OJJDP FY24 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children – Invited to Apply | O OJJDP 2024 172229

Opportunity Information: Apply for O OJJDP 2024 172229

The OJJDP FY24 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) - Invited to Apply opportunity is a discretionary federal funding announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), designed to sustain and strengthen key national functions carried out by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The award is structured as a cooperative agreement, which typically means OJJDP expects to have substantial involvement in the funded work through ongoing coordination, shared planning, reporting, and performance oversight, rather than simply issuing funds with minimal federal engagement. The program is listed under CFDA 16.543 and is focused on law, justice, and legal services tied directly to child protection, missing children recovery, and responses to child sexual exploitation.

At a high level, the solicitation funds NCMEC program activities across three categories that together cover prevention, response, and investigative support at a national scale. Category 1 centers on NCMEC's National Resource Center and Clearinghouse, which is positioned as a nationwide hub for information, tools, and training intended to prevent child abduction and sexual exploitation, help locate missing children, and support victims and their families. This includes providing technical assistance and training to the broad network of professionals who encounter these cases, such as law enforcement, prosecutors, child welfare personnel, educators, medical professionals, victim advocates, and others involved in child protection and investigative work. The emphasis is not only on case response but also on improving system capacity through vetted resources, guidance, and knowledge sharing so that communities and agencies can respond faster, coordinate better, and reduce harm.

Category 2 is aimed at operational support for the National AMBER Alert Program, with a specific focus on the AMBER Alert Secondary Distribution (AASD) Program, Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), and Team Adam deployments. In practical terms, this category is about ensuring that urgent child abduction alerts can be distributed rapidly and reliably across modern communications channels, including mobile alerting through WEA, while also maintaining the behind-the-scenes infrastructure and partnerships that allow those alerts to reach the public, media, platforms, and participating systems. It also supports Team Adam, which is widely understood as an on-the-ground deployment capability that can provide specialized assistance to law enforcement during critical missing child cases, helping agencies expand search and investigative capacity quickly when time is most critical.

Category 3 supports the Children's Justice Project, specifically by providing resources to address the unidentified human remains of children. This part of the opportunity targets one of the most difficult gaps in the child protection and justice space: cases where remains are discovered but a child's identity is unknown, delaying notification to families and preventing accountability and case closure. Funding under this category is intended to strengthen efforts that help identify these children, improve investigative coordination, and support the technical and operational work needed to connect unidentified remains to missing child cases, which can involve cross-jurisdictional information sharing, forensic and investigative assistance, and improved access to specialized expertise.

From the source details provided, this opportunity is labeled "Invited to Apply," meaning it is not broadly competitive in the usual sense and is intended for a specific applicant or a narrow set of eligible entities. The eligible applicants field is listed as "Others," and the description directly references NCMEC as the operator of the National Resource Center and Clearinghouse and the broader program recipient, reinforcing that this solicitation is purpose-built for NCMEC's national role. The funding opportunity number is O-OJJDP-2024-172229. The original application closing date is August 29, 2024. The expected number of awards is three, and the listed award ceiling is $38,994,666, indicating substantial federal investment and suggesting that the three categories may align with separate awards or funding components under the overall NCMEC program umbrella.

Overall, the grant opportunity is best understood as federal support for a set of national, high-impact public safety and child protection functions: preventing and responding to child abduction and exploitation, operating and improving national alerting and rapid response mechanisms, and addressing unresolved cases involving unidentified deceased children. The structure and scale indicate OJJDP is prioritizing continuity of operations, nationwide technical assistance and training, and the operational backbone required to move information quickly and effectively among the public, law enforcement, and child-serving systems.

• The Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention in the law, justice and legal services sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "OJJDP FY24 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children – Invited to Apply" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 16.543.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2024-08-16.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2024-08-29. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $38,994,666.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 3 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

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