs index. Agency pages show awarding organizations; they do not replace this listing’s obligation total. Nothing here is a grant-application instruction.

A worked reading of the 97.036 extract

Start from the four packet facts: $217,152,975,613.33, 716 awards, 87 recipients, and 56 states under CFDA 97.036. The mean near $303 million is a quotient from a small award count, not a typical project worksheet. If a later USAspending.gov file adds a large declaration, dollars can jump while 87 recipients barely move. If project modifications proliferate, 716 can rise while the dollar book stays close to $217,152,975,613.33.

Nothing in the extract splits public assistance into debris removal versus emergency protective measures versus permanent work. Those cuts live in FEMA publications. Treat CFDA 97.036 as an assistance-listing tag on USAspending.gov award files. Open the Disaster Grants - Public Assistance program page, then the all-programs index, for a same-series ranking. Cite 716 awards and 87 recipients next to the dollars so concentration is not hidden.

Questions

How much is obligated under FEMA public assistance disaster grants?

USAspending.gov assistance awards indexed on SpendingVault show $217,152,975,613.33 in obligations for CFDA 97.036, Disaster Grants - Public Assistance (Presidentially Declared Disasters). That sum is an obligation total, not a Treasury outlay total. The same extract lists 716 awards, 87 recipients, and 56 states.

Why does CFDA 97.036 have only 716 awards?

The indexed award count is 716. Public-assistance dollars often sit on a relatively small number of large state and territorial actions, which is why $217,152,975,613.33 can coexist with a modest record count. The 716 figure is a file statistic, not a count of project worksheets or households. 87 organizational recipients are stored on those rows.

Does the disaster-grant total include money already paid?

Not as a cash-paid sum. USAspending reports obligations—commitments to pay—rather than outlays. The $217,152,975,613.33 figure can include amounts that will disburse later. The 716-award count is a record tally, not a count of checks issued to states or localities. Cite CFDA 97.036 with the obligation total from USAspending.gov assistance awards, not an outlay series.

How many states appear on CFDA 97.036?

The extract codes 56 states for Disaster Grants - Public Assistance. That count is place-of-performance geography in USAspending.gov assistance files, not a map of every declared county. Those rows still sit under the $217,152,975,613.33 obligation total and the 87-recipient count.