American Society For Microbiology

American Society For Microbiology, doing business as A S M, is a Washington, DC–based tax-exempt non-profit organization that provides scientific publishing, professional development, and workforce training services to federal agencies as a prime recipient and, minimally, as a subrecipient. A S M operates entirely outside set-aside categories — all recent awards are full-and-open — and derives revenue across 302 federal awards spanning contracts and grants from 49 distinct agencies, though the award footprint is heavily concentrated in grant vehicles with limited contract work and low per-award potential values relative to the organization's combined obligated dollars.

A S M's core capability portfolio centers on scientific journal publishing and subscriptions. Recent contract work includes a $471,748 perpetual electronic subscription with the Department of Agriculture issued September 30, 2026, for fifteen specified ASM microbiology journals including Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and Journal of Virology, awarded sole-source under FAR Part 12; a $444,672 definitive contract awarded July 1, 2023, to provide USDA users and on-site public IP-authenticated access to ASM journals through June 2028; and a $2.063 million firm fixed-price definitive contract awarded September 30, 2022, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop an accredited genomic sequencing course for clinical microbiologists, performed in Washington, DC and completed September 29, 2024.

A S M's grant footprint is considerably larger and more diverse. The National Institutes of Health dominates by award count (48 awards across NIH Office of the Director and NIAID offices, though with modest potential values), while the National Science Foundation (13 awards) and CDC (13 awards) round out the top tier. By combined potential value, the Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service leads at $1.8 million across eight awards, followed by CDC at $161 thousand across thirteen awards. Recent grant work includes a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases beginning August 4, 2023, and running through July 31, 2028, to design and operate the ASM MOSAIC program, a five-year initiative supporting early-career scientists from minoritized groups transitioning from postdoctoral positions to tenure-track faculty positions at research-intensive institutions; project grants from the NSF Division of Biological Infrastructure awarded July 15, 2023, and August 15, 2024, to support first-time attendees from community colleges and minority-serving institutions at the ASM Conference for Undergraduate Educators; and an NSF project grant awarded March 15, 2023, for the Microbiology Leaders Evolving and Accountable to Progress (MBIO LEAP) project, a diversity, equity, and inclusion training initiative for microbiology leaders.

A S M's award activity has been sparse in recent years — one award per year in 2024, 2025, and 2026 — with only four awards reaching ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months (combined potential value $445 thousand). The organization holds a single subrecipient grant position: a USAID/Ethiopia Health Security Activity sub-award from Project Hope awarded April 25, 2025. Award categorization reflects the publishing and professional services mix: 67 awards classified as Periodical Publishers, 29 as Professional Organizations, and remainder across laboratory equipment, technical services, and publication categories. The discrepancy between combined potential value ($5 million) and combined obligated dollars ($141 million) reflects the organization's long award history dating to 1993 and substantial cumulative federal investment in microbiology education, diversity pipeline programs, and scientific journal access across federal research and civilian agencies.