BJA Find Funding Opportunities

Purpose

Enumerate U.S. DOJ Bureau of Justice Assistance funding opportunities listed on bja.ojp.gov and return them as structured JSON. For each opportunity surface: title, opportunity ID (O-BJA-YYYY-XXXXX), status (open / closed), solicitation type (Competitive / Formula / Non-Competitive / etc.), primary topic + free-text tag list, posting date, closing date, Grants.gov deadline, JustGrants deadline, short description preview, eligible applicant types when parseable, detail-page URL on bja.ojp.gov, and the NOFO PDF URL on ojp.gov. Read-only — no application submitted.

When to Use

• Daily / weekly polling for newly-posted BJA funding announcements.
• Topic-, keyword-, or applicant-type-scoped queries against the BJA catalog (e.g. "currently open drug-court opportunities for tribal governments").
• Bulk extraction of the BJA NOFO PDF index for a downstream PDF parser (which then resolves award_min / award_max / expected_number_of_awards / total_program_funding — those live only inside the PDF; see Site-Specific Gotchas).
• Comparing the open queue against past awards (/funding/expired) for trend analysis.

Workflow

The BJA funding listing is a thin Drupal 10 view over a public JSON API at https://bja.ojp.gov/funding-api/*. No auth, no cookies, no anti-bot — verified during 2026-05-19 testing with bare browse cloud fetch (no stealth, no residential proxy). Lead with the JSON API; only fall back to the HTML cards when you need a filter dimension the API doesn't honor and you don't want to filter client-side. The browser is overkill — the entire skill can run in 2 HTTP requests.

1. Pick the right endpoint by status

Both supported endpoints return 200 OK with Content-Type: application/json and an array of opportunity records. Filter query string parameters (?search=, ?form_topic=, ?funding_category=) are silently ignored by the API — see gotchas. Filter client-side after fetching.

2. Decode each record

API rows have these keys (lowercase; types as observed 2026-05-19):

{
  "origin_site": "BJA",                                       // always "BJA"
  "title": "FY25 Byrne State Crisis Intervention Formula Program",
  "url": "https://bja.ojp.gov/funding/opportunities/o-bja-2025-172582",
  "field_closing_date": "2026-05-19T20:59:59",                // ISO-8601, local-Eastern as Z-naive
  "field_grants_gov_deadline": "2026-05-12T23:59:59",         // ISO-8601
  "field_app_justgrants_deadline": "2026-05-19T20:59:59",     // ISO-8601 (usually == closing_date)
  "code_body": "",                                            // always empty in observed runs
  "field_funding_type": "Formula",                            // Competitive | Competitive Discretionary | Formula | Continuation | Non-Competitive | Noncompetitive Discretionary
  "name": "Courts",                                           // primary topic (see topic taxonomy below)
  "tags": "Crisis response, Formula NOFOs, Crisis intervention, Violent crime, ...",  // comma-separated free-text tags
  "body": "Jmx0O3AmZ3Q7..."                                   // **base64-encoded HTML preview, truncated** — see gotcha
}

To produce the requested output shape:

• grant_name = title
• opportunity_id = uppercase the last URL segment: o-bja-2025-172582 → O-BJA-2025-172582.
• status = derived from which endpoint you called (current_funding_data → open, expired_funding_data → closed).
• solicitation_type = field_funding_type (string enum above).
• primary_topic = name.
• topic_tags = tags.split(", ") (comma + space). Free-text — includes program names, controlled topics, and ad-hoc descriptors mixed together.
• close_date = field_closing_date (this is the final hard application deadline = JustGrants deadline).
• grants_gov_deadline = field_grants_gov_deadline (SF-424 pre-submission, typically 7 days before close_date).
• justgrants_deadline = field_app_justgrants_deadline.
• description_preview = decode and strip HTML from body:

  let body = Buffer.from(item.body, "base64").toString("utf8");
  // Drupal double-encodes: &lt; → <, etc.
  body = body.replace(/&lt;/g,'<').replace(/&gt;/g,'>')
             .replace(/&amp;/g,'&').replace(/&quot;/g,'"').replace(/&nbsp;/g,' ');
  const description_preview = body.replace(/<[^>]+>/g,' ').replace(/\s+/g,' ').trim();
  

  The decoded body is truncated to roughly 700–1500 chars and ends in .... For the full description, fetch the NOFO PDF (out of scope for this skill).
• eligible_applicant_types = parse the <ul> block following <strong>Eligible Applicants:</strong> in the decoded body. The structure is two-level (top-level Government Entities: / Nonprofits: / Other: groupings, each containing leaf <li> items like State governments, County governments, Native American Tribal governments (federally recognized)). This list is also truncated in many records — the body cut-off can fall mid-<ul>. If you need a complete, verified applicant list, fall back to the NOFO PDF.
• detail_url = url (already canonical).
• nofo_pdf_url = derivable from the opportunity_id WITHOUT fetching the detail page:

  const slug = item.url.split('/').pop();           // "o-bja-2025-172582"
  const pdfSlug = slug.replace(/^o-/, '');          // "bja-2025-172582"
  const nofo_pdf_url = `https://www.ojp.gov/funding/docs/${pdfSlug}.pdf`;
  

  Verified working pattern across all 7 currently-open opportunities (2026-05-19). The PDF is hosted on www.ojp.gov, not bja.ojp.gov. Older expired solicitations (FY2018 and earlier) often lack a NOFO PDF entirely — emit null and skip if the URL 404s.

3. Apply client-side filters

Because the API ignores filter params, do all filtering in your decode step:

Observed topic taxonomy (from the listing page's <select name="form_topic">, with Drupal taxonomy term IDs — useful only for the HTML fallback in step 4):

This is narrower than the prompt's claimed BJA vocabulary ("Officer Safety", "Justice Information Sharing", "Victim Services", etc.) — those labels do not appear in the filter UI. Topic-tags like "Officer safety and wellness" do appear inside the free-text tags field, so use substring matching on tags for topics outside the controlled list above.

4. Browser / HTML fallback (only if you need server-side filtering)

Skip this unless the client-side filter pass in step 3 is unworkable (e.g. you only want a count, not the records, and want to avoid downloading the whole catalog). The HTML listing does honor filter params via Drupal Views — but each card only exposes title + 3 dates (no topic, no tags, no body, no eligible applicants), so this loses ~80% of the structured data the API gives you. Cards are at <article class="listing-item listing-item--funding_opportunity"> with selector pattern:

/funding/current?search=<urlenc>&form_topic=<termID>&funding_category=<Competitive|Formula|...>&sort_by=field_closing_date_value&sort_order=ASC&page=<N>

Or for closed: /funding/expired?… (same param set). Pagination uses ?page=N zero-indexed, 25 cards per page. Per-card extraction regex from the listing HTML:

• detail URL: <a href="(/funding/opportunities/[a-z0-9-]+)">
• title: <span class="field field--name-title[^"]*">([^<]+)</span> inside that anchor
• close date: inside field--name-field-closing-date block → <time datetime="([^"]+)"
• grants.gov deadline: same pattern inside field--name-field-grants-gov-deadline
• justgrants deadline: same pattern inside field--name-field-app-justgrants-deadline

To enrich beyond those four fields from the HTML path, you have to fetch each detail page (bja.ojp.gov/funding/opportunities/{slug}) — which still does not expose award amounts or full applicant lists; it adds only Opportunity ID, Solicitation Status, Fiscal Year, Posting Date, Solicitation Type, and the NOFO PDF download link. The API gives you strictly more, faster. Use the HTML path only as a tie-breaker when the API path is unavailable.

Site-Specific Gotchas

• The API ignores filter query strings. ?search=…, ?form_topic=…, ?funding_category=… are accepted (200 OK) but the response is unchanged — verified by appending ?search=crisis&form_topic=61066 and still getting all 7 current items back. The HTML listing path (/funding/current?search=…) does honor these. The form's action="/funding-api/current_funding_data" is misleading — clicking submit on the rendered form actually reloads the HTML view with the params, not the JSON endpoint.
• forecasted status does not exist on BJA. Verified 2026-05-19: /funding/forecasted, /funding/anticipated, /funding/upcoming, /funding/expected, /funding/archive all return 404. /funding-api/forecasted_funding_data, /funding-api/anticipated_funding_data, /funding-api/upcoming_funding_data all return 200 OK but with a zero-length body (Drupal's behavior for non-existent REST views). BJA only publishes "currently available" (/funding/current) and "past" (/funding/expired). Do not invent a forecasted result set; return an empty array with the note in step 1.
• /funding/expected and /funding/archive from the prompt's input spec are wrong. They return 404. The correct paths are /funding/current and /funding/expired. The prompt's "Past Funding" sidebar link confirms this: it points to /funding/expired.
• The body field is base64-encoded AND HTML-entity-double-encoded AND truncated. Decoding chain: Buffer.from(body, 'base64').toString('utf8') → < → <, > → >, & → &, " → ",   → → strip remaining tags. Truncation cuts at ~700–1500 chars decoded and ends with literal .... Eligible-applicants lists are often cut off mid-<ul> — confidence on applicant-type filtering is low for any record whose body ends in .... The full description lives only in the NOFO PDF.
• NOFO PDF URL is derivable, not surfaced. The API does not include a pdf_url field. Construct: take the URL slug (o-bja-2025-172582), strip the leading o- (→ bja-2025-172582), and prefix with https://www.ojp.gov/funding/docs/ and suffix with .pdf. The detail page also includes a class="usa-button usa-button--big" Download anchor pointing at the same URL — fetch the detail page only if you want to verify the PDF exists before emitting the URL.
• Older (FY2018 and earlier) opportunities often lack a NOFO PDF. The detail page for bja-2018-13620 has no field-opportunity-document block — older records were imported from a legacy system that only carries title/status/dates/opportunity_id. Treat nofo_pdf_url as nullable.
• expired_funding_data is capped at 500 rows. The HTML view /funding/expired paginates over 49 pages × 25 cards = ~1225 historical records, but the JSON endpoint returns at most 500 (most-recent-first ordering). For deeper historical extraction, fall back to HTML pagination — /funding/expired?page=0..48&sort_by=field_closing_date_value&sort_order=DESC.
• Award amounts, expected number of awards, and total program funding are NOT exposed on bja.ojp.gov at all. Not in the API, not on the listing card, not on the detail page. They live exclusively inside the NOFO PDF body text (typically under headings like "Eligibility" → "Award Information" → "Award Amount" / "Number of Awards" / "Total Amount Available"). Any filter on award_min / award_max requires a NOFO PDF parser — explicitly out of scope per this skill's contract. Emit those fields as null and pass the PDF URL through.
• field_closing_date is Eastern time but serialized as Z-naive. Format is YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS with no timezone suffix — the underlying value is Eastern (EST/EDT) as shown on the detail page ("8:59 pm Eastern"). The detail page's <time datetime="...Z"> ISO attribute renders as Zulu but the displayed "Closing Date" reflects the local Eastern day. When comparing against a user-supplied close_after / close_before, treat the API value as America/New_York.
• name (primary topic) is sometimes a default, not a true classification. All 7 currently-open opportunities (2026-05-19) returned "name": "Courts" regardless of subject matter — including the "FY25 Rural Law Enforcement Violent Crime Reduction Initiative" which is clearly law-enforcement-primary, not courts. The tags field is far more reliable for topic classification — it carries 3–13 ordered facets per opportunity covering program name + topic areas + crime types. Filter on tags (case-insensitive substring), not name, for any topic search.
• Topic taxonomy mismatch with prompt. The prompt lists "Officer Safety and Wellness", "Substance Use", "Justice Information Sharing", "Victim Services", "Tribal" — but the listing page's form_topic <select> only exposes 9 controlled terms: Corrections, Courts, Drugs, Forensic sciences, Hate crimes, Law enforcement, Mental health, Tribal justice, Violent crime. The prompt's broader vocabulary appears to be BJA's editorial Program Areas (visible on /program/{slug} pages) rather than the funding-listing filter taxonomy. For prompts that reference an out-of-controlled-list topic, substring-match against tags instead of name.
• Solicitation Status on the detail page is one of: Open, Closed, Forecasted (theoretically) — but in practice you'll only see Open and Closed. No record observed during 2026-05-19 testing exposed a Forecasted solicitation status on its detail page.
• No anti-bot, no auth, no rate-limit-evidence. Site is fronted by Cloudflare + Drupal 10 + Varnish, but every endpoint above returned 200 OK from a bare browse cloud fetch with no proxies, no stealth, and no cookies. 8 sequential requests during testing produced no 429 / 403 / captcha. Still, keep ≤ 1 req/s sustained as a courtesy — the API is uncached (X-Drupal-Dynamic-Cache: UNCACHEABLE).
• Field name surprise: code_body is always empty. Don't try to parse it. The real description preview is in body (base64).
• origin_site is hardcoded "BJA" in the BJA mini-site's API. Other OJP bureaus (NIJ, OJJDP, OVC, COPS) likely host their own parallel *.ojp.gov/funding-api/current_funding_data endpoints with origin_site differing; this skill is scoped to BJA only.

Expected Output

{
  "source": "https://bja.ojp.gov/funding-api/current_funding_data",
  "fetched_at": "2026-05-19T18:53:23Z",
  "status_filter": "open",
  "total_results": 7,
  "filters_applied": {
    "keyword": null,
    "topic": null,
    "eligible_applicant_type": null,
    "close_after": null,
    "close_before": null,
    "award_min": null,
    "award_max": null
  },
  "items": [
    {
      "grant_name": "FY25 Byrne State Crisis Intervention Formula Program",
      "opportunity_id": "O-BJA-2025-172582",
      "status": "open",
      "solicitation_type": "Formula",
      "primary_topic": "Courts",
      "topic_tags": [
        "Crisis response", "Formula NOFOs", "Crisis intervention",
        "Violent crime", "Law enforcement", "Violence prevention",
        "Crime prevention", "Mental health", "Drugs", "Substance abuse",
        "Courts", "Gun violence", "Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program (SCIP)"
      ],
      "posting_date": null,
      "close_date": "2026-05-19T20:59:59",
      "close_date_timezone": "America/New_York",
      "grants_gov_deadline": "2026-05-12T23:59:59",
      "justgrants_deadline": "2026-05-19T20:59:59",
      "description_preview": "This funding opportunity will provide funding for the creation or enhancement of state crisis intervention court proceedings and related programs or initiatives, including extreme risk protection order programs, as well as mental health courts, drug courts, and veterans treatment courts. Eligible Applicants: Government Entities: State governments See the Notice of Funding Opportunity for additional opportunity details and directions on how to apply. ...",
      "description_truncated": true,
      "eligible_applicant_types": ["State governments"],
      "eligible_applicant_confidence": "high",
      "award_min": null,
      "award_max": null,
      "expected_number_of_awards": null,
      "total_program_funding": null,
      "detail_url": "https://bja.ojp.gov/funding/opportunities/o-bja-2025-172582",
      "nofo_pdf_url": "https://www.ojp.gov/funding/docs/bja-2025-172582.pdf"
    }
    // ... 6 more
  ]
}

For a forecasted-status request:

{
  "source": "https://bja.ojp.gov/funding/current",
  "fetched_at": "2026-05-19T18:53:23Z",
  "status_filter": "forecasted",
  "total_results": 0,
  "items": [],
  "note": "BJA does not publish a forecasted/anticipated funding queue. /funding/forecasted, /funding/anticipated, /funding/upcoming, /funding/expected, /funding/archive all return 404. /funding-api/forecasted_funding_data returns 200 OK with an empty body. Closest substitute: monitor Grants.gov directly or subscribe to BJA's notification list."
}

For a closed-status request (uses the expired endpoint, capped at 500 most-recent):

{
  "source": "https://bja.ojp.gov/funding-api/expired_funding_data",
  "fetched_at": "2026-05-19T18:53:23Z",
  "status_filter": "closed",
  "total_results": 500,
  "total_results_truncated": true,
  "truncation_note": "API returns at most 500 most-recent expired records. For older records, paginate /funding/expired?page=0..48 (25/page, ~1225 total).",
  "items": [ /* same shape as above, with status: "closed" */ ]
}