If you are planning to apply for federal funding, one of the very first things you need to do is register with the System for Award Management (SAM) and obtain a Unique Entity ID (UEI).
Why It’s Important
Grants.gov is where all federal agencies post their discretionary grant opportunities. By centralizing more than 1,000 different grant programs, applicants can apply to many different federal agencies and grant programs using just one, secure login. Before applying for federal grants at grants.gov, System for Award Management (SAM) registration is required. If your organization is planning to apply for any type of federal grant, it is very important to complete the free SAM registration well in advance of the application deadline and make sure to renew it every year before the annual sam.gov renewal deadline.
The SAM registration process can take several weeks, so start early. Additionally, your entity’s SAM registration will need to be renewed every 365 days. We recommend starting your renewal 45–60 days before your registration expires.
In the process of registering at SAM, your entity will also be assigned a Unique Entity ID (UEI). (Note: as of April 2022, the federal government replaced the use of DUNS numbers with UEI numbers to identify entities for federal grant purposes. If your entity previously registered with SAM, you can find your UEI by following these steps). If no one at your organization can currently sign in to your entity’s SAM.gov record, you can still look up your UEI with SAM.gov’s public entity search, as long as your record is public. See Step 11 below for how to restore administrator access.
Again, in order to apply to grants through grants.gov and be eligible to receive federal grant awards, you must have completed SAM registration and obtained a UEI for the entity you represent.
We cannot emphasize strongly enough how important it is to start this process early, well ahead of any grant proposal deadlines!
How To
Below is a simplified step-by-step summary of how the process works. For more details, download the official SAM.GOV Quick Start Guide for Financial Assistance Registrations here.
You can also find many resources at the Federal Service Desk site including a Live Chat option.
- Visit sam.gov to register.
WARNING: Make sure you are on sam.gov. Type it directly into your browser. There are several for-profit companies that advertise themselves as SAM registration and will show up at the top of google search results. They WILL take your money and complicate the whole process. The legitimate sam.gov registration is FREE.
2. Click on the green “Get Started” button
TIP: This can be a complicated process. If you have questions or need any assistance, contact the experts at GSA. At the very bottom of the SAM page you will find help and contact links. The help link takes you to guides and FAQs, the contact link takes you to live chat and phone call options.
3. Before proceeding, read through the “Before You Get Started” information on the page and download the “Entity Registration Checklist” (also available from the Federal Service Desk: Quick Start Guide: Entity Registration Checklist; grant seekers only need the “Financial Assistance Awards Only” section). Once you have all of the necessary items prepared you can proceed with registration.
4. When you have all necessary information prepared, select “Sign In” at the upper right corner of SAM.gov and accept the U.S. Government System terms. You will be taken to login.gov, where you can sign in or select “Create an Account.” Once you’ve made your login.gov account you’ll be ready to sign in to SAM and proceed with your registration. You should use the email address you plan to use for all of your grants.gov correspondence in perpetuity (forever). This should be an email address your organization will ALWAYS have access to. It is incredibly difficult to gain access to SAM or Grants.gov without this email address. Once you are signed in, you’ll be taken to your SAM.gov Workspace. On the “Entities” widget, select “Get Started,” then select “Create New Entity.”
5. SAM.gov will ask a few questions about your goals and then suggest a purpose of registration. For grants, choose “Financial Assistance Awards Only.” (Choose “All Awards” only if you also plan to bid on federal contracts; it requires more information.) Do not choose “Get a Unique Entity ID Only.” That option is not a registration, and you cannot receive a federal grant directly with a Unique Entity ID alone. You will also be asked whether you are registering a government entity. Choose “Yes” if you represent a city, county, or other unit of government, and “No” if you are a nonprofit.
6. The next step in the registration process will be to validate your entity. You cannot be assigned a UEI until your organization is validated. You will be instructed to search for your entity (i.e., business, non-profit, local government entity, etc.) by name. You may find you are already correctly listed in the results. If not, you will have to go through a validation process. Please be aware that if you must complete a validation process, you will likely need to attach documents that prove your legal business name, address, state of incorporation, and start year. There are detailed instructions and guides available for the validation process through the SAM.gov help pages. You’ll want to watch your email closely during the validation process. This could take several weeks. Once your entity is validated, you may then return to your SAM registration efforts.
Note! Organizations with rural addresses may be more likely to find their entity information is listed incorrectly or not at all. This situation will require an entity validation process, which we’ve covered in a separate article, SAM Registration – Dealing with Entity Validation Hurdles. Organizations with a rural address may take a few extra weeks to process.
7. After your entity is validated, you will be asked whether you want your entity record to be publicly displayed in SAM.gov. Choose YES. If your record is hidden, state and local governments and other non-federal organizations will not be able to find you in SAM.gov, even though your basic information is still available to federal users and in public data downloads. You will then certify that you are authorized to act on behalf of the entity, and your Unique Entity ID will be displayed. Select “Continue Registration” to complete the rest of your registration.
8. Other sections of the registration process will have you assign key “Points of Contact” and certify your adherence to certain regulatory requirements. The three required points of contact are the Accounts Receivable, Electronic Business, and Government Business contacts. SAM.gov sends messages about problems with your registration to the Government Business contact, so make sure that person watches their email, including spam or junk folders, while your registration is processed.
9. When you have completed all sections of the registration MAKE SURE YOU HIT SUBMIT! You will get a “Registration Submitted” confirmation message on the screen. IF YOU DO NOT SEE THIS CONFIRMATION MESSAGE, your registration IS NOT SUBMITTED. If you need to stop partway through, you can pick up where you left off from your SAM.gov Workspace, but a registration that is not edited or submitted within 90 days will be removed.
10. You will receive an email from SAM.gov when your registration is active. Allow at least 10 business days, and it can take much longer if an issue is found.
11. The person who registers your entity is automatically assigned the Entity Administrator role. We strongly recommend assigning the same role to at least one other person in your organization as a backup. If your only Entity Administrator leaves and no one else has the role, you will need to submit a notarized Entity Administrator Appointment Letter to the Federal Service Desk to appoint a new one, which can delay your renewal. The new administrator must be an employee, officer, or board member, not an outside consultant. To submit a letter:
- Navigate to www.fsd.gov
- Search the knowledge base for “How can I become the new administrator for our entity registration?”
- Download the appropriate template for “single” domestic entity.
- Have the letter notarized and scanned.
- Submit the scanned letter to the Federal Service Desk (www.fsd.gov) by following the instructions in the knowledge base article.
For more detailed information, see the Federal Service Desk article How do I register a new entity or obtain a new Unique Entity ID in SAM.gov?