December 2025 Flood Resilience Grant Program

This is the largest single pot of federal money aimed at counter-drone capability, and it is worth understanding precisely who can touch it: eligible applicants are state governments only, which makes this a pass-through opportunity for the AI and sensing vendors that states procure from rather than a grant that a technology company applies to directly. Established under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 and administered by FEMA as opportunity DHS-FEMA-C-UAS-161, the program provides $500 million total to help states and their local partners detect, identify, monitor, track and, in select jurisdictions, mitigate unmanned aircraft that threaten public safety or critical infrastructure. The funding splits across two years with a deliberate geographic logic: $250 million in FY2026 is prioritized for the 11 states hosting FIFA World Cup 2026 events plus the National Capital Region hosting America 250 celebrations, and the remaining $250 million in FY2027 is distributed across all 56 states and territories with a broader emphasis on building durable national detection and response capacity. Award sizes are extraordinary in range - a floor of $3,325,000 against a ceiling of $250,000,000 across roughly 12 awards - reflecting that a single state consortium award can absorb an entire fiscal year's tranche. The AI relevance is in what the money buys: DIMT-M (detection, identification, monitoring, tracking and mitigation) technologies depend on sensor fusion, radio-frequency and radar signal classification, computer vision for visual drone identification, and machine learning models that distinguish hostile UAS from lawful traffic and birds in cluttered urban airspace. Practically, AI vendors should pursue this through state homeland security offices and existing statewide procurement vehicles. FEMA moved unusually fast on the first tranche, publishing the NOFO on October 28, 2025 and announcing $250 million in awards to World Cup host states by December 30, 2025, so companies should engage state emergency management agencies well ahead of the FY2027 cycle rather than waiting for a NOFO to appear.

Humanity AI is a 500 million dollar, five-year pooled fund launched in October 2025 by ten major foundations - MacArthur, Ford, Mellon, Mozilla, Omidyar Network, Doris Duke, Lumina, Kapor, Packard and Gates - built around the premise that AI is design rather than destiny and that the people affected by AI systems should have a hand in shaping them. Communities Leading on AI is its first competitive open call, and it is the most accessible entry point into a fund that otherwise operates largely through invited and aligned grantmaking. Ten million dollars is available, with individual grants from 75,000 to 1,000,000 dollars. Three of the fund's five issue areas are in scope for this call: education, meaning AI shaped around the interests of students and educators; labor and economy, meaning AI that enhances rather than displaces workers; and humanities, arts and culture, meaning protection for creators alongside expanded human creativity. The fund's other two priorities, democracy and security, are not part of this particular call. Applications launched 10 September 2026 and close 21 October 2026 at 4:59pm Pacific, a notably short six-week window. Review is two-phase: initial screening for eligibility, then scoring on vision, community leadership, clarity and feasibility, impact potential, and credibility, with finalists notified in December 2026 and asked for additional materials and possible interviews before awards are announced in early spring 2027. The eligibility rules reward exactly what the name suggests - community leadership. U.S.-based 501(c)(3) organizations may apply independently; individuals must apply through a fiscal sponsor or as part of a collaboration; for-profit entities can participate but cannot lead an application; and organizations that already received direct Humanity AI funding in 2026 may only participate inside a collaboration rather than as a lead.