FY 2022 NSGP Results Overview — September 6, 2022

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced it made final award decisions for the FY 2022 Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) funding opportunity.

FEMA reviewed approximately 3,500 total sub-applications and awarded approximately 1,800 total grants.

Out of a total of $250 million, the NSGP- Urban Area (UA) program and NSGP-State (S) program were each awarded just under $119 million, and, for the State Administration Agencies (SAAs) $12 million (5%) to offset their NSGP management and administrative costs.

FEMA reviewed more than 2,100 NSGP-UA submissions totaling nearly $284 million in investment requests and awarded just under 840 grants. FEMA also reviewed 1,367 NSGP-S submissions totaling nearly $164 million in investment requests and awarded nearly 985 grants. Both programs, in terms of applications submitted and investments requested, were significantly over-subscribed.

Under NSGP-UA, approximately 73% of the awards were for first-time subgrantees, while under NSGP-S just under 40% were for first-time subgrantees.

While this year’s scoring was modified to enhance the funding opportunity for first-time subgrantees (15-point bonus) and subgrantees located in jurisdictions with socially vulnerable populations (10- to 15-point bonus), using the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index, these factors had only marginal impact on overall scoring.

The biggest scoring factor remained the determination of the sub-applicant’s high risk of terrorist (and violent extremist) attacks due to its organization “type” (i.e., ideology, beliefs, or mission). Other key factors included:

Quantity of applicants (limited resources)
Quality of applications (competency and impact of the IJ)
Static factors (rankings of applicants from higher risk to less risk)
Risk ranking by state (based on risk analysis formula), and related national intelligence analysis (immediate security concerns facing the nation).
Subjective factors (there are three stages of review — State, FEMA, Secretary of Homeland Security, involving multiple reviewers per application with degrees of discretion).

Demographically, Jewish sub-awardees accounted for approximately 84% of the NSGP-UA awards, followed by Christian organizations (11%), Muslims organizations (3%) and then Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist organizations (.5% combined). Under the NSGP-S program, Jewish and Christian organizations each secured about 40% of the awards, followed by unaffiliated organizations (16.5%), Muslim organizations (2%) and then Hindu and Buddhist organizations (1% combined). There were no Sikh awards under NSGP-S this year.

Over the next few weeks, FEMA will contact the State Administrative Agencies with the results of their submission, followed by the SAAs notifying the nonprofit subgrantees with their specific results. Result notifications will include several terms and conditions relative to program management plans, Environmental and Historic Preservation compliance, program performance reporting, document retention and record keeping, close-out reporting, and other federal and state stipulations and requirements. Navigating the post-award process will not be without its learning curve.