The Staffing for Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant Program is one of three grant programs that constitute the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) focus on enhancing the safety of the public and firefighters with respect to fire and fire-related hazards.
Donor Name: Department of Homeland Security
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 04/12/2024
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: 4 Years
Details:
The SAFER Program provides funding directly to fire departments and volunteer firefighter interest organizations to assist in increasing the number of firefighters to help communities meet industry minimum standards and attain 24-hour staffing to provide adequate fire protection from fire and fire-related hazards, and to fulfill traditional missions of fire departments.
The objectives of the SAFER Program are to assist local fire departments with staffing and deployment capabilities to respond to emergencies and ensure that communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards. Local fire departments accomplish this by improving staffing and deployment capabilities, so they may more effectively and safely respond to emergencies. With enhanced staffing levels, recipients should experience a reduction in response times and an increase in the number of trained personnel assembled at the incident scene.
SAFER offers grants to support activities in two activities:
- Hiring of Firefighters
- Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters
Funding Information
Estimated Total Program Funding: $360,000,000
Period of Performance
12-48 months
Eligibility Criteria
- Hiring Activity
- Fire departments operating in any of the 50 states, as well as fire departments in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or any federally recognized Indian tribe or tribal organization. A fire department is an agency or organization having a formally recognized arrangement with a state, local, tribal, or territorial authority to provide fire suppression to a population within a geographically fixed primary first due response area.
- The Hiring Activity offers grants to support applications to hire new, additional firefighters (or to change the status of part-time or paid-on-call firefighters to full-time firefighters), rehire laid off firefighters, or to retain firefighters facing layoff. National, regional, state, local, tribal, and nonprofit interest organizations representing the interests of volunteer firefighters are not eligible to receive a SAFER Program award under the Hiring Activity.
- R&R Activity
- Volunteer and combination fire departments operating in any of the 50 states, as well as fire departments in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any federally recognized Indian tribe or tribal organization. A fire department is an agency or organization having a formally recognized arrangement with a state, local, tribal, or territorial authority (city, county, parish, fire district, township, town, or other governing body) to provide fire suppression to a population within a geographically fixed primary first due response area. National, regional, state, local, tribal, and nonprofit interest organizations representing the interests of volunteer firefighters are eligible to receive a SAFER Program award under the R&R Activity.
- The R&R Activity offers grants to support applications to assist fire departments with the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters who are involved with or trained in the operations of firefighting and emergency response. Career fire departments are not eligible to apply for funding under the R&R Activity.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
