Opportunity sources

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

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.

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.

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.

The pipeline record

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

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.

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.