Preschool Development Birth to Five is adding a new opportunity for states this year – the SMART Grant. It’s expected to open in mid-September, with applications due November 17. This leaves, states about five weeks to build a winning proposal.
That is not a lot of time for a federal grant application, but it’s enough if you start planning now with a clear vision of what you’re building toward. Often the most challenging part is not the writing, but establishing a clear, desired outcome. The Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that was released tells you what the grant funds are for, but it doesn’t tell you what separates an application that gets funded from one that reads well but doesn’t move a reviewer. That’s what this post is for.
What this grant funds
The SMART Grant is a one-year, targeted investment, not a multi-year systems overhaul. That is a significant distinction. States used to writing three-to five-year strategic plans for PDG B-5 funding need to adjust their thinking for this round. The NOFO suggests that the application won’t be asking states “What could you build with an unlimited runway?” Instead, states want to show “What can you actually finish, and prove worked, in twelve months?”
That reframing should happen before the narrative gets written. Applications that describe a lofty vision instead of a bounded, deliverable project with long-term results may read as mismatched to the funding goals, no matter how strong the writing is.
The clock, stated plainly
Mid-September to November 17 sounds like two months. In practice, it’s often less. You may lose the first week or two to internal awareness, approvals, and getting the right people in a room. Data pulls, if you need current numbers on quality, access, or program enrollment, may take longer than anyone plans for. Any external partner conversation needs enough lead time to actually inform the proposal and build consensus. That means starting the conversation now, whether that’s with a current partner or one you haven’t worked with yet. What actually determines speed is whether the partner already has a proven solution ready to implement.
Realistically, that leaves three to four weeks to draft, review, and finalize. States that start planning now, before the NOFO is even officially open, are the ones who will have a finished draft with time to revise it. States that wait for the official start date may already be behind.
The four focus areas
The NOFO’s stated purposes translate into four areas where, ideally, applicants will show, not tell, that they are ready.
Coordination across the mixed-delivery system. A weak application describes child care, Head Start, and Pre-K as part of the same early childhood landscape. A strong one shows those programs already sharing data or workflows, or lays out a specific, buildable plan for how they will. That might look like a shared eligibility or intake process that lets a family’s information move between CCDF and pre-K without re-entry at each door, a unique child identifier that follows a child across systems to prevent duplicate enrollment and reveal actual unmet need, or a cross-agency data-sharing agreement that goes beyond an MOU on paper and specifies what data moves, how often, and who can act on it. Reviewers may notice a difference between coordination that’s aspirational and coordination that functions. Shared visions are important; shared data is the pathway to reaching that vision.
Program quality and access. A strong application will likely propose a solution that goes beyond a simple report of provider count, open and close rates, and licensed capacity within a region to a solution that leverages available technology to better understand the true availability of quality, affordable care. For example, states might consider creating a geospatial dashboard and enhancements needed to their current data system to allow robust data collection. The dashboard may include near-real time vacancies and provider-desired capacity data, ECE workforce data, local census data, and information about the cost to families. Robust data collection, coupled with advanced analytics, can be used to develop a much deeper understanding of supply and demand that allows for not just better information for families but will also allow states to focus limited capacity building resources where it is most needed. These questions about access and quality are even more critical as states look at initiatives such as universal child care. This grant could provide a tremendous opportunity to build technology to support these investments.
Supporting informed family choice. An application that discusses the third grant priority, family choice, in the abstract, may not move grant reviews to award funds. A strong one points to something concrete, such as a single place where families can see program information, availability, and eligibility together, instead of piecing it together across three or four separate websites. This is one of the easiest scoring areas to turn into a tangible deliverable, and one of the easiest to get wrong by treating it as a communications problem instead of an infrastructure one. Read our recent white paper, “Meaningful Family Choice: How State Child Care Infrastructure Can Make It Happen”
Using data to address the needs of children birth through five. A strong application shows data leading to decision-making: a policy change, a resource shift, a targeted intervention, rather than just a reporting requirement, numbers collected, and filed. That might look like attendance and utilization data that reveals which neighborhoods are underserved and directs outreach or subsidy funding there, licensing inspection and quality-rating data that flags which providers or regions need coaching or resources, and workforce turnover data that shows exactly where wage or retention supports would have the most impact rather than spreading limited funds evenly. Reviewers often don’t score on how much data a state has. They’re more likely to score what the state plans to do with it.
The most common way applications fall short
The pattern that most often weakens a grant application is describing a vision, no matter how lofty, instead of pointing to something concrete with meaningful return on investment. It’s an easy trap, because vision statements can be easier to write under deadline pressure than specific, defensible plans. But a one-year grant period rewards specificity. A reviewer reading fifty applications is probably going to remember the one that says something specific like “we will build a single family-facing portal showing availability and eligibility across all licensed providers by month nine” over the one that says “we will improve family access to information.”
PDG B-5 SMART Grant: Proposal Framing Strategy
Reviewer Evaluation Pillar | Aspirational Focus (Common Trap) | Execution-Ready Focus (Fundable Application) |
Mixed-Delivery Coordination | Describes programs as part of a shared early childhood landscape; relies on org charts and broad vision statements. | Demonstrates existing operational workflows or presents a concrete, buildable plan for shared agency and program data. |
Program Quality & Access | Declares quality and access as high priorities; speaks about system gaps in abstract terms. | Pinpoints precise geographical/system access breakdowns using real-time data to target specific gaps. |
Informed Family Choice | Treats family choice as a public communications effort or multi-site awareness campaign. | Offers a single infrastructure deliverable, such as a unified family portal to find and enroll with a provider that meets their needs and data analytics that measure family choice barriers and outcomes. |
Data-Driven Decision Making | Treats data collection as a passive reporting requirement or compliance activity. | Demonstrates clear data utility where analytics directly drive policy changes, resource shifts, or targeted interventions. |
Where TCC fits in
Building a grant application that successfully lays out a plan for meaningful coordination, visibility, and a family-facing deliverable from scratch in a five weeks isn’t ideal. However, there are solutions that states can point to and build their proposals around.
TCC has spent more than 25 years building the systems states use to run CCDF subsidy, pre-K, licensing, quality initiatives, workforce registries, and grants across mixed-delivery systems.
- Our tools give states real-time visibility into quality and capacity, the exact evidence a SMART Grant application needs to show for the quality and access.
- Our family-facing portal puts program information, availability, and eligibility in one accessible place, a concrete deliverable for the family choice.
- Our analytics and program integrity tools turn program data into an outcome a reviewer can measure. Read our white paper, ”Strengthening CCDF Program Integrity: A Practical Framework for States.”
- Our comprehensive, integrated ECE data system supports meaningful collaboration and data-driven decision-making that keeps your return on investment multiplying long after the grant period ends.
The difference between a well-written application and a funded one may come down to clear, concrete deliverables. TCC provides the turnkey mixed-delivery systems, family-facing portals, and cross-agency data tools that turn high-level goals into reviewer-ready proposals. If your state is weighing whether it has the pieces in place to build a strong application, that’s a conversation worth having now, while there’s still time for the answer.
Before the application closes, see how TCC’s existing tools can serve as the core deliverable of your state’s SMART Grant application.