We checked every open federal solicitation. Not one of them is buying autism training.

If you run an ABA agency, a special education department or a disability nonprofit, you've probably thought there must be government money out there for what you do. You've probably also never had a spare week to go find it.

We went and looked. Here's what's actually there, including the disappointing parts. A list of opportunities that leaves out the bad news isn't useful to anybody.

The federal contract market is not where this money is

We went through the live federal contract index, across every training product-service code and every education, disability and social-assistance industry code. Not a sample. The whole set.

1,861 active notices. 879 still open for response. Zero buying autism, behavior analysis or behavior technician training.

Search the entire active federal index for the word autism and you get two notices. Neither is a training buy.

The grant side is quieter than you'd expect too

• 23 federal grant opportunities that mention autism are posted, and 4 more are forecast.
• Most are research. If you're a training provider and not a research institution, those aren't for you. Better to know that now than after two weeks on an application.

And the federal door built for exactly this work, the Department of Education's personnel preparation program, has nothing open and nothing forecast. We checked all three of its program numbers. Zero, zero, zero.

That's where things stand today, not forever. It's also the best reason to have your paperwork in order before that door reopens.

The fine print that stops most organizations before they start

Federal money, grants and contracts alike, requires an active SAM.gov registration.

That isn't a formality. 2 CFR 25.200(b)(1) requires you to be registered before you apply, and 25.205(a) says an agency can't make an award to an entity that isn't.

Registration is free. It also takes a couple of weeks after you finish the forms, because the government checks your details against IRS records before it marks you active. If yours has lapsed, and lapsed registrations are very common in small organizations, you can't fix it in the week a deadline lands.

We know this one from the inside. Ours had lapsed, and we only found out because we went looking.

That's the least exciting and most useful thing on this page. Check yours today, before you need it.

So where is the money?

Below the federal level, and it isn't close.

State agencies, county behavioral health and MHMR authorities, school districts, education service centers and state workforce boards all buy autism and behavior training. Almost none of it needs a federal registration. It needs that buyer's own vendor registration, which usually takes days, not months.

The catch is that this money is spread across fifty separate state systems. Most are awkward to search, and none of them talk to each other. So we started pulling them together, state by state. Texas is done: all 490 solicitations currently posted on the state's Electronic State Business Daily, from state agencies to school districts, MHMR centers and workforce boards.

The part that surprised us: the state list is not the market

We assumed a complete pull of the state board was a complete picture. It isn't, and the gap isn't small.

We read the procurement pages of four Texas school districts directly. Between them they had 39 open solicitations. The state board carried 12 of them.

Alief ISD had 18 open. The state board carried 3. Leander ISD had 15 open. The state board carried 4. If you were watching only the state feed for those two districts, you missed most of what they were buying.

And here's the counterweight, because you can check this yourself and we'd rather you found it here. Spring ISD posted 1 of its 1. So this isn't a rule about school districts. It's a spread, and it's wide.

The reason is in the law, and we read it.

Texas state agencies are required to post. Government Code Section 2155.083 applies to "each state agency making a procurement that will exceed $25,000 in value." Subsection (g) says a state agency "shall post" in the electronic state business daily, and (k) repeats it for every procurement contract estimated above $25,000. Subsection (j) explains why agencies comply: a contract awarded in violation of the minimum posting time "is void."

School districts are governed by different law. Education Code Chapter 44 doesn't mention the electronic state business daily at all. Neither do Local Government Code 271 or Government Code 2269, which cover other local purchasing. Each of them calls for newspaper notice instead.

So districts aren't missing from the state board because anyone is careless. They have no duty to post there. Posting is up to each district, which is exactly what the numbers look like, and why we're showing you counts, not a percentage.

What that means in practice: if you're only watching the state feed, you're watching part of the market. For state agencies, it's close to all of it. For school districts, the buyer's own page is still where the work is. Searching the state board harder won't find these. Reading the districts' own procurement pages will, and that's how we got the numbers above.

One more category most people miss: purchasing cooperatives. Some education service centers run solicitations for national co-ops, and one award lets member districts across the country buy from that vendor without running their own procurement. One contract, many buyers. They're worth more attention than they get.

One thing we won't pretend

Everything above is United States funding.

If you serve autistic people outside the US, this list doesn't help you yet. We'd rather say so than let you spend an afternoon finding that out.

The tool

We built the search we wanted for ourselves, and we're opening it up.

The Funding Finder →

It covers every live federal grant, federal contract and state solicitation we can find that touches autism, developmental disability, special education or the people who work in them. Each one comes with a straight answer about whether it's worth your time. When it isn't, you get the reason, so you can disagree with us.

It shows you what it ruled out as well as what it kept, because a funding list you can't check is a funding list you shouldn't trust.

It also shows you what we couldn't determine. We grade from what the buyer publishes: its title, its commodity codes and its eligibility fields. We haven't read the solicitation documents. A residency requirement, an incumbent or an insurance minimum can rule you out in ways a posting never shows. Read the document before you commit a day to it.

When did you last check your SAM registration?