Administration of federal assistance in the United States
The agencies then supply the assistance to beneficiaries (known as recipients, see below), such as States, hospitals, non profit organizations, academic institutions, museums, first responders, poverty-stricken families, etc., through hundreds of individual programs.
[6] Failure to do so may lead to sanctions, including fines and penalties, exclusion or suspension from participating in federal assistance programs and activities, and/or criminal charges.
[8] Examples include infrastructure programs and grants, which are usually restricted to States, local governments, and U.S. territories—because these are usually the only entities that administer public roads, bridges, etc.
[10][11] This is allowed because certain federal programs may not have the organizational structure to provide assistance directly to the final recipient and requires support from other entities.
This State office may decide to assign part of its federal grant through sub-grants (also known as sub-awards)[10] to cities and counties within the State (considered local governments) for crime-prevention activities such as neighborhood watch programs or supplying new equipment to police forces.
The original recipient, the AGO, has become a pass-through entity and the cities and counties have become "sub-recipients", all the while the assistance is still serving the federal program's purpose to prevent crime.
Some programs award assistance to a pass-through entity who is neither the direct applicant nor the ultimate beneficiary, such as the Pell Grant program where students apply and receive the aid but it is the university's responsibility to receive and administer the applications and disburse the aid.
Noncompliance of a federal regulation on the part of the sub-recipient may also be attributed to the pass-through entity because it is still responsible for the funds it passed on.
[citation needed] The task of organizing and categorizing federal assistance programs into a uniform and standardized system has been assigned to the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) since 1984.
[12] There were precursor catalogs to this one, focusing on particular topics and maintained by other groups, such as the US office of education https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED067776/page/n17/mode/2up pub.
This register acts as both a directory and a dictionary, facilitating both recipients and the general public in finding information of a specific program.
Federal agencies also require pass-through entities to perform similar procedures to their sub-recipients, since they are responsible for the assistance they pass on.
