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, because 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 enumerated 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.
On October 4, 2026: 1,713 active notices, 809 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. One is assistive technology for students with disabilities. The other is an autism research solicitation, not training.
The grant side is quieter than you'd expect too
- 12 federal grant opportunities mentioning autism were posted on October 4, and 4 more were forecast.
- Most are research. The Department of War runs a substantial autism research program.
- 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 program numbers. Zero, zero, zero.
That's how it stood on October 4, not how it will always be. Which is the best argument I can give you for having your paperwork in order before it reopens.
The fine print that stops most organizations before they start
Federal money requires an active SAM.gov registration, for grants and contracts.
That's not a formality. For grants, 2 CFR 25.200(b)(1) requires you to be registered before you submit, and 25.205(a) says an agency can't make an award to an entity that isn't. For contracts, FAR 4.1102(a) sets the same rule, with narrow exceptions.
Registration is free. It can also take weeks after you finish typing, because the government validates your details against IRS records before it marks you active. If yours has lapsed, you can't fix that 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 glamorous and most useful thing on this page. Go 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 buy autism and behavior training constantly. Almost none of it requires federal registration at all, just that buyer's own vendor registration, which is usually much faster.
The catch: this money is scattered across fifty separate state systems, most of them awkward to search, none of them talking to each other. So we started pulling them into one place. Texas is done: all 475 solicitations posted on October 4 on the state's Electronic State Business Daily, from state agencies through independent school districts, MHMR centers and workforce boards. The rest are in progress.
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 is not small.
We went and read the procurement pages of four Texas school districts directly. On October 4, between them they had 39 open solicitations. The state board carried 13 of the 39. Two out of every three were only on the districts' own pages.
Alief ISD is the case that makes it concrete: eighteen open solicitations, three of them on the state board. If you were watching the state feed for Alief's business, you saw one in six of it.
And the honest counterweight, because you can check this yourself and we would rather you found it here: Spring ISD posted 2 of its 2, and Fort Bend ISD 4 of its 4. Two of the four districts we looked at put everything on the state board. So this is not a rule about school districts. It is a spread, and it is wide. Alief 3 of 18, Leander 4 of 15, Fort Bend 4 of 4, Spring 2 of 2.
And now we can tell you why, because we went and read the law.
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) is the part that explains why compliance is so high: a contract awarded in violation of the minimum posting time "is void." Getting the posting wrong voids the contract, which is a consequence agencies feel.
School districts are governed by a different chapter, Education Code Chapter 44, and it does not mention the electronic state business daily at all. Not once in the chapter. Districts publish their bid notices in a newspaper instead.
So the district layer is not missing from the state board because anyone is being careless. Districts have no duty to post there. The purchasing laws for school districts, cities and counties (Education Code 44.031, Local Government Code 252.041 and 262.025) require notice in a local newspaper and do not mention the state board.
That makes district posting discretionary, and discretionary is exactly what the numbers look like: Alief posting three of eighteen and Fort Bend posting four of four are both entirely lawful. It is why the share moves depending on which districts you happen to look at, and why we are showing you counts rather than a percentage.
The practical consequence: harvesting the state board harder will not find these. Reading the districts' own procurement pages will, which is what we did to get the numbers above.
What that means operationally: if you are only watching the state feed, you are watching part of the market. For state agencies it is close to all of it. For school districts, the buyer's own page is still where the work is.
And here's the category most people miss entirely: purchasing cooperatives. Texas education service centers run solicitations for national interlocal purchasing co-ops: the kind of award that lets member districts across the country buy from a vendor without running their own procurement. One contract, many potential 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. It's a gap we know about.
The tool
We built the search we wanted for ourselves, and we're opening it up.
Every live federal grant, federal contract and state solicitation we can find that touches autism, developmental disability, special education, or the workforce that serves them. Each one comes with a straight answer about whether it's worth your time, and when it isn't, the reason why, so you can disagree with us.
It refreshes every day. 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.
We also show you what we couldn't determine. We grade from what the buyer publishes: its own title, commodity codes and eligibility fields. For most postings, we haven't read the solicitation documents. A residency requirement, an incumbent or an insurance minimum can disqualify you in ways a posting never shows. Read the document before you commit a day to it.
When did you last check your SAM registration?
References
- 2 CFR 25.200, requirements for notices of funding opportunities: ecfr.gov
- 2 CFR 25.205, effect of noncompliance with a requirement to obtain a UEI or register in SAM.gov: ecfr.gov
- FAR 4.1102, policy on System for Award Management registration: acquisition.gov
- Texas Government Code Chapter 2155, purchasing: general rules and procedures (Section 2155.083): Texas Legislative Council
- Texas Education Code Chapter 44, fiscal management (Section 44.031): Texas Legislative Council
- Texas Local Government Code Chapter 252, purchasing and contracting authority of municipalities (Section 252.041): Texas Legislative Council
- Texas Local Government Code Chapter 262, purchasing and contracting authority of counties (Section 262.025): Texas Legislative Council