• Granting Agency: Department of Homeland Security, FEMA
• Appropriation Amount: $560,000,000 (500 awards)
• Grant Amount:  No match
• Announcement Date: January 3, 2022
• Closing Date: February 4, 2022

View the NOFO
The SAFER Program Help Desk can be contacted at (866) 274-0960 or by email at FireGrants@fema.dhs.gov. Normal hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. ET.

Purpose: To assist local fire departments with staffing and deployment capabilities to respond to emergencies and assure 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.

Eligible Expenditures: (see NOFO for more details)
Hiring of Firefighters (Hiring) Activity: The period of performance for applications funded under the Hiring Activity will be 36 months.
Recruitment and Retention (R&R) Activity: The period of performance for applications funded under the R&R Activity will be 12, 24, 36 or 48 months.

Eligible Applicants:
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,2 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.)