FOA is a publicly available document by which a U.S. Federal agency makes known its intentions to award discretionary grants or cooperative agreements, usually as a result of competition for funds.
Funding opportunity announcements may be known as program announcements, requests for applications, notices of funding availability, solicitations, or other names depending on the agency and type of program.
[2] Request for application (RFA) identifies a more narrowly defined area for which one or more agencies have set aside funds for awarding grants.
[5] NIH and other HHS Agencies have developed omnibus Parent Announcements for common grant mechanisms that have transitioned to electronic submission, for use by applicants who wish to submit what were formerly termed “unsolicited” or "investigator-initiated" applications.
(An enhancement was recently completed which NO longer allows duplicate funding opportunity numbers within the system .)