Peace Corps federal obligations through FY2026

Reading $400.1 million as an award total, not a volunteer census

The Peace Corps trains and places volunteers in partner countries. USAspending does not count those volunteers. It counts awards the agency makes to vendors and other recipients: training facilities, medical support, IT, logistics, and similar instruments. $400,062,464.96 is the obligation stock for those awards through the FY2026 cutoff. A year with more volunteers does not automatically produce a larger USAspending total, and a year with fewer volunteers does not automatically shrink it.

Because so much of the Peace Corps model is people rather than procurement, this $400.1 million understates the agency’s full cost of operations if a reader expected every dollar to appear as an award. Federal employee pay and many volunteer-related disbursements never show up as the 589 USAspending rows. The table is complete for awards; it is incomplete as a budget encyclopedia.

589 awards and a mid-six-figure average

Five hundred eighty-nine awards against $400,062,464.96 implies about $679,223 per award. That mean sits between high-volume grant shops and thin-contract micro-agencies. Training and medical-support contracts can be large; small purchase orders still populate the tail. The packet gives no breakdown by country of performance, even though Peace Corps work is overseas. USAspending place-of-performance fields on individual awards are the only path to that geography.

The state table on SpendingVault still matters. Many Peace Corps vendors, recruiters, and domestic offices are U.S.-sited, so obligations attributed to states can be real even when volunteer service is abroad. Read a state share as a USAspending location field, not as “volunteers assigned to that state.”

FY2026 cutoff and multi-year support contracts

Fiscal year 2026 is the latest year in the packet, not the only year inside the $400,062,464.96. Multi-year medical or logistics contracts signed earlier remain in a cumulative obligation total until they are closed or de-obligated in the source. A surge in FY2026 modifications would move the number; a quiet year of continuing the same vehicles might not. This page does not project either path.

Obligations are commitments. Outlays—the cash that actually moved—are unpublished here. For an agency that pays many small stipends and medical bills, the gap between obligation and outlay can be material. Do not treat $400.1 million as money already spent in-country.

CGAC 1125

Peace Corps rows use awarding-agency code 1125. That CGAC is a USAspending identifier, longer than the three-digit codes used by some older cabinet accounts. SpendingVault’s /agencies/1125/ path is keyed to it. Awards another department makes for international development would carry a different code even if Peace Corps volunteers later worked in the same country.

Where to click next

The Peace Corps agency page holds the live obligation tables. The state subdirectory attributes the 589 awards by USAspending geography. The all-agencies index places CGAC 1125 next to other awarding agencies without implying a ranking of foreign-assistance impact. Impact metrics are not in this packet; award dollars and award counts are.

Domestic vendors, overseas posts, and the 589-award map

Peace Corps posts sit in partner countries. USAspending geography on the 589 awards still often points at U.S. states because recruiters, medical contractors, and headquarters vendors are domestic. The state table for agency 1125 is therefore a map of award location fields, not a map of volunteer host countries. A large share in one state can mean a training campus or a medical-support contractor, not a surge of volunteers from that state.

Country-of-performance values, when they exist, live on individual award records. The packet does not list them. This page does not invent a country ranking. Readers who need host-country dollars should filter the award-level file, then check whether the field is populated. Empty country fields are common on administrative awards that never leave the United States.

The $400,062,464.96 stock can move when medical or logistics vehicles are modified. Volunteer counts can move on a different calendar. Do not expect the two series to tick together. FY2026 is the extract cutoff. Refresh the Peace Corps agency page for the current USAspending vintage rather than treating this prose as a frozen appropriation. Outlays remain unpublished in the packet.

Readers sometimes want a per-volunteer cost. Dividing $400,062,464.96 by a volunteer census would mix an award ledger with a headcount that is not in this packet. This page will not perform that division. The 589 awards and the $400.1 million are the only quantities on offer. If a later extract adds awards that were previously missing from the warehouse, both the count and the dollars can jump without any change in posts filled. Use the Peace Corps agency page as the live source.

Questions

How much has the Peace Corps obligated on USAspending?

USAspending.gov shows $400,062,464.96 in Peace Corps obligations through FY2026 across 589 awards. The awarding-agency CGAC is 1125. The total is an award ledger, not a count of volunteers or of countries served. USAspending.gov records this as awarding-agency obligations through FY2026, not cash outlays. The live table for CGAC 1125 is the source for the current 589-award book.

Does the $400 million include volunteer stipends?

Only if those payments were issued as USAspending awards. Many personnel and volunteer costs never appear in the 589-award extract. The packet does not itemize stipend versus contract dollars, so this page does not split the $400,062,464.96 that way. That figure uses only the packet totals. The extract has no median and no contract-versus-assistance split. FY2026 is the warehouse cutoff, not a single-year appropriation.

What is agency code 1125?

1125 is the USAspending awarding-agency CGAC identifier for the Peace Corps. SpendingVault filters /agencies/1125/ to that code. It is an accounting key, not a State Department bureau number. SpendingVault URLs under the agency path filter to that CGAC identifier. It is an accounting tag, not a quality score. Totals on this page are obligations through FY2026.

Why look at spending by state for an overseas agency?

USAspending still tags many Peace Corps awards with U.S. recipient or place-of-performance locations. The state table for CGAC 1125 shows those domestic attributions for the 589 awards. It does not map volunteer posts by host country. Outlays are unpublished in this packet, so this page does not estimate cash already paid. Refresh the agency page after USAspending updates rather than treating the current stock as frozen.