STOP Act Grant: Eligibility, Funding, and Grantee Requirements

A STOP Act grant is a federal award from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) that pays community coalitions up to $60,000 a year, for as long as four years, to expand local work against underage drinking. Authorized by the Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act (Public Law 109-422), the program is limited to nonprofits that already hold, or once held, a Drug Free Communities (DFC) Support Program award. The FY 2026 cycle (SP-26-001) opened June 15, 2026 and closes July 15, 2026, with roughly $1.96 million available and about 32 awards expected.¹

Who Can Apply

Eligibility is narrow. Only domestic public and private nonprofit entities that are current or former recipients of the DFC Support Program may apply, and every applicant has to include a letter certifying that DFC status.² The rule assumes a working coalition is already in place before STOP Act money arrives on top of it.

If your coalition already holds an active STOP Act grant, you can apply for another one only if the new project covers a different target population or geographic area. Current recipients are capped at one additional award. New applicants can hold no more than two awards total, and each has to cover a distinct population or catchment area.²

How Much the Grant Pays

Each award is capped at $60,000 per year in total costs, covering both direct and indirect expenses. Administrative (indirect) costs cannot exceed 6% of the total award. Grants run up to four years, and there is no cost-sharing or match requirement. Food is not an allowable expense.²

The money is meant for capacity building. It funds a coalition’s ability to plan, run, and sustain prevention strategies aimed at people under 21. It does not pay for treatment services.²

What Grantees Have to Do

SAMHSA prescribes a required set of activities anchored in two frameworks: SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework and CADCA’s Seven Strategies for Community Level Change. Within 120 days of the award, the grantee has to develop a logic model and a 12-month action plan built on those frameworks.²

Every grantee must also:

Identify and implement evidence-based, evidence-informed, or community-defined prevention strategies targeting underage drinking.
Form a youth advisory group that helps shape the program.
Convene town halls to gather community feedback and use the input to guide action.
Strengthen coordination among federal, state, local, and tribal agencies.
Submit a Differential Impact Statement within 90 days of the award, identifying whether the program is reaching populations disproportionately affected by underage drinking and tracking progress on closing gaps.²

Optional activities include adapting materials from SAMHSA’s national “Talk. They Hear You.”® campaign, offering culturally and trauma-informed training for youth-serving professionals, and running alcohol-free youth events with community partners.²

Grantees are also required to work with CADCA, the Strategic Prevention Technical Assistance Center, and the Prevention Technology Transfer Center to share best practices and extend prevention messaging.²

How to Apply

Applications go in electronically through Grants.gov or the eRA ASSIST system. Before you can submit anything, your organization needs to be registered with SAM.gov (to obtain a Unique Entity Identifier) and set up in eRA Commons. SAMHSA recommends starting that registration work at least six weeks before the deadline. Private nonprofits also have to submit proof of tax-exempt status.²

The application itself has five main components:

A one-page project abstract.
A project narrative of up to 10 pages covering the needs assessment for the target area and population (youth ages 12 to 20), the implementation approach, organizational experience and staffing, and the data collection plan.
A budget narrative.
Required attachments, including letters of commitment and a project timeline.
Standard federal forms.²

Watch the submission cap. For FY 2026, SAMHSA said it would accept only the first 60 complete applications received through eRA before closing the portal, and it expects to make roughly 32 awards out of $1.96 million in available funding. The FY 2026 window runs from June 15, 2026 to July 15, 2026.¹

Reporting and Continuation Funding

Under the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010, grantees set annual performance targets and submit quarterly updates through SAMHSA’s Performance Accountability and Reporting System (SPARS). Quarterly data includes people reached through population-level prevention efforts and people served through individual-level activities, broken down by gender, ethnicity, race, and age.³

Annually or biennially, coalitions also have to collect local survey data across at least three grade levels between 6th and 12th grade, measuring four things: past 30-day alcohol use, perception of risk or harm from alcohol, perception of parental disapproval, and perception of peer disapproval.⁴ Annual programmatic progress reports go through eRA Commons within 90 days of the end of each budget period.²

Continuation funding is not automatic. Each year, it depends on the availability of appropriations, the grantee’s progress toward stated goals, on-time submission of every required report, and compliance with the award’s terms. SAMHSA may also require grantees to take part in a cross-site evaluation if one is funded.³

What the Program Is Trying to Move

A 2017 report to Congress found that past-month alcohol use among people ages 12 to 20 had declined 29.2% since 2004, and binge drinking in that age group dropped 30% between 2004 and 2014. Alcohol-related traffic deaths among young people ages 16 to 20 fell 79% between 1982 and the report’s publication. The report attributed those changes to the coordinated federal approach involving the 15 agencies of the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Prevention of Underage Drinking, working alongside state and local efforts.⁵

That is the target your STOP Act application has to speak to: measurable local movement on youth alcohol use, tied to evidence-based prevention strategies and documented through the survey measures SAMHSA already tracks.

1
Simpler Grants.gov. Sober Truth on Preventing Underage Drinking Act Grants SP-26-001
2
SAMHSA. FY 2025 STOP Act Grants NOFO
3
SAMHSA. FY 2024 STOP Act Grant NOFO
4
SPARS/SAMHSA. STOP Act Community Outcomes Reference Guide
5
NIAAA. Report to Congress on the Prevention and Reduction of Underage Drinking