The Drug Free Communities Support Program (DFC) is a federal grant program that provides funding to community-based coalitions that organize to prevent youth substance use.  Since the passage of the DFC Act in 1997, the DFC program has funded nearly 2,000 coalitions and currently mobilizes nearly 9,000 community volunteers across the country. For many coalitions, the DFC grant can be a major turning point in the development of the coalition. However, the DFC grant process is both long and detailed and only a small percentage of grants are selected to be funded.

The process begins every year around mid-January with the release of the DFC Request for Applications (RFA). The DFC RFA includes all of the information and requirements necessary to submit a successful grant, including statutory eligibility requirements, a project narrative, a budget template, and required supporting documentation. On average, a DFC grant will be approximately 100 pages in length and are due in mid-March. Last year, nearly 500 grants from across the country were submitted; only 82 grants received funding.

Once the grants are submitted in mid-March, each grant is subjected to a rigorous peer-review process. Each grant is read and reviewed by three separate reviews from across the country and scored on a scale from 0-100. The average of each of these scores is the grant's final score. The grants with the highest scores are funded. Funded coalitions are awarded their grant money in October.