Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE): Higher Education Programs (HEP): Strengthening Institutions Program (SIP), Assistance Listing Number 84.031A

Background
The SIP Program provides grants to eligible institutions of higher education (IHEs) to help them become self-sufficient and expand their capacity to serve low-income students. The funds are provided to improve and strengthen the institution’s academic quality, institutional management, and fiscal stability.

Grant Details
The program contains one competitive preference priority and one invitational priority. The competitive preference priority is increasing postsecondary education access, affordability, completion, and post-enrollment success. The invitational priority is projects that propose to implement activities that promote postsecondary completion for students who are no longer enrolled because of challenges they faced during the COVID–19 pandemic or who stopped attending for other reasons.

Eligibility Requirements
To qualify as an eligible institution under the SIP Program, an institution must be accredited or pre-accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting agency or association, be legally authorized by the State in which it is located to provide an educational program for which it awards a bachelor’s degree, and be designated as an ‘‘eligible institution’’ by demonstrating that it has an enrollment of needy students and has low average educational and general expenditures per full-time equivalent undergraduate student.

Period of Performance
The project period for the grant is up to 60 months.

Grant Value
$36,886,151. Individual Development Grants have an estimated range of awards from $400,000–$450,000 per year with an estimated average size of $425,000 per year. Cooperative Arrangement Development Grants have an estimated range of awards from $500,000–$550,000 per year with an estimated average size of $525,000 per year.