International Association Of Wildland Fire

International Association of Wildland Fire, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization headquartered in Missoula, Montana, operates as a federal grant recipient and event organizer supporting wildland fire research, management coordination, and inter-agency communication for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

IAWF operates exclusively as a prime grant recipient with no subcontractor footprint; all 31 federal awards in the source data represent direct grants or cooperative agreements rather than contract work. The organization does not compete on federal contract vehicles and has received no set-aside designations across its award history. IAWF's work centers on hosting and organizing major international conferences and symposia that bring together wildland fire researchers, practitioners, and policy officials to disseminate scientific findings and coordinate management strategy — a capability portfolio grounded entirely in event management and inter-organizational liaison functions rather than research performance or consulting services.

IAWF's federal customer base splits primarily between the USDA Forest Service and NASA Shared Services Center. The Forest Service accounts for nine awards across multiple organizational units (Forest Service headquarters, Washington Office Acquisitions, and the R6-Pacific Northwest Region), while NASA Shared Services Center anchors the dollar value with eight awards carrying $178 thousand in combined potential value. The Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and several other agencies round out a ten-agency customer set, with the top five customers (by award count) covering 84% of recent awards. The combined potential value across all 31 awards is $243 thousand, though obligated dollars total $2.5 million — indicating that actual invoiced amounts have exceeded original ceiling estimates, a pattern common in cooperative-agreement work where final costs exceed initial projections.

Recent representative work includes a $49,630 project grant from NASA Shared Services Center (awarded October 2023, completion September 2025) to host the 7th International Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference in Missoula, a $196 thousand Cooperative Agreement from USDA Forest Service under the State & Private Forestry Cooperative Fire Assistance program (CFDA 10.698, awarded April 2024, completion December 2026) to enhance collaboration in wildland fire management through international conferences and inter-agency coordination, and a $55,115 project grant from NASA (awarded June 2022, completion June 2023) for the IAWF Fire & Climate Conference. A current cooperative agreement with USDA Forest Service Acquisitions (awarded January 2025, completion December 2025) funds IAWF's role as liaison between federal and non-federal wildland fire organizations to communicate National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy updates through pre-fire season conferences. Award activity has remained sparse and flat across the past five years, with two awards in 2020 and 2022, two in 2023, and single awards each in 2024 and 2025.