Campus Safety Grants: It’s Not All Doom and Gloom
Grant applications for programs that are sustainable, reduce unemployment and focus on more than just the purchasing of equipment have the best chance of being awarded.
These types of funding areas typically abound during times of economic vitality, but when the floodgates are being closed down, they will wither and die. Only the strongest grant programs stand a chance of survival.
Reducing Unemployment Remains a Priority
Unemployment is still hovering near 10 percent. As evidenced by the proliferation of grant programs spawned by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), there is and will remain a concerted effort in areas of grant funding towards decreasing that unemployment rate.
That is not to say that we expect to see another round of stimulus money. This program has unfortunately gained a general perception as being a failed effort that only increased our debt. The federal government is the only area that visibly appears to have benefitted in more jobs. The private sector is still waiting for the job market to return. What many predicted would be only a short term problem that ARRA would help resolve, is now looked at as being a five-year, long-haul effort.
Programs Must Be Sustainable After Grant
You should not expect that hiring grants will suddenly appear, however. Grants by their very nature are designed to simply be a stop gap or bridging effort to long-term solutions. The historical failure of the COPS hiring grants and to some extent the SAFER fire act hiring programs is directly linked to the problem of lack of a long-term sustainability component. Under these programs, money was given to hire police officers and firefighters for several years under the premise that local governments would have time to gain sufficient budgetary resources to allow absorbing these new employees into existing budget resources. Without new residential and industrial growth to generate additional tax based revenue, these local government agencies cannot offer a realistic sustainability plan to their applications. Consequently, their grant applications are failing, or their departments simply will not apply to the programs.
There is an important lesson to be learned here by anyone applying for grants. Sustainability, after the grant money is gone, is a huge stumbling block that must be worked out well in advance of the application. A realistic solution to that must be presented in any successful grant application.
Grants Must Focus on More Than Just Equipment
This uncertainty does not mean that we should still be sitting idle when it comes to safety and security concerns on campuses. Educational institutions seeking supplemental funding from grant programs to address safety and security issues must still prepare themselves well in advance. They must understand that although supplemental funding exists for safety and security projects, equipment alone is usually not allowed to be the sole reason that grant would be awarded.
Equipment or resources to increase response capability levels on campuses will still carry some priority in programs here, but applicants should bear in mind that any request for equipment (such as mass notification, video surveillance, access control or communications interoperability solutions) will need to be an integral part of a larger, comprehensive emergency management plan for the campus.
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