FEMA’s pre-disaster FMA grant program helps communities reduce long-term flood risk for properties with repeated flooding by funding capacity building, project scoping, property buyouts, partnership development, and localized flood risk reduction projects that store or divert floodwaters.

Supports nature-based solutions

Application cycle: The Flood Mitigation Assistance program is currently accepting applications. Applications are due August 6, 2026.

Summary: The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Flood Mitigation Assistance (FMA) grant program makes funds available to reduce or eliminate the risk of repetitive flooding to structures insured under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Funds can be used for a variety of flood mitigation activities to reduce community and individual flooding risk. 

Eligible applicants: States, U.S. territories, and federally recognized tribes are eligible to apply. Applicants must have a FEMA approved hazard mitigation plan and be in good standing with the NFIP. Cities, townships, counties, special districts, and federally recognized tribes are considered subapplicants. Subapplicants must work with their applicant to prepare and submit applications. 

. Eligible activities:

• Priority 1 (Capability and Capacity Building) activities include developing future localized flood risk projects or individual flood mitigation projects that will subsequently reduce flood claims against the NFIP. Activities under this category will be prioritized in the following order: developing or updating hazard mitigation plans, technical assistance to communities, future project scoping, and additional capacity building activities such as expanding skills of the current workforce. 
• Priority 2 (Localized Flood Risk Reduction Projects): eligible activities must benefit NFIP-insured properties and include localized flood control; floodwater storage and diversion; floodplain and stream restoration; stormwater management; and wetland restoration. 
• Priority 3 (Individual Flood Mitigation Projects): eligible activities include property acquisition, structure elevation and retrofitting measures. Projects that reduce risk to repetitive loss and severe repetitive loss properties will be prioritized. 

Funding: 

• Priority 1: $60 million is available for capability and capacity building (C&CB) assistance to develop future localized flood risk reduction projects and/or individual flood mitigation projects.
  • $100,000 for state mitigation plans with maximums of:
    • $50,000 for state multi-hazard mitigation planning.
    • $25,000 for local multi-hazard mitigation planning.
  • $50,000 for technical assistance to states.
  • $900,000 for project scoping.
  • $300,000 for additional C&CB activities, such as partnership development, enhancing local floodplain management, and SRL/RL strategy development.
• Priority 2: $420 million is available to reduce community flood risk and support NFIP
• Priority 3: $120 million is available for individual flood mitigation projects. Generally, no federal statutory maximums exist for eligible individual flood mitigation projects.
• 10% of the total subapplication budget can be used for subapplicant management costs.

Cost share:

• In general, the cost share for projects is 75% federal / 25% nonfederal 
  • The cost share is different for specified Priority 3 projects. Certain severe repetitive loss properties and repetitive loss properties are eligible for a 90-100% federal cost share. If the project does not meet the eligibility requirements, the federal cost share is 75%.

Application process: 

• Local governments submit mitigation planning and project applications to their state during the open application cycle, and should contact their State Hazard Mitigation Officer or federally recognized tribal official for more information.
• Freely available data from FEMA’s National Risk Index (NRI) can be included in and used to bolster a community’s project grant application. The NRI is a tool that calculates a risk index figure for each county for various types of disasters.

Applicants can be submitted using the FEMA GO Portal.