# Opportunity sources

Where opportunities live, and how to filter a daily feed down to the few worth reading.

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## Federal contracting

**SAM.gov** — the central federal contract opportunity system. Search by NAICS, set-aside type, agency, place of performance, and posting date. Set-aside filters are the highest-value ones for a small business.

**DLA DIBBS** — Defense Logistics Agency bid board. High volume, short turnarounds, largely commodity items. This is the feed behind a workflow of 50 bids a week in under two hours a day, and it only works because the filter is brutal and the qualification is fast.

**Agency-specific portals** — several agencies post outside or ahead of SAM. Worth checking directly for the two or three agencies that matter to the organization.

**Prime contractor subcontracting pages** — large primes carry small-business subcontracting obligations and publish opportunities. Consistently under-worked by small businesses, and often a better win rate than bidding prime.

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## Grants

**Grants.gov** — federal discretionary grants. Filter by eligibility category, CFDA or Assistance Listing number, and agency.

**Agency grant pages and forecasts** — many agencies publish a forecast months before the notice. That lead time is worth more than anything else on this list, because it is the only way to prepare rather than react.

**Foundation directories** — Candid and equivalents. Foundation 990s are public and show exactly who they funded, for how much, and for what. That is the highest-signal free research available in the nonprofit space.

**State and municipal portals** — smaller, less competitive, and frequently a better fit for a small organization than federal money.

**Corporate and community foundations** — local giving programs, often relationship-driven rather than competitive.

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## Filtering a daily feed

The whole point of a daily feed is that almost none of it is for you. Screen before anything reaches the owner.

**The filter, in order — cheapest checks first:**

1. **Eligibility category** — entity type, set-aside status. Kills most of the list instantly
2. **NAICS or program area** — is this the work the organization does
3. **Geography** — place of performance or service area
4. **Dollar size** — against realistic capacity, both floor and ceiling
5. **Deadline feasibility** — a good fit due in four days with a portal registration requirement is a no
6. **Incumbent presence** — a recompete with a happy incumbent is usually a no

**Report the counts.** The filter is only trusted if the owner can see what it threw away:

```
DIBBS, Jul 24: 312 solicitations
  → 47 in your NAICS
  → 19 small-business set-aside
  → 11 within your size range
  → 4 with feasible deadlines
  → 2 recommended for full go/no-go review

Cut for deadline: 5 (all due within 3 days)
Cut for size: 8 (over USD 2M, above your bonding)
```

**Show the near-misses once a week, not daily.** Repeated patterns in what gets cut are strategic information — if bonding capacity is killing eight bids a week, that is a business decision worth raising, not just a filter statistic.

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## The pipeline record

Keep every opportunity ever touched, in one place, with a state:

| State | Means |
|---|---|
| Watching | Forecast or anticipated, not yet posted |
| Reviewing | Posted, go/no-go in progress |
| Pursuing | Go decision made, drafting |
| Submitted | In, with the submission date and confirmation |
| Won | Awarded — post-award obligations now apply |
| Lost | Not awarded, with the debrief if one was taken |
| No-bid | Declined, with the reason |

**The no-bid reasons are the most valuable column in the table.** Nearly every solicitation recurs annually, and next year's decision takes ninety seconds instead of an evening because the reasoning is already written down.

**Take the debrief on federal losses.** It is usually available on request, most small businesses skip it, and it is the only place the actual scoring becomes visible.

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## Frequency

**Daily** for high-volume commodity feeds like DIBBS, where speed is the entire advantage.

**Weekly** for grants and most contracting. Grant cycles are slow and a daily check finds nothing most days.

**Forecast review quarterly.** Agency forecasts are how a small organization gets ahead of a solicitation instead of scrambling after it, and quarterly is enough to catch them.