SAFER Grants 2026: FY2025 Awards, Cost Share and Rules

SAFER source review, Grantsights, November 6, 2026: Grantsights checked the FY2025 SAFER notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) attached to its Grants.gov listing (opens in a new tab) against FEMA's SAFER program page (opens in a new tab), FEMA's September 30, 2026 award release (opens in a new tab), the statute at 15 U.S.C. 2229a on govinfo.gov (opens in a new tab) and the federal award records. Where official sources stop: FEMA hasn't said when FY2026 opens or how much it will hold, and no FEMA page can tell your council whether it can carry a new firefighter's full salary in year 4. Your own budget answers that one.

SAFER Grants Status on November 6, 2026

The FY2025 round is over and FY2026 hasn't begun. The FY2025 notice offered $324,000,000 and expected about 190 awards. According to FEMA's fire grants overview page (opens in a new tab), the FY2025 SAFER application period is closed, and FEMA's SAFER page now reads "FY 2025 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grants Awarded." According to FEMA's award release, the $324 million went to nearly 200 fire departments and volunteer firefighter interest organizations.

What happened to the FY2025 round? It ran late, about 11 months after the FY2024 deadline, and it was paid for by the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025 (Public Law 119-4), the year-long stopgap, according to the FY2025 fact sheet. The notice went up on May 18, 2026, FEMA GO opened at 8 a.m. ET on May 19, and the notice set September 30, 2026 as the last day for selections. FEMA's own award table lists FY2025 awards dated September 28 and 29, 2026.

USASpending.gov (opens in a new tab) showed no SAFER awards of any kind signed between October 1, 2025 and November 6, 2026 when Grantsights searched Assistance Listing 97.083 on November 6. That's a reporting lag, not a missing round: FEMA's page and release confirm the awards, and the FY2025 rows (IDs starting EMW-2025-FF) should appear in federal award data later.

For FY2026, Grantsights searched the Grants.gov (opens in a new tab) database on November 6, 2026. It returned no posted or forecast notice under Assistance Listing 97.083. The Department of Homeland Security had 4 open or upcoming notices that day: 3 for Flood Mitigation Assistance and an FY2027 counter-drone program. Nobody can quote an FY2026 SAFER amount or deadline yet.

How SAFER Grants Work: Two Activities, Paid Directly by FEMA

SAFER has run since 2005 and, by FEMA's count in the FY2025 notice, has awarded about $6.1 billion. It's section 34 of the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, codified at 15 U.S.C. 2229a. According to the statute on govinfo.gov (opens in a new tab), Congress authorized $750,000,000 a year for fiscal years 2024 through 2028, and the authority to make these grants runs out on September 30, 2030 unless Congress extends it. Authorized isn't appropriated: the FY2024 and FY2025 rounds each held $324 million, less than half the ceiling.

The program has 2 activities, and each takes its own application:

1. Hiring of Firefighters. Pays part of the salary and benefits of new, additional full-time firefighters, or of part-time and paid-on-call firefighters converted to full-time, for 3 years.
2. Recruitment and Retention (R&R) of Volunteer Firefighters. Pays for marketing, physicals, training, tuition, retirement plans for volunteers, stipends and other costs of bringing in and keeping volunteers, for 12, 24, 36 or 48 months.

There's no state agency in the middle. The FY2025 notice says subapplicants and subawards aren't allowed, and FEMA pays each recipient directly. Your state may still require an intergovernmental review under Executive Order 12372, which the notice tells applicants to check with the state's Single Point of Contact.

The statute sets 2 floors. At least 10% of each year's SAFER money must go to R&R grants, and 10% of the hiring money is set aside for all-volunteer or majority-volunteer departments that want to hire. The FY2025 notice warns that FEMA may fund a lower-scoring volunteer department's hiring request over a higher-scoring career one to meet that set-aside. FEMA's Criteria Development Panel also caps interest organizations at 33% of the R&R money.

Who Can Apply for SAFER Grants

The FY2025 notice names 2 kinds of eligible applicants in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, the territories and tribal nations, and limits each to 1 application per activity:

• Fire departments. An agency or organization with a formally recognized arrangement with a state, territorial, local or tribal authority to provide fire suppression on a first-due basis to a fixed area. Career, combination and volunteer departments can all apply for Hiring. Only volunteer and combination departments can apply for R&R; the notice says career departments aren't eligible for that activity. A nonprofit volunteer fire company qualifies on the same terms as a city department.
• Volunteer firefighter interest organizations. National, regional, state, local, tribal and nonprofit groups that represent volunteer firefighters, such as state firefighter or fire chiefs' associations and volunteer firefighter relief associations. They can apply for R&R only, never Hiring, and FEMA makes the final call on whether a group counts.

The notice rules out for-profit organizations, individuals, federal fire departments, departments controlled by a larger department, airport or port fire units with no first-due area outside the facility, and "ambulance services, emergency medical service organizations, rescue squads, auxiliaries, dive teams" and search and rescue teams. That last group is the opposite of AFG, where nonaffiliated EMS can apply; a standalone ambulance squad should read grants for EMS and ambulance services instead. A city whose fire department is part of the same legal entity can apply on the department's behalf if the application says so.

Two thresholds apply to every applicant. The statute bars awards to any applicant whose fire and emergency response budget has fallen below 80% of its average over the 3 years before applying, and the FY2025 notice asks for the current year's operating budget and the 3 prior years to check it. And the AOR, the Authorized Organization Representative who submits, must be a current employee, official or leader of the applicant. Consultants can't be the AOR.

The SAFER Hiring Cost Share and Salary Limits

The hiring cost share came back in FY2024 after at least 2 rounds without one. The FY2022 and FY2023 notices each said there was "no cost share or match or position cost limit." The FY2024 and FY2025 notices restored the statute's terms: the department pays 25% of actual costs in years 1 and 2 and 65% in year 3, and FEMA's share can't exceed 75%, 75% and 35% of the department's usual annual cost for a first-year firefighter at the time it applied. That usual cost is base salary plus the standard benefits package, including health, dental and vision insurance, FICA, life insurance and pension contributions. R&R grants have no cost share.

The FY2025 notice gives a worked example. This table is illustrative, not data; it extends the notice's example of a department whose usual first-year firefighter cost is $120,000 and whose actual cost runs $100,000 a year.

So a 6-position award in that example costs the department $690,000 over 3 years and $600,000 a year after that. FEMA doesn't require proof of the local money when you apply, but the notice says it may contact likely winners to confirm they have it before making an award.

The statute lets FEMA waive or reduce the cost share, the position cost limit and the 80% budget rule for demonstrated economic hardship. The FY2025 notice didn't offer a cost share hardship waiver. Its only waiver covers staffing maintenance, described below. Where a notice and the statute differ, the notice sets that round's terms.

Grantsights' view: the year 3 jump to 65% and the year 4 cliff are what decide a hiring application, not the narrative. A council that approves the application without a written plan for year 4 is setting up a layoff fight in 2030. The statute itself requires each application to describe long-term plans for keeping the firefighters after federal support ends.

What Hiring and Recruitment and Retention Grants Pay For

Hiring money buys 1 thing: salary and benefits for new full-time operational firefighters, defined in the FY2025 notice as positions funded for at least 2,080 hours a year whose primary assignment, at least half the time, is on a fire suppression vehicle. The rules that trip up departments:

• Only firefighters hired after the award offer count. People already on the payroll, promotions and job-sharing don't.
• Overtime isn't paid unless it's built into the regular contracted shift to meet the Fair Labor Standards Act.
• Salaries during recruit academy are allowed, but turnout gear, physicals and background checks for the new hires aren't.
• No management and administration (M&A) costs, no indirect costs and no grant writer fees under Hiring.
• Only volunteer and majority-volunteer departments may hire people into officer roles alongside their operational duties.

R&R grants have a long cost list ranked by priority. High priority items in the FY2025 notice include a staffing needs assessment (which, if funded, becomes the only funded item), an R&R coordinator or program manager, recruitment marketing, entry and annual physicals that meet National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standard 1582, behavioral health and employee assistance programs, basic and leadership training with lost wages and travel, tuition assistance, personal protective equipment (PPE) for new recruits, and starting or extending a Length of Service Award Program (LOSAP). Medium priority items include nominal stipends, insurance, explorer and cadet programs and up to $10,000 of exercise equipment. Bunkroom conversions are low priority and capped at $10,000.

The notice lists what R&R won't fund: firefighter salaries, vehicles, fire suppression equipment, radios and pagers, training props, giveaways, banquets, gym memberships, student loans, and continued funding of a LOSAP that SAFER already started. R&R recipients may use up to 3% for M&A and up to $1,500 in federal funds for a grant writer's fee, paid within the window the notice sets.

How FEMA Scores SAFER Applications

Scoring has 2 parts, weighted differently by activity. According to the FY2025 notice, a computer pre-score counts for 50% of a Hiring application and 30% of an R&R application, and a panel of fire service peer reviewers scores the narrative for the other 50% or 70%. Narratives aren't read at the pre-score stage, so only the highest pre-scores reach the panel.

The pre-score rewards the largest gain in compliance with NFPA 1710 (career departments) or NFPA 1720 (volunteer departments). A department that meets the standard "never or 0%" of the time today and expects to meet it 91% to 100% of the time after the award scores High on both questions. Hiring applications also score higher with more calls, a larger population, NFPA 1582 entry and annual physicals for new hires, and EMS certification as the local authority requires. R&R applications score higher when more than 60% of members are volunteers, when recruits will reach Firefighter II, when an R&R coordinator is already in place, and when the project helps more than 1 jurisdiction.

The narrative boxes take plain text only, with at least 200 characters per element: no tables, bullets, quotation marks or all-capital typing. FEMA samples applications for copied narratives and inaccurate data, and the notice says either can disqualify you. After the panel, a technical review checks costs and eligibility and can cut a request.

How to Apply for SAFER Grants: Registration and FEMA GO

Applications go through FEMA Grants Outcomes (FEMA GO), not the federal grant listing site, and the FY2025 notice lists 7 steps:

1. Apply for, update or verify the department's Unique Entity Identifier (UEI), and have its IRS Employer Identification Number ready.
2. Put the UEI on the application.
3. Create a login.gov account, using the email already tied to your SAM record so the two accounts link.
4. Register or renew in the System for Award Management (SAM) and confirm it's active. The SAM.gov registration guide explains the steps.
5. Register in FEMA GO, add the organization and assign the AOR. FEMA's FEMA GO user guides for the fire grant programs (opens in a new tab) cover account creation, submission and award acceptance.
6. Submit the complete application in FEMA GO.
7. Keep SAM active for as long as an application or award is open.

The notice warns that registration "can take up to four weeks." Volunteer and combination departments can file both a Hiring and an R&R application in the same round, but 2 applications for the same activity get both disqualified. Regional R&R projects need a signed memorandum of understanding between the host and every partner, uploaded with the application. FEMA's SAFER guidance documents page (opens in a new tab) holds the FY2025 notice, fact sheet, frequently asked questions and the self-evaluation sheets for each applicant type; read the self-evaluation sheet for your activity before you write a word.

After an award, Hiring recipients get a 180-day recruitment period, and the 36-month period of performance starts automatically when it ends, whether or not the positions are filled. R&R recipients get 90 days. Awards must be accepted in FEMA GO within 30 days.

What FEMA's SAFER Pages Don't Tell You

FEMA's SAFER pages and the 69-page FY2025 notice leave 6 gaps that cost departments money or a round.

1. Year 4 is all yours, and layoffs end the grant. Recipients must keep a staffing maintenance number, the pre-award paid operational roster plus the SAFER positions, for the whole period. The notice says laying off operational personnel puts the grant in default and may require repayment. FEMA can waive the number only for non-SAFER positions lost to attrition, and only when economic hardship hits the jurisdiction's whole public safety sector.
2. Older success stories describe a different program. FY2022 and FY2023 hiring awards carried no match. A neighbor's free 3-year hiring grant from 2024 tells you little about a round with a 25%, 25% and 65% match.
3. The clock starts without you. A department that takes 9 months to hire loses 3 months of a 36-month grant, since the period begins 180 days after the award either way.
4. Repeat winners are rare. Grantsights analysis of the federal award records found only 8 of the 200 funded FY2024-round recipients had an FY2023-round award under an identical name and state, a lower bound since spellings vary. Hiring departments mostly win once and then carry the positions themselves.
5. The standards behind the score are changing. A footnote in the FY2025 notice says NFPA 1710 and 1720 lapse in 2026 and will be consolidated under a proposed NFPA 1750, and that FEMA hasn't decided how that affects scoring. The same footnote says 24-hour staffing isn't a SAFER requirement.
6. Federal award data lags FEMA by months. As of November 6, 2026, the FY2025 awards appeared only in FEMA's own table.

Grantsights pulled each row from that notice's federal listing and attached NOFO on November 6, 2026. The opening month has drifted from February to May, and funding fell $36 million after FY2023. Awards have followed the deadline by roughly 3 months: the FY2024 round closed July 3, 2025 and its awards were signed September 21 to 25, 2025. Grantsights' view: plan for a spring notice and a 5-week window, and get the council's year 3 and year 4 commitment in writing before the notice drops, because that vote takes longer than the application.

SAFER Grants Awarded: What the FY2024 Round Looked Like

Grantsights analysis of federal award records for the FY2024 round found 206 awards totaling $310,877,510, signed September 21 to 25, 2025. Six showed $0 obligated at the pull, likely declined or withdrawn, so the figures below use the 200 awards with money. The median award was $823,283, the middle half ran from $442,950 to $2,175,476, and 88 awards were $1,000,000 or more. Recipients sat in 40 states. According to USASpending.gov (opens in a new tab) data, Florida received the most money, $66,719,802 across 17 awards, followed by California ($37,124,795, 14 awards) and Texas ($35,614,738, 17 awards). Pennsylvania had the most awards, 21, worth $12,152,885.

The federal records don't label the activity, but they show it indirectly. Each award's period of performance began either about 90 or about 180 days after signing, which matches the notice's 90-day R&R and 180-day Hiring recruitment periods. Sorted that way, the FY2024 round held 135 Hiring awards worth $271,826,816 (median $1,459,383) and 65 R&R awards worth $39,050,693 (median $394,700), or 12.6% of the money for R&R, just above the 10% floor. Hiring went mostly to Florida (17), Texas (15), California (12) and Ohio (12); R&R went mostly to Pennsylvania (19), New York (7) and New Jersey (7). That split is a Grantsights inference from dates, not a FEMA label.

The FY2023 round looked different: 191 awards with a net total of $342,327,132, including 88 Hiring awards with a median of $2,238,585, under a notice with no cost share. Once the match returned, FY2024 funded more hiring departments (135) at a smaller median. The data can't prove the match caused that, but it's the obvious difference between the 2 notices.

Small volunteer companies win R&R money. For example, Glasgow Volunteer Fire Department in West Virginia received $1,423,786 in the FY2024 round, and one department in Pennsylvania, Blue Rock Fire Rescue, received $30,000, the smallest funded award. Small towns win Hiring money too: one town in North Carolina, Burgaw, received $972,501 in what the award dates mark as a Hiring grant.

According to FEMA's award table, checked November 6, 2026, the FY2025 round shows the same mix on its first page: Houston Fire Department at $9,958,260 and Saint Johns County, Florida at $6,425,137 for Hiring; the International Association of Fire Chiefs at $1,938,584 and the Kansas State Association of Fire Chiefs at $1,729,064 for R&R; and Forest Volunteer Fire Company in Pennsylvania at $199,940 for R&R. Grantsights didn't total FEMA's FY2025 table, so the $324 million and "nearly 200" figures come from FEMA's release.

Non-Federal Money for Firefighter Staffing and Volunteer Recruitment

About 65 of the 200 funded FY2024 awards were R&R grants, mostly to volunteer companies, and those are the SAFER applicants that private foundations can realistically help. Be honest about the limits: no foundation will pay a career firefighter's salary for 3 years, and a city or county fire department rarely gets foundation grants at all. A nonprofit volunteer fire company often does, for the same things R&R pays for: a recruitment campaign, a junior firefighter or cadet program, physicals, or gear for new members. Foundation money can also carry a recruitment effort in a year with no SAFER notice.

Grantsights' community funder list shows private foundations whose 990-PF filings report grants to community and civic causes, sorted by state, so a fire company can find who already gives in its area. You can preview your own state for free, and there's a 30-day refund if the list doesn't fit your organization. It's foundation money, not federal grants, and the gifts are small: the typical community gift below is $750 to $2,500. Before asking, check a funder's past giving with how to read a 990-PF.

These rows are statewide counts of all community-cause giving in Grantsights analysis of 990-PF filings pulled October 29, 2026, not fire-only gifts. The 5 states are the ones with the most inferred FY2024 R&R awards. For open federal and state notices, including the next SAFER round once FEMA posts it, use the Grantsights grant search.

Common Mistakes in SAFER Applications

These 7 mistakes come from the FY2025 notice's own rules.

• Treating the award as permanent funding. Departments underestimate year 3, when the local share jumps to 65%, and year 4, when it's 100%.
• Asking for current staff. Only firefighters hired after the award offer are eligible. Moving an existing firefighter into a SAFER slot, or promoting one, is a red flag in the technical review.
• Requesting the wrong activity. Career departments can't apply for R&R, and interest organizations can't apply for Hiring. Submitting 2 applications for one activity disqualifies both.
• Cutting the fire budget before applying. An operating budget under 80% of the 3-year average makes the applicant ineligible under the statute.
• Writing the narrative in a word processor's format. Tables, bullets and quotation marks aren't allowed in the narrative boxes, and copied text can disqualify the application.
• Letting a consultant submit. The AOR must be the applicant's own staff or leadership. Hiring awards also can't reimburse the writer's fee.
• Duplicating a statewide R&R project. If your state association already runs a SAFER recruitment grant that covers your company, check before filing your own; the notice asks applicants to certify that partners haven't received grants for similar items.

Related Guides for Fire Department Staffing and Funding

SAFER pays for people; these 8 guides cover the rest. For every money source a volunteer company can use, read grants for volunteer fire departments. For how federal match rules work in general, see the cost sharing and matching guide, and a city or county weighing SAFER against other federal money can use federal grants for local governments. Police agencies looking for the law enforcement version of hiring money should read grants for police departments. A large hiring award can push a department past $1,000,000 in federal spending in a year, which triggers a Single Audit; the Single Audit requirements guide explains it. Tribal fire departments can compare other options in the tribal grants guide, and if you're paying for outside help with the narrative, how to hire a grant writer covers contracts and fees.

FAQ: Common Questions

Are SAFER grants open right now? No. FY2025 closed June 22, 2026, FEMA announced awards September 30, 2026, and no FY2026 notice is posted or forecast as of November 6, 2026.

When is the next SAFER deadline? Not announced. The last 4 windows ran 35 to 44 days, so register and line up the council's commitment early.

How much does a SAFER hiring grant pay, and what is the cost share? No fixed cap. FEMA pays up to 75%, 75% and 35% of each position's cost over 3 years; the department pays 25%, 25% and 65%. R&R has no cost share. The FY2024-round median was $823,283.

Who is eligible for SAFER, and can a nonprofit or volunteer fire company apply? Any fire department can apply for Hiring, and volunteer and combination departments plus volunteer firefighter interest organizations can apply for R&R. A nonprofit fire company with a formal first-due arrangement qualifies.

How do you apply for a SAFER grant? UEI, active SAM registration, login.gov, FEMA GO registration with an in-house AOR, then one application per activity in FEMA GO.

Where can I see which SAFER grants were awarded? FEMA's SAFER page award table for FY2025; USASpending.gov (opens in a new tab) for FY2024 and earlier.

Sources

Grantsights checked each of these 14 sources on November 6, 2026.

• FEMA: Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER), program page and award table (opens in a new tab)
• FEMA: Assistance to Firefighters Grants Program overview (FY2025 SAFER application period closed) (opens in a new tab)
• FEMA: SAFER guidance documents (FY2025 NOFO, fact sheet, FAQs, self-evaluation sheets) (opens in a new tab)
• FEMA: FY2025 SAFER Grant Program fact sheet (May 2026) (opens in a new tab)
• FEMA press release, September 30, 2026: $324 million in FY2025 SAFER awards among $648 million in fire grants (opens in a new tab)
• FEMA: FEMA GO user guides for the fire grant programs (opens in a new tab)
• Grants.gov: FY2025 SAFER (DHS-25-GPD-083-00-99), with the FY2025 NOFO attached (opens in a new tab)
• Grants.gov: FY2024 SAFER (DHS-24-GPD-083-00-99), with the FY2024 NOFO attached (opens in a new tab)
• Grants.gov: FY2023 SAFER (DHS-23-GPD-083-00-99), with the FY2023 NOFO attached (opens in a new tab)
• Grants.gov: FY2022 SAFER (DHS-22-GPD-083-00-99), with the FY2022 NOFO attached (opens in a new tab)
• Grants.gov: grant search, used for the posted and forecast check (opens in a new tab)
• govinfo.gov: 15 U.S.C. 2229a, staffing for adequate fire and emergency response (opens in a new tab)
• Grantsights pull of federal prime awards for Assistance Listing 97.083 through the public award search API (USASpending.gov award search (opens in a new tab)), November 6, 2026
• Grantsights statewide community 990-PF pull, October 29, 2026