Summary: 

Community Safety Campaign recommends that Jewish* communities do not apply for or receive funds from the FY26 Federal Nonprofit Security Grants Program due to current conditions and priorities for the program, ongoing concerns with the administration of the program through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and significant disparities in funding from the program. 

CSC encourages communities to instead advocate for changes to the program, explore other state or locally based funding opportunities, and invest time and resources into building community-based alternatives as detailed in our guide. 

Context: 

Community Safety Campaign (CSC) is a national project started in 2022 led by a multiracial group of Jewish organizers. Our purpose is to initiate and grow material shifts in Jewish safety practices away from isolation and militarization towards collective responsibility and solidarity with other communities. CSC challenges the current paradigm of security in Jewish institutional life and our wider society while providing support and resources to Jewish communities and non-Jewish partners to actualize alternative, community-based models in response to antisemitism and other forms of violence. 

In 2025, CSC released a public letter signed by 70 organizations and congregations as well as 140 communal leaders, pledging not to take money from the Nonprofit Security Grant Program and rejecting the repressive conditions imposed by the Trump administration, which included cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and restrictions on DEI programming and constitutionally-protected boycotts. This letter grew public consciousness about concerns with this program, reaching elected officials (including being quoted in the progressive Antisemitism Response and Prevention Act) and initiating a groundswell of activism in Jewish organizations and communities, leading legacy Jewish institutions to respond publicly for the first time to growing concerns, as reported by national Jewish and other media outlets. 

Over the last year, the conditions of the program have remained unclear and opaque, with some of the disputed language being removed from certain places but not others. The Muslim Political Action Committee, reports significant disparities in the allocation of funding, with Muslim communities only receiving 3.7% of the $850 million dispersed between 2017 and 2026 along with $8 million in cancelled grants due to “anti-terrorism” laws in the face of intensifying anti-Muslim violence. (This has been a persistent issue with the program, with a 2021 report raising similar concerns through analyzing grants between 2008-2020.) 

FY26 Program: 

In late June, when the new Notice of Funding Opportunity for FY26 was released, we began hearing from organizations – some were clear that they remained opposed to applying for the program, others were unsure about whether they would change their plans, and some planned to apply with a commitment to not taking the funds if the conditions remained in place. 

In analyzing the notice, we are raising the following concerns: 

• While the requirement to comply with ICE has been removed (page 41), several of the key funding priorities are focused on sharing data with immigration authorities and supporting border security (pages 12/13). This makes clear that the program’s goal is to misuse real safety concerns of communities targeted by violence to further harmful DHS interests. 
• The restrictions on DEI programming remain the same for the majority of program recipients (pages 47/48), which are a direct threat to democracy and free speech while furthering authoritarian policies that endanger all of us. 
• The disparities in grant allocations between communities, and especially the Trump administration’s actions in labeling Muslim organizations “terror-linked” in order to cancel over $8mil in grants, are extremely concerning. 
• Elected officials have raised concerns about “vague and expansive standards (that give) applicants little guidance about what is expected of them and raises concerns about mid-project terminations without warning.”
• At its foundation, the program should not be administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency created in 2002 as the central force in the “War on Terror” that has spent trillions of dollars to surveil, criminalize, detain and deport millions of Black, Brown, Muslim, Arab and others in the USA and globally. Regardless of specific Trump administration conditions, this program is deeply compromised and must be transferred to another government agency for it to be a meaningful and values-aligned resource for communities. 

Therefore, we’re providing the following guidance for Jewish* communities and organizations: 

• Continue to publicly speak out against the program’s conditions that use real concerns about Jewish safety as a tool to further authoritarian interests.
• Invest time and energy into building community-based alternatives with support from the Community Safety Campaign and our partners. 
• Challenge your local and regional institutions to lift up concerns with the program and advocate with elected officials to remove these conditions and shift the program out of DHS’ administration.
• Refuse to apply and/or receive grants from the federal Nonprofit Security Grants Program
• Explore other funding opportunities that are less compromised such as state-based funding opportunities. Be sure to research whether those specific programs also include requirements about compliance with law enforcement or other authorities. 

For press or media requests, please contact our team at CommunitySafetyCampaign@proton.me. 

*Our guidance is specifically for Jewish communities because we recognize that other communities, especially Muslim and Black Christian organizations, have a different set of considerations and have not historically had as much access to this program.