Giving Compass' Take:
- Robyn Griggs Lawrence discusses the impact of FEMA funding cuts on cities facing disasters and the need to improve community-based disaster resilience.
- As a donor, how can you advocate for community-based disaster resilience networks in your region as FEMA withdraws support?
- Learn more about disaster relief and recovery and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on disaster philanthropy.
What is Giving Compass?
We connect donors to learning resources and ways to support community-led solutions. Learn more about us.
With the Trump administration slashing Federal Emergency Management Agency staff and pushing for decentralization, local governments are being forced to take on more responsibility for emergency management. As FEMA funding is cut, experts say cities need to prepare now by forging ties with state agencies, neighboring jurisdictions and local businesses and nonprofits.
President Donald Trump, who has called for FEMA’s elimination, signed a March executive order directing state and local governments to take on a greater role in national preparedness and streamline federal preparedness operations. Since he took office, about 2,000 full-time staff members – roughly a third of the full-time workforce – have left the agency. FEMA has also canceled the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, proposed raising the damage threshold for federally declared disasters and moved to deny major disaster declarations for snowstorms.
“The administration’s cuts to FEMA staff, funding programs, and policies has not only degraded the agency’s capacity, but the capacity of state and local governments as well,” Rob Moore, director of the flooding solutions team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an email. “The loss of federal funding, training programs, and direct assistance from knowledgeable FEMA staff has set back climate resilience and emergency management by a decade or more on the eve of the hurricane and wildfire seasons.”
“The message is pretty clear to state and local governments: the cavalry’s not coming,” said Kathy Fulton, executive director of the American Logistics Aid Network, a nonprofit that provides supply chain assistance during disasters, regarding FEMA funding cuts. “They’re the ones who are going to have to figure this out – and really, how are they going to do that?”
According to an Urban Institute analysis, 71% of major disasters from 2008 to 2024 would not have qualified for FEMA funding under the Trump administration’s proposed changes, meaning state and local governments would have been on the hook for about $15 billion.
Read the full article about FEMA funding cuts by Robyn Griggs Lawrence at Smart Cities Dive.