Healthy Marriage Promotion and Responsible Fatherhood Grants

This program works on strengthening families, with a range of different approaches. Under the HEART (Helping Every Area of Relationships Thrive) opportunity, projects support activities to promote healthy marriages and/or relationships to ultimately

All projects under this program have a goal to strengthen families. Healthy Marriage promotion funds organizations that provide services designed to integrate skills-based healthy marriage education, along with additional services to address relationship skills and job and career advancement opportunities. Responsible Fatherhood promotion funds organizations that provide a broad array of services to promote or sustain healthy marriage and relationships (including couple and co-parenting), strengthen positive father-child engagement, and improve employment and economic stability opportunities. A portion of the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood funding is available for Tribal TANF Child Welfare awards which fund tribal governments or tribal consortia to coordinate the provision of services to tribal families at risk of child abuse or neglect of child welfare services and services under tribal programs.

Under the Healthy Marriage Promotion provision of the legislation, all public and private entities are eligible to apply (including, state, territorial, local, and quasi-governmental agencies, Native American tribal governments and tribal organizations, nonprofit organizations, independent school districts, public, private or Tribal institutions of higher education, and for-profit entities). Eligible applicants under Responsible Fatherhood include: states, territories, Native American tribes and tribal organizations, and public and nonprofit community entities (including public and private nonprofit post-secondary educational institutions). Individuals (including sole proprietorships) and foreign entities are not eligible. Faith-based and community organizations that meet the eligibility requirements are eligible. The eligible applicants under the Tribal TANF and Child Welfare Services program are: Indian tribes and Alaska Native regional non-profits that administer a Tribal TANF program or a consortia of two or more Indian tribes.

Persons who may benefit from the assistance includes, individuals, couples, and youth in need of assistance with Healthy Marriage services. For the Responsible Fatherhood programs, beneficiaries are fathers (with children who are up to age 24) interested in Responsible Fatherhood activities, including parenting education, economic stability services, and marriage and relationship education (recipients may not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, age, disability, or religion) . Tribal TANF Child Welfare funds assist in the efforts to enhance and expand the ability of tribes and tribal consortia to assist tribal families at risk of child abuse or neglect of child welfare services and services under tribal TANF.

Healthy Marriage Promotion activities include the following: (I) Public advertising campaigns on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health. (II) Education in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills, and budgeting. (III) Marriage education, marriage skills, and relationship skills programs, that may include parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement. (IV) Pre-marital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples and for couples or individuals interested in marriage. (V) Marriage enhancement and marriage skills training programs for married couples. (VI) Divorce reduction programs that teach relationship skills. (VII) Marriage mentoring programs which use married couples as role models and mentors in at-risk communities. (VIII) Programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage in means-tested aid programs, if offered in conjunction with any activity described in this subparagraph. Responsible Fatherhood activities include: (I) Activities to promote marriage or sustain marriage through activities such as counseling, mentoring, disseminating information about the benefits of marriage and 2-parent involvement for children, enhancing relationship skills, education regarding how to control aggressive behavior, disseminating information on the causes of domestic violence and child abuse, marriage preparation programs, premarital counseling, marital inventories, skills-based marriage education, financial planning seminars, including improving a family's ability to effectively manage family business affairs by means such as education, counseling, or mentoring on matters related to family finances, including household management, budgeting, banking, and handling of financial transactions and home maintenance, and divorce education and reduction programs, including mediation and counseling. (II) Activities to promote responsible parenting through activities such as counseling, mentoring, and mediation, disseminating information about good parenting practices, skills-based parenting education, encouraging child support payments, and other methods. (III) Activities to foster economic stability by helping fathers improve their economic status by providing activities such as work first services, job search, job training, subsidized employment, job retention, job enhancement, and encouraging education, including career-advancing education, dissemination of employment materials, coordination with existing employment services such as welfare-to-work programs, referrals to local employment training initiatives, and other methods. For TTCW, recipients may use funds to (I) to improve case management for families eligible for assistance from such a tribal program; (II) to provide supportive services and assistance to tribal children in out-of-home placements and the tribal families caring for such children, including families who adopt such children; and (III) to provide prevention services and assistance to tribal families at risk of child abuse and neglect.

See also NOFO for additional information.

The awards are made for a five year project period, with annual appropriations for both HMRF and TT-CW.

The criteria for selecting proposals will be published in the HMRF and TTCW NOFOs.

The competitive award for all three programs under this listing was conducted in September 2025 for a 5-year project period. We do not anticipate the making of new awards until 2030, assuming congressional appropriation. The award procedure is: Each application is reviewed against four factors: eligibility, application deadline, required electronic submission or waiver requested and approved, and the Award Ceiling. If the applicant does not meet all of these factors, then it is disqualified from the merit review process. After the initial review, applications are reviewed and evaluated by merit review panels using only the criteria described in the Application Review section of the NOFO. Each panel is composed of experts with knowledge and experience in the area under review. Generally, review panels include three reviewers and one chairperson. While the merit review scores and their ranking are not binding, ACF does consider them when selecting projects for funding. Scores and rankings are only one element used in the award decision-making process. Other criteria are explained in the Program Description section and the Application Review section of the NOFO. For example, ACF may reserve the right to evaluate applications in the larger context of the overall portfolio by considering geographic distribution of federal funds (e.g., ensuring coverage of states, counties, or service areas) in its pre-award decisions. ACF will complete a review of risk posed by applicants as described in 45 CFR 75.205, or on or after October 1, 2025, 2 CFR 200.206. ACF may elect not to fund applicants with management or financial problems that would indicate an inability to successfully complete the proposed project. In addition, ACF may elect not to allow a prime recipient to subaward if there is any indication they are unable to properly monitor and manage subrecipients. Applications may be funded in whole or in part. Successful applicants may be funded at an amount lower than req

All awards were approved/disapproved by September 2025.

Non-competing continuations will be issued based on availability of funds, satisfactory progress, compliance with award terms and conditions and a determination that continuation funding is in the best interest of the federal government.

There is no appeal process for unsuccessful applicants. For existing recipients, appeals in regards to disputes may take place in accordance with 45 CFR Part 16, subject to the limitations of the Appendix A.