There’s been a dizzying amount of activity in security funding this year for all the wrong reasons. Let’s take a moment to see where we are as we approach grant deadlines for the both the NYS Securing Communities Against Hate Crimes Grant as well as the Federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
The deadline for the SCAHC grant is Friday May 17. This is 8 days away, and since its on an erev Shabbos, we’re especially encouraging organizations to not wait until the day of the deadline to file their grants. The system that the grant is filed on is not made to handle the kind of volume that it faces close to the deadline, and this invariably results in system crashes and down time where grants can’t be filed. PLEASE don’t wait until these precarious moments occur. Push yourself to finish your grants and file now. Don’t forget all off your required submissions as well. Remember, the total amount of money available for awards this year could be as high as $60m dollars, depending on the volume of the proposals. This means 300 organizations could be awarded $200K each. There is no state that has come close to awarding this amount of money for security grants.
Due to the way the NYS grant was put together this year to enable organizations to access more dollars, we had to deal with a difficult reality of dueling deadlines between the NYS and Federal grant. The Federal grant deadline is May 21st, 4 short days after the State grant. All the same warnings apply to this grant as well—don’t wait and don’t forget required submissions. We hope we’ll never have a repeat of these grants overlapping in the future.
Some organizations may be struggling to put together proposals for both grants. Relief may be on the way for this issue. The Federal government just appropriated $400m for a supplementary NSGP program. It’s unclear whether these funds are going to be utilized as a separate grant application or whether they will be used to just bolster the existing program and allocation. In either scenario, it is clear that lawmakers want these dollars to carry through the next year or more. This is obviously great news, and we urge everyone to follow the developments on how this supplemental program will roll out.
While we’re still in the trenches of completing grants for our schools and affiliated shuls, and it’s hard to make plans for the coming year, we think a dramatic shift is needed in the way organizations approach this grants, specifically regarding time lines. We can confidently say that many more organizations would be able to receive funding if they would have planned in advance. We are hoping to create some incentives to move this idea along and maximize the number of institutions that can apply for funding. We’re looking forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks.