How Govtrak Portal works

1. Sign up with your organization's name, contact info, and a login email/password. This creates your account — it doesn't submit anything yet.
2. Pick a jurisdiction and grant program, then fill out your application: project details, a budget, and 12 narrative questions about your project and your organization. Each question has guidance underneath it about what a strong answer covers.
3. Save your progress anytime. Nothing is final until you click Submit — you can leave and come back as many times as you need.
4. Submit when it's complete. Once submitted, the form locks — if something needs to change after that, contact your jurisdiction's staff.

If your jurisdiction instead uploaded your application for you (some jurisdictions accept applications through a separate system), you'll be given a login separately so you can check its status here.

Your application moves through these statuses, roughly in this order:

1. Draft — You're still filling this out. Nothing is submitted yet — save your progress and come back anytime before you submit.
2. Submitted — We've received your application. It's in the queue waiting for a reviewer to be assigned.
3. Under review — One or more reviewers are scoring your application. No action is needed from you right now.
4. Pending final decision — Scoring is complete. A final qualify/disqualify call is being made — no action needed from you right now.
5. Pending council approval — Staff have already said qualify. A final governing-body sign-off is needed before it counts as qualified.
6. Qualified — The application qualified. Next, the City decides whether to recommend it for funding.
7. Disqualified — This application was not approved for funding.
8. Recommended for funding — The City recommended this application for funding. The award decision is next.
9. Not recommended — The City did not recommend this application for funding this cycle.
10. Awarded — Funding was awarded. A project has been created with its required-document checklist attached.
11. Not awarded — This application was not awarded funding this cycle.

Not every application sees "pending council approval" — it only appears for jurisdictions that require an extra governing-body sign-off.

After your application is qualified, the City decides whether to recommend it and then whether to award it. When it is awarded, a project page is created for you; it opens once your City is ready for you to begin. It has:

• A required-documents checklist — each item shows its own due date; upload directly against each one.
• Reimbursement requests — request payment for eligible costs you've already incurred, up to once per calendar month.
• Expenditure pacing — a running comparison of how much you've spent against your award deadline.
• An annual CAPER report — a performance narrative (with optional photos) due once a year.
• Monitoring — only shows up if your jurisdiction selects your project for a compliance review; if it does, you'll see findings and any additional documents requested there.

Your project page shows a one-time welcome summary of all of this the first time you visit — you can dismiss it once you've read it.

Required documents and monitoring items each have a due date shown on your project page. Watch for the Overdue status — click any status badge in the app for a plain-language explanation of what it means and what (if anything) to do next.

If something on your application or project doesn't look right, or you're not sure what a requirement is asking for, contact the jurisdiction you applied to — they manage the checklist and requirements for your award, and can update or clarify anything shown here.