Federal and state grants can fund cameras, guards, locks, and reinforced doors. For many nonprofits, that support is now part of what it takes to keep their doors open.
Across the country, traditional community spaces have replaced their open doors with concrete bollards, reinforced entry doors, and camera surveillance. As terrorism threats rise, nonprofits are being forced into defense mode. Many depend on support from the federal government’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) to meet basic security needs.
While nonprofits trade their welcoming spirit for defensive armor, a more profound question emerges: What happens to a community when its primary identity is defined by its vulnerability?
The Anatomy of a Hardened Target
The NSGP is a federal grant program administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It assists eligible nonprofit organizations with a higher risk of terrorism or hate crimes in strengthening security at their facilities. The grant is designed to help nonprofits harden their “soft targets.”
“Target hardening” refers to the physical strengthening of a building or site to make it more difficult to penetrate, damage, or attack. It is a security strategy that focuses on creating physical obstacles to deter or delay an intruder.
NSGP funds are allocated for physical tools of defense:
- Access Control: High-security locks, gates, and biometric systems
- Surveillance: CCTV cameras and 24/7 monitoring hubs
- Target Hardening: Blast-resistant windows, reinforced doors, and steel bollards to prevent vehicular ramming
- Personnel: Contracted security guards to patrol hallways and entrances.
A nonprofit may apply for, and potentially receive, both federal and state grants— allowing for significant security upgrades. New York offers two key security funding streams. The Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NPSE) focuses on funding health, safety, and security p
The 2025 Funding Freeze: A Bureaucratic Chokepoint
Despite the clear need for funding, 2025 was a year of administrative volatility. In early 2025, the federal government issued a freeze on homeland security grant drawdowns, leaving many nonprofits in a state of “frozen” security. This move, intended for administrative review, effectively stalled organizations that may have already been awarded funds and planned construction or new security staff hiring.
For Fiscal Year 2025, the NSGP program allocated , divided between urban-area nonprofits in high-risk cities and state-level nonprofits outside those areas.
Recent wrangling between Republicans and Democrats over the 2026 spending bill, and their fractious fighting over ICE and homeland security funding, brought Congress to a standstill. It left the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and its umbrella agency FEMA, in a record-breaking shutdown for nearly three months. Congress has only just passed the FY 2026 spending bill and reopened the DHS. During the shutdown, FEMA was unable to review and award FY 2025 NSGP funds— and the FY 2026 application cycle hasn’t even started yet.
As soon as the President signs off on the factitious 2026 spending bill and DHS is back up and running, nonprofits should expect a compressed timeline; from bill signing to application, the window could be as little as a few weeks.
The Cash Flow Challenge
For nonprofits, a significant challenge in utilizing federal security funding is that costs are reimbursed only after an organization has purchased or implemented the security feature. Nonprofits must have sufficient cash flow, or borrow funds, to meet expenses until reimbursement kicks in. The Hebrew Free Loan Society is one organization that answers that need by offering Security Infrastructure Loans for eligible, NY-area, Jewish communal organizations to support security planning, training, equipment, and infrastructure improvements.
While reimbursement is usually effectuated within a reasonable timeframe, the same can’t be said for the application process. NYSED is still processing reimbursement applications from schools in New York that submitted for NPSE reimbursement in 2024. Processing of federal grants is also backlogged by several years. In a March 17 roundtable focusing on security challenges facing houses of worship in Davie, Fla., Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) told local institutions that are only now receiving grants approved in 2023 and 2024, while another was waiting for award funds from as far back as 2022.
Saving Lives
In March 2026, Temple Israel in Michigan, one of the largest synagogues in the U.S. and home to a 140-child preschool, became the kind of target these grants are meant to protect. An armed attacker drove his truck into the building while students were inside. The synagogue’s in-house security team stopped him, killing him in an exchange of gunfire.
In an attack in July 2023 at the Margolin Hebrew Academy in Memphis, an armed man attempted to breach the school, but the physical hardening measures, funded by the NSGP, held firm. The assailant was stopped by high-security access control doors that prevented a potential tragedy before it could begin. Without that hardware, the outcome could have been a massacre.
While these cases show the power of proactive defense, in May 2025, the limitations of physical hardening were revealed at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
Two Israeli Embassy employees, a couple soon to be engaged, were gunned down on the sidewalk after just leaving a Young Diplomats Reception at the museum. The suspect fired approximately twenty rounds with a semi-automatic handgun while shouting “Free Palestine”.
This highlights the “security gap” that exists between a hardened building and the public street. While the museum is a nonprofit that qualifies for and maintained security resources, the physical measures were confined to the building itself. Most disturbingly, after the shooting, the perpetrator simply walked into the museum. The internal security staff failed to recognize him as the shooter, although eyewitnesses reported that he looked “distressed.” He was even given a drink of water by a staff member before he identified himself as the killer.
This tragedy serves as a grim reminder that even with funding and personnel, “hardening” of the interior of the building can be circumvented by a shooter who targets the transition between an enclosed facility and the world beyond.
Protected or Policed?
When a nonprofit must prove its “high-risk” status to receive funding, its identity begins to shift. It is no longer defined by the mission it stands for, but by the violence it has learned to anticipate. That’s the real price tag, and it’s expensive.
The fact that we need nearly half a billion dollars in annual funding just to keep people from being murdered in their sacred or charitable spaces is a scorching indictment of our social fabric.
But the greater tragedy might be the “frozen” state of our communities, both bureaucratically and emotionally, behind bulletproof glass and steel gates. We have traded the “open door” for the “monitored entryway,” and in doing so, we have paid a price that no government grant can ever truly cover.
This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.
