The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) preparedness grants help the nation potentially prevent acts of terrorism and other threats and prepare for events like the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in 2028. However, FEMA has not always been transparent in how it administers its grants.
The Big Picture
In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, FEMA, within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), implemented a suite of preparedness grants to address terrorist threats.
FEMA has 13 preparedness grants totaling $2.9 billion for fiscal year 2026. The grants are designed to help nonfederal and non-governmental entities prevent, prepare for, and respond to terrorism and disasters, including mass shootings or incidents at transit systems or ports. FEMA also awards grants to prepare for special events, including the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympic Games in 2028.
The grant funding helps communities build and sustain emergency management capabilities through training and exercises, purchasing equipment, improving planning and communication, and other activities to address national preparedness.
In 2025, DHS terminated grants and paused funding, among other grant-related actions. For FEMA preparedness grants, these actions disrupted the awards cycle by delaying disbursements to recipients. In April 2025, a U.S. district court required FEMA to stop delaying disbursements while the case is ongoing. DHS also attached new conditions to grant awards, such as requirements for recipients to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. A U.S. district court prohibited DHS from enforcing the 2025 immigration-related conditions, but DHS attached similar conditions to 2026 grant awards. As of November 2026, lawsuits about these conditions remain ongoing.
What GAO’s Work Shows
Our body of work highlights FEMA’s recurring challenges in administering its preparedness grant programs, some of which are consistent with experiences recipients faced in 2025. Specifically, we found that FEMA
has not been transparent about how it evaluates certain preparedness grant applications,
has not consistently communicated changes to National Priority Areas with stakeholders, and
did not consistently provide key information about the methodology it used for its risk model for several preparedness grant programs.
Transparency
To submit suitable projects for FEMA’s preparedness grants, applicants need complete information on how applications will be assessed. In July 2023, we found that FEMA included in its 2021 funding notice for transit security grants a required description of the criteria it would use to assess applications.
However, the agency did not accurately describe how it would score key aspects of project merit, such as risk reduction. We also found that FEMA did not consistently award grants to the highest scoring applications as outlined in its 2021 funding notice.
Similarly, we reported in September 2025 that FEMA’s port security grants announcement did not follow federal requirements to describe all criteria used to evaluate applications and make award recommendations. FEMA also did not describe how it weighted various criteria to generate an overall project score used to allocate funds.
We concluded that potential applicants may not have had sufficient information to make informed decisions about which security improvement projects were likely to score highly or best aligned with the evaluation criteria FEMA considered in making award recommendations. Additionally, FEMA risked affecting the objectivity, fairness, and transparency of the award process.
National Priority Areas
Because national priorities and conditions for grant funding can change year to year, grant applicants may need additional details on those changes to ensure their projects effectively address changed priorities or conditions.
However, when DHS established the National Priority Areas in 2020, FEMA did not communicate to stakeholders this addition to the grant application process prior to implementing it, as we reported in January 2024. Additionally, FEMA’s efforts to conduct outreach—including information bulletins, email notifications, and listening sessions—did not effectively solicit input from stakeholders, such as recipients’ barriers to implementing the change.
Further, we found that DHS had not fully documented its rationale for changes to the National Priority Areas for several years. Grantees also said not having information about changes to the priorities negatively affected their ability to plan and meet National Priority Area requirements. We concluded FEMA could better address stakeholders’ challenges by conducting targeted communication and soliciting feedback.
Risk Scoring Methodologies
The use of recognized scientific practices for developing risk models can help ensure grant applicants understand how their individual risk scores are calculated and how their jurisdiction compares to others.
However, in September 2018 and again in July 2023, we found that FEMA did not fully use recognized scientific practices in maintaining its risk assessment model for two of its homeland security grants (2018) and its transit security grants (2023), which were used to determine applicant eligibility and funding. For example, risk models did not consistently include information that would enable users or reviewers to understand the underlying assumptions and justifications for the model, such as the size of the weights assigned to the model’s components or the reasoning behind changes from one year to the next.
Additionally, the transit security risk model did not include cyber threats, which DHS identified as a relevant threat for transit security in fiscal year 2019.
We concluded that adherence to scientific practices for risk models could help ensure grant allocation approaches that rely on the risk model are reasonable, high quality, and credible.
Challenges and Opportunities
Terrorism and other hazards pose a persistent threat, and recipients of FEMA’s preparedness grants use them to help build and sustain preparedness capabilities over time, such as replacing expired personal protective equipment.
Lack of transparency and disruptions to funding cycles threaten FEMA’s ability to route finite funding to where it reduces the most risk, while ensuring no community falls below a baseline level of capability. Striking that balance also depends on information flowing both ways—FEMA needs sound data to allocate well, and recipients need clarity on how allocation decisions are made. FEMA can improve its grants administration by addressing our open recommendations to:
fully describe the criteria used to assess applications,
ensure its evaluation processes is consistent with FEMA’s goals for distributing funds,
ensure relevant threats are captured in its risk models for certain grants, and
incorporate lessons learned from prior challenges before taking any future grant actions.
For more information, contact Chris Currie at CurrieC@gao.gov.
Source: GAO Reports & Testimonies · 2026-11-12