How accurate are CFDA numbers and statutory citations?

Every higher-ed program in the catalog ships with the CFDA / Assistance Listing number from the agency's NOFO, the statutory authority (e.g., 'American Innovation and Competitiveness Act §308' for NSF EPSCoR), and — for any program gated on a federal designation — the statutory definition that scoring uses (e.g., 'HSI per Title V §502(a)(5) of the Higher Education Act — ≥25% Hispanic FTE undergraduate enrollment'). The data layer is reviewed adversarially before each release, and any CFDA we can't confirm authoritatively is flagged in the program record. You verify the binding NOFO with the agency before applying.

How does scoring handle HSI / MSI / TCU / HBCU eligibility?

Designation status is read from the ED OPE designations matrix, refreshed annually, and stored with effective dates (HSI status can shift year over year on the 25% enrollment threshold). Programs that gate on a designation reference the statutory definition explicitly, so when a NOFO pins a specific fiscal-year designation snapshot the scoring reads that year — not 'whatever's current.' The dossier also surfaces match-quality caveats when a designation was held only in some of the relevant years.

How are NIH and NSF awards joined to my institution?

The UEI ↔ IPEDS UNITID crosswalk is rebuilt annually from the IPEDS HD file (which carries both starting with HD2022) and progressively enriched from every ingest. A five-stage cascade — direct UEI, historical UEI, legacy DUNS, OPEID6, trigram name + state — resolves each award. Recipient entities like the UC Office of the President, Stanford Health Care, or a university research foundation are kept distinct from the campus they roll up to, so a system-office award doesn't misattribute to an arbitrary campus. Unresolved awards land in a review queue and are re-attempted after each HD refresh.

Does Strategic Pursuit comply with NIH RePORTER's rate limits?

Yes. NIH RePORTER enforces ≤1 request per second and limits bulk pulls to weekday 9 PM – 5 AM ET (or weekends); we honor both. The weekly cron throttles to 1.1 seconds between requests and schedules bulk-ExPORTER syncs only inside the allowed windows. Sustained API usage by Strategic Pursuit does not put your institution's separately-authenticated RePORTER access at risk — we connect from our own infrastructure, never from a customer credential.

Can my whole sponsored-programs office use it, or just one person?

Whole team. Practice supports 5 named users, Growth supports 20, Enterprise is unlimited. Invite teammates from /settings/team — they get a 7-day email link, sign up themselves, and land in your institution's workspace. Saved dossiers and search history are shared across the team.

How does this differ from Pivot, InfoEd SPIN, or GrantForward?

Those tools index solicitations and let you keyword-search; Strategic Pursuit reads your institution's federal portfolio (USAspending + NSF + NIH), your designation status (ED OPE), your research expenditure profile (IPEDS HERD), and your Title IV reliance, then scores every relevant federal program on the actual statutory eligibility. The output is a ranked, cited dossier — not a list of opportunities you still have to triage. Treat it as the layer that sits between your search platform and your Monday-morning portfolio review.

What data is OFF-LIMITS?

NSLDS student-level data is never ingested — we only use the publicly-posted FSA Data Center aggregates. No PII, no enrollment-detail-level data, no faculty NIH grant abstracts beyond what NIH RePORTER itself publishes. Agency logos and seals are not displayed (18 U.S.C. §701); text-only agency names are.

What plan should an institution start on?

Start on the 30-day trial (3 dossier runs, 1 seat, no card). Single-institution offices typically land on Practice or Growth depending on team size; multi-institution systems (an SUNY central office, a state university system) and high-volume consulting firms typically land on Enterprise. The same three tiers serve both civil-firm and higher-ed segments — segment is a UI surfacing decision, not a pricing decision.

Federal funding intelligence· For higher-ed institutions

A week of cross-referencing solicitations.
One eight-minute dossier.

Strategic Pursuit runs an AI-powered analysis across IPEDS HERD, NSF Awards, NIH RePORTER, USAspending higher-ed, ED Title III/V, USDA NIFA, FSA Title IV, and the ED OPE designations matrix — then hands your sponsored-programs office a ranked, cited dossier for any IPEDS-registered institution. Scored on the statute, benchmarked against Carnegie peers, ready to brief leadership.

Covers
STEM Research
Health Research
Humanities & Arts
Workforce / Career-Tech
MSI Capacity
Land-Grant Capacity

Create your workspace See how it works

Trial3 runs · 1 seat · no card
Sources9 federal · 2M+ data points pre-loaded
CrosswalkUEI ↔ IPEDS UNITID, weekly refresh

Returning user? Sign in →

Where the data comes from

Nine federal sources for higher-ed. Every fact in every institution dossier traces back to one.

The agent is instructed to never fabricate program details. If a fact isn't backed by one of these sources, it doesn't ship.

IPEDS HD
NCES Higher Education Directory — UNITID, sector, control, Carnegie classification, OPEID, UEI.
IPEDS HERD
R&D expenditures by source — total spend, federal share, agency breakdowns.
NSF Awards
NSF Award Search — every NSF award by institution, directorate, division, and program.
NIH RePORTER
NIH RePORTER v2 — projects by activity code, institute, PI, and FY.
USAspending higher-ed
USAspending prime awards filtered to higher-ed recipient types, joined via the UEI ↔ UNITID crosswalk.
USDA NIFA
Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension awards (via USAspending) — AFRI, 1890 / 1994 capacity.
FSA Title IV
Pell + Direct Loan + Campus-Based volume per institution; aggregate-only, never student-level.
ED OPE designations
HBCU / HSI / AANAPISI / TCU / ANNH / NASNTI / PBI / MSI matrix — refreshed annually.
Grants.gov live
Active and forecasted NOFOs, filtered to IHE-eligible solicitations by applicant type.

Why institutions use it

Three jobs the platform does for your sponsored-programs office that nothing else does end-to-end.

01 · Sponsored-programs leverage
Stop hand-mapping NSF, NIH, and ED solicitations to your campus.
Submit an institution; eight minutes later your sponsored-programs office has a ranked dossier with eligibility, strategic fit, and competitive position scored on every federal program your campus can actually win — across NSF, NIH, ED Title III/V, USDA NIFA, DOD MSI, DOE EPSCoR, and more. Replaces a week of cross-referencing solicitations against IPEDS HERD and OPE designations.
30–50× faster than the analyst-and-spreadsheet baseline.
02 · MSI / land-grant program targeting
See HBCU, HSI, AANAPISI, TCU, and land-grant programs scored on the right statute.
Eligibility rules are encoded against the actual statutory definitions (HSI per Title V §502(a)(5), HBCU per HEA §322(2), 1890 land-grant per 7 U.S.C. §3221) and read against the current ED OPE designations matrix. Your office sees which Title III, Title V, and capacity-building programs your designations actually qualify for — and which you'd qualify for if you hit the enrollment threshold.
OPE designations refresh annually; scoring tracks the statutory year.
03 · R1/R2/M1 peer benchmarks
Place your federal research portfolio against the right peer set.
Strategic Signals pulls research expenditure (IPEDS HERD), federal share, and award concentration across NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, USDA, and NASA — then benchmarks against Carnegie R1, R2, M1, D-PU peer medians so the dossier shows where your portfolio is concentrated, where it's underweight, and which agencies offer the highest-leverage diversification plays.
Peer medians refreshed annually against IPEDS HD + USAspending.

NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Track-1NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER)NSF Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (HSI Program)NSF Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP)NSF Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP)NIH Research Project Grant (R01)NIH Academic Research Enhancement Award for Undergraduate-Focused Institutions (R15 AREA / REAP)NIH Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Specialized Centers (U54)NIH Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (U-STAR)ED Title III-A Strengthening Institutions Program (SIP)ED Title III-B Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities ProgramED Title III-B Strengthening Historically Black Graduate Institutions Program (HBGI)ED Title III-F Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities Master's Degree ProgramsED Title V-A Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program (DHSI)ED Title V-B Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (PPOHA)ED Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN)ED TRIO Student Support Services (SSS)ED TRIO Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement ProgramED Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions Program (AANAPISI)ED Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions Program (NASNTI)ED Predominantly Black Institutions Program (PBI) Competitive GrantED Hispanic-Serving Institutions STEM and Articulation Program (HSI-STEM)USDA NIFA 1890 Capacity Building Grants ProgramUSDA NIFA Hispanic-Serving Institutions Education Grants ProgramUSDA NIFA Tribal Colleges Endowment ProgramUSDA NIFA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)DOE Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Implementation GrantsDOD HBCU/MI Research and Education ProgramIMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21)NEH Humanities Initiatives at Historically Black Colleges and UniversitiesNEH Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving InstitutionsNEH Humanities Initiatives at Tribal Colleges and Universities

Institution-eligible programs

32 higher-ed federal programs are scored on every institution dossier.

From NSF EPSCoR and CAREER to NIH R01/R15/R21, ED Title III/V, USDA NIFA 1890 capacity, DOD MSI Research, IMLS LB21, and the NEH Humanities Initiatives at HBCUs/HSIs/TCUs — each encoded against its statutory eligibility. The scoring isn't a black-box AI guess; it's the actual program statute checked against your institution's designations, Carnegie classification, and HERD footprint.

13Programs
U.S. Department of Education
5Programs
National Science Foundation
4Programs
National Institutes of Health
4Programs
U.S. Department of Agriculture — National Institute of Food and Agriculture
3Programs
National Endowment for the Humanities
1Programs
U.S. Department of Energy
1Programs
U.S. Department of Defense
1Programs
Institute of Museum and Library Services

New programs land in the catalog as IIJA / IRA / annual appropriations shift — every workspace picks up the update at the next dossier run, no version bump required.

The compare

What your Business Development analyst spends Tuesday on, versus what Strategic Pursuit ships before the standup.

Business Development analyst, Tuesday

≈ 8 hours

01Search Grants.gov for keywords matching the focus area.
02Open USAspending.gov, filter by city + agency, build a 5-year history.
03Find the city's Justice40 / CDBG / QCT status across three different sites.
04Pull FEMA disaster history for the county.
05Hand-write the eligibility memo against each program's statute.
06Compose the Business Development pitch from notes — usually in PowerPoint.

Output: a PowerPoint pitch + an Excel coverage sheet. Easy to skim, hard to defend in a client meeting because the citations live in browser tabs the analyst already closed.

Strategic Pursuit, same Tuesday

≈ 8 minutes

01Type the city name + focus areas.
02Watch the agent stream progress through every source in real time.
03Read the ranked dossier with three-axis scoring on each program.
04Skim the appropriations-near-this-city band for relevant earmarks.
05Hand the PDF to the Business Development lead.
06Pitch the city manager the same week.

Output: a cited dossier, scored on the actual program statute, with the earmark backstory built in. The Business Development lead spends their Tuesday on the pitch, not on the research.

How it works

Three steps. The longest one is making coffee while the agent runs.

01
Sign your institution up.
Email + password (or Google). One person from your sponsored-programs office creates the workspace; the 30-day trial gives you 3 dossier runs and 1 seat — no card.
Create workspace
02
Submit an institution.
Type 'Ohio State University' (or pick from the typeahead by UNITID), select focus areas (STEM Research, Health Research, Humanities & Arts, Workforce / Career-Tech, Student Success, MSI Capacity, Land-Grant Capacity, Infrastructure / Facilities), hit submit. The agent streams progress as it works.
03
Read, share, pitch.
An eight-minute dossier with ranked programs, three-axis scoring, peer benchmarks against Carnegie R1 / R2 / M1 medians, designation provenance, and step-by-step application guidance — saved to your workspace, exportable to PDF, ready to brief leadership.

Pricing

Annual or monthly. No per-seat policing. Cancel from the Stripe portal anytime.

Every tier includes the full agent + the live earmark feed. Pay annually and save ~17 % vs. monthly, or pay month-to-month if your finance team prefers it. Caps scale with team size; the cap that matters in practice is dossier runs per month.

Practice
For regional firms and single-practice teams.
$15,000/ year
or $1,500 / month
Start a 30-day trial
- 5 named users
- 30 dossier runs per month
- Unlimited earmark browser
- PDF dossier export
- Email support · 2-business-day SLA
Recommended
Growth
For multi-office firms and dedicated federal practice teams.
$45,000/ year
or $4,500 / month
Start a 30-day trial
- 20 named users
- 150 dossier runs per month
- Saved client portfolios + alerts
- Slack / MS Teams earmark alerts
- Comparative dossiers across cities
- Quarterly DuBois practice review
- 1-business-day support SLA
Enterprise
For ENR Top-100 firms and DuBois strategic partners.
Custom
Talk to us
- Unlimited users
- 500+ dossier runs per month
- SSO (SAML / OIDC)
- Read-only API access
- White-label dossier branding
- Dedicated CSM · 99.5% uptime SLA

Engagement Services (custom strategy work led by DuBois Company practitioners using Strategic Pursuit as the analytical backbone) is sold separately on a per-engagement basis, $25K–$100K.

FAQ

The eight questions sponsored-programs offices and consultants ask before signing up.

Start a workspace

Eight minutes from now you could be reading a dossier on a city your Business Development team is pitching tomorrow.

30-day trial, 3 dossier runs, 1 seat. No credit card. If it doesn't replace 20 hours of analyst time in the first month, don't upgrade.

Create your workspace Already have an account? Sign in.

A week of cross-referencing solicitations.
One eight-minute dossier.

Covers

STEM Research

Health Research

Humanities & Arts

Workforce / Career-Tech

MSI Capacity

Land-Grant Capacity

Trial3 runs · 1 seat · no card

Sources9 federal · 2M+ data points pre-loaded

CrosswalkUEI ↔ IPEDS UNITID, weekly refresh

32 higher-ed federal programs are scored on every institution dossier.

A week of cross-referencing solicitations. One eight-minute dossier.

IPEDS HD

IPEDS HERD

NSF Awards

NIH RePORTER

USAspending higher-ed

USDA NIFA

FSA Title IV

ED OPE designations

Grants.gov live

Stop hand-mapping NSF, NIH, and ED solicitations to your campus.

See HBCU, HSI, AANAPISI, TCU, and land-grant programs scored on the right statute.

Place your federal research portfolio against the right peer set.

Business Development analyst, Tuesday

Strategic Pursuit, same Tuesday

Sign your institution up.

Submit an institution.

Read, share, pitch.

01How accurate are CFDA numbers and statutory citations?ExpandCollapse

02How does scoring handle HSI / MSI / TCU / HBCU eligibility?ExpandCollapse

03How are NIH and NSF awards joined to my institution?ExpandCollapse

04Does Strategic Pursuit comply with NIH RePORTER's rate limits?ExpandCollapse

05Can my whole sponsored-programs office use it, or just one person?ExpandCollapse

06How does this differ from Pivot, InfoEd SPIN, or GrantForward?ExpandCollapse

07What data is OFF-LIMITS?ExpandCollapse

08What plan should an institution start on?ExpandCollapse

Eight minutes from now you could be reading a dossier on a city your Business Development team is pitching tomorrow.

A week of cross-referencing solicitations. One eight-minute dossier.

IPEDS HD

IPEDS HERD

NSF Awards

NIH RePORTER

USAspending higher-ed

USDA NIFA

FSA Title IV

ED OPE designations

Grants.gov live

Stop hand-mapping NSF, NIH, and ED solicitations to your campus.

See HBCU, HSI, AANAPISI, TCU, and land-grant programs scored on the right statute.

Place your federal research portfolio against the right peer set.

Business Development analyst, Tuesday

Strategic Pursuit, same Tuesday

Sign your institution up.

Submit an institution.

Read, share, pitch.

01How accurate are CFDA numbers and statutory citations?ExpandCollapse

02How does scoring handle HSI / MSI / TCU / HBCU eligibility?ExpandCollapse

03How are NIH and NSF awards joined to my institution?ExpandCollapse

04Does Strategic Pursuit comply with NIH RePORTER's rate limits?ExpandCollapse

05Can my whole sponsored-programs office use it, or just one person?ExpandCollapse

06How does this differ from Pivot, InfoEd SPIN, or GrantForward?ExpandCollapse

07What data is OFF-LIMITS?ExpandCollapse

08What plan should an institution start on?ExpandCollapse

Eight minutes from now you could be reading a dossier on a city your Business Development team is pitching tomorrow.

A week of cross-referencing solicitations.
One eight-minute dossier.

A week of cross-referencing solicitations.
One eight-minute dossier.