Administrative history of the Obed Wild and Scenic River | P15AS00398

Opportunity Information: Apply for P15AS00398

This grant opportunity, titled "Administrative history of the Obed Wild and Scenic River" (Funding Opportunity Number P15AS00398), is a National Park Service (NPS) notice describing an intended award rather than a competitive funding call. The project sits within the U.S. Department of the Interior and is associated with NPS Cultural Resource programs. Its basic purpose is to fund the preparation of an administrative history for the Obed Wild and Scenic River (often abbreviated as OBRI), with the final product expected to present a broad, management-focused narrative of how the area has been administered over time. In practical terms, this kind of study typically pulls together records, policies, planning documents, and institutional decisions to explain how management goals were set, how they changed, and what major milestones shaped the river corridor's stewardship.

The opportunity is explicitly described as a "notice of intent to award" and "not a request for applications," meaning the NPS is not soliciting proposals from the public and there is no open competition. Instead, the announcement is issued to satisfy public notice requirements that apply when an agency intends to make an award without full and open competition. The NPS indicates it plans to support this work through a Cooperative Agreement, which generally implies a more collaborative relationship between the agency and the recipient than a standard grant, often involving substantial involvement by the NPS in the project scope, coordination, review, or deliverables.

The intended recipient is Middle Tennessee State University, operating under an existing cooperative agreement (P14AC00882) and participating as a partner within the Southern Appalachian Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU). CESUs are structured partnerships that help federal agencies collaborate with universities and other partners on research, technical assistance, and educational projects tied to natural and cultural resource management. In this case, the NPS is signaling that it will rely on that established partnership framework to carry out the administrative history study for OBRI.

From the metadata provided, the opportunity is categorized as discretionary funding using the cooperative agreement instrument type, and it is listed under the funding activity category "Information and Statistics" with CFDA number 15.945 (a catalog identifier used for federal assistance programs). Eligible applicants are broadly listed as public and state-controlled institutions of higher education and "others," but because the notice is not competitive, that eligibility language does not function as an invitation to apply; it mainly reflects how the opportunity would be classified in a general sense. The posting shows an original closing date of 2015-09-14 and a creation date of 2015-09-09, consistent with a short public-notice window typical for intent-to-award announcements.

Finally, several fields indicate that the announcement is informational rather than a standard grant competition: the award ceiling is listed as 0 and expected awards is left blank, reinforcing that this is a notice about a planned, specific award arrangement rather than a solicitation that will select from multiple applicants. The key takeaway is that the NPS planned to fund a single, pre-identified partner to produce an overarching administrative history documenting the management evolution of the Obed Wild and Scenic River.

• The National Park Service in the information and statistics sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Administrative history of the Obed Wild and Scenic River" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2015-09-09.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2015-09-14. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Others.

Apply for P15AS00398

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