NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program

The NSDI Cooperative Agreements Program (CAP) was an annual program to assist the geospatial data community through funding and other resources in implementing the components of the NSDI. The program was open to State, local and Tribal governments, academia, commercial, and non-profit organizations. The program provided small seed grants to initiate sustainable on-going NSDI implementations and emphasized partnerships, collaboration and the leveraging of geospatial resources in achieving its goals. Since 1994, the NSDI CAP supported over 700 projects that

• created collaborations within all sectors of government,
• helped develop an understanding of geospatial information in organizations new to the NSDI,
• provided seed money to enable geospatial organizations to participate in the national effort to implement the NSDI,
• promoted the importance of geospatial data standards,
• promoted the development of standardized metadata in hundreds of organizations, and
• greatly expanded implementation of geospatial services on the Internet.

The program ended in 2013.  But you can refer to this list of resources about other available funding opportunities.

The FGDC is supporting international Global Spatial Data Infrastruture (GSDI) with its contribution to the GSDI Small Grants Program. The program has been available since 2003 and its goals are same as the NSDI CAP but the focus is on developing countries around the globe.