Departments researching the SAFER Recruitment and Retention (R&R) activity usually want one specific answer: what will FEMA actually pay for? The honest answer is that the exact list is set fiscal year by fiscal year in the program's Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), but the test FEMA applies to every request, and the categories of spending that have historically qualified, are stable enough to explain here.
This is background for reading the current NOFO with the right questions in mind, not a substitute for reading it. TurnoutFlow builds recruiting and retention software, see the note below for what that does, and does not, mean here.
The test FEMA actually applies
FEMA does not fund a line item because it is on a generic list of allowed categories, the SAFER guidance is explicit that an applicant has to explain how a given activity addresses a recruitment or retention problem the department has identified, and merit review scores applications on exactly that. A request without that explanation scores poorly, even if similar spending has been approved for other departments in other years.
In practice, that means the strongest applications start from a specific, named problem, for example, "we lose recruits partway through Firefighter I because we cannot outfit them", and work backward to the spending that addresses it, rather than starting from a shopping list of things a grant might pay for.
Categories that have historically qualified
FEMA cites examples such as personal protective equipment for new recruits, along with nominal stipends, awards, and incentive programs tied to recruitment or retention milestones. The R&R activity is broadly aimed at the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters, as distinct from the separate Hiring activity, which funds paid positions.
This is not an exhaustive list, and FEMA does not publish one as a fixed set, the eligible and ineligible cost detail lives in the current fiscal year's NOFO, and it is worth reading in full before assuming an idea qualifies.
- Personal protective equipment for new recruits.
- Nominal recruitment and retention incentives, stipends, and awards.
- Recruitment-focused outreach and marketing effort tied to an identified recruitment problem.
The SOP requirement is not optional
Any incentive, stipend, or award program funded under R&R has to be governed by Standard Operating Procedures the department has formally adopted, not an informal understanding among officers. At minimum, those SOPs need to specify who qualifies for each incentive, exactly what they have to do to earn it, and what happens to the award if the person does not fulfill the requirement.
Departments that treat this as paperwork to backfill after the grant is awarded tend to run into trouble during monitoring. Writing the SOP alongside the application, not after the award, is the more defensible order of operations.
Who the funded activity has to reach
Funds under R&R may only be used for volunteer firefighters who are involved with, or trained in, the operations of firefighting and emergency response. A recruitment or retention program aimed at, say, general community volunteers unconnected to operational firefighting duties falls outside what the grant is meant to support.
Read the current NOFO before you plan a budget around this page
Eligible and ineligible cost detail is set fresh in each fiscal year's Notice of Funding Opportunity, and specifics have changed between cycles. Treat this page as orientation for what kind of thinking FEMA is looking for, and the NOFO as the actual source of truth for what you can request this year.