Award types
USAspending divides awards into procurement (contracts) and financial assistance (everything else). This site groups them into five types, each with a fixed colour in every chart.
- Contracts
- Grants
- Direct payments
- Loans
- Other assistance
Contracts
"An agreement between the federal government and a prime recipient to provide goods and services for a fee." Award type codes A (BPA call), B (purchase order), C (delivery order) and D (definitive contract). Indefinite-delivery vehicles carry no obligations themselves; the orders placed under them do. Every contract carries a NAICS industry code and a product or service code.
Grants
"An award of financial assistance from a federal agency to a recipient to carry out a public project or service authorized by a United States law. Unlike loans, grants do not need to be repaid." Codes 02 (block grant), 03 (formula grant), 04 (project grant) and 05 (cooperative agreement). Most grant dollars go to state governments, which is why state health and transportation departments top the recipient rankings.
Direct payments
"A cash payment made by the federal government to an individual, a private firm, or another private institution." Codes 06 (direct payment for a specified use) and 10 (direct payment with unrestricted use). Social Security, Medicare, veterans' benefits and farm payments are here, mostly as aggregated county-level records; they dominate per-resident rates.
Loans
"A federal award from the government that the borrower will eventually have to pay back." Codes 07 (direct loan) and 08 (guaranteed or insured loan). Counted at subsidy cost in fiscal-year figures; face value in award lists.
Other assistance
Codes 09 (insurance) and 11 (other financial assistance). Crop insurance and flood insurance indemnities sit here.