Sneak Preview: FEMA Told To Improve EFSP Reallocation Timeliness

(The following was excerpted from a Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Despite objections from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) maintained its recent audit recommendation that FEMA should take steps to reallocate unclaimed and unpaid funds under the Emergency Food and Shelter program (EFSP) in a timelier manner.

Established in 1983 through the Emergency Jobs Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 98-8) and incorporated into the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (Pub. L. 106-400), EFSP supplements and expands the work of local social service organizations to provide emergency food, shelter and supportive services to individuals in economic crisis experiencing or nearing homelessness. Since its inception, there have been 38 phased (i.e., fiscal year (FY)) appropriations, and four special appropriations.

The National Board, chaired by FEMA with representatives from various nonprofit charitable organizations, is the recipient of EFSP grant funds, and is responsible for identifying jurisdictions with the greatest need and distributing funds to those jurisdictions. It has authority to establish its own procedures for allocating the funds. To date, it has provided grants to about 8,300 local social service organizations in more than 2,300 counties and cities nationwide.

Congress appropriates EFSP funds to FEMA, which publishes a notice of funding opportunity to make funds available to the National Board. FEMA, a division of DHS, awards an annual grant to the board, which in turn makes grants through its fiscal agent, United Way Worldwide (UWW). Program procedures issued by the board require recipient jurisdictions to create a local board (LB) as a governing body to advertise the availability of funds to their jurisdictions each fiscal year and set funding priorities annually.

In addition, local recipient organizations (LROs) are nonprofit social service entities that apply to LBs for grant funds. Further, the National Board has established state set-aside (SSA) committees that ensure states have the chance to consider funding pockets of homelessness or poverty in jurisdictions that do not qualify for EFSP funds under the board’s funding formula.

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

Join us for our following Thompson Grants events:
Federal Grants Forum For Institutions of Higher Education | Sept. 28-29, 2022 | Virtual Event
Advanced Federal Grants Forum | Oct. 25-27, 2022 | Phoenix, Ariz.