Congress provided $10 million to the Department of Homeland Security for the FY16 Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant Program. DHS awarded those funds to 26 state and local government agencies, non-profit organizations, and universities in July 2017 in accordance with the Notice of Funding Opportunity. On this page, the Office for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (OTVTP) shares information useful to practitioners in communities across the country and provides how DHS assesses and monitors the projects in this program. The grant projects all contribute to the prevention of terrorism in the areas they serve, but also provide performance metrics, lessons learned, and promising practices that communities can replicate to build a nationwide terrorism prevention infrastructure. The need for additional community based efforts is high, DHS assesses very few communities have viable prevention and intervention capabilities. By sharing information here, DHS hopes that more communities can begin to develop their own capabilities.
DHS Grants Supporting Terrorism Prevention: Conceptual Framework
Performance Reports
Grantee performance on the FY16 CVE Grant Program has largely concluded. DHS assessed grantee performance throughout the grant period and has released a Preliminary Report on Programmatic Performance which documents grantee outcomes and promising practices and lessons learned that DHS is incorporating into its future prevention programming. That report, and quarterly reports compiled over the course of the grant period can be found on the CVE Grant Program Resources page.
Practitioners may contact DHS OTVTP with questions or for further information at terrorismprevention@hq.dhs.gov.
Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in CVE Grants
Since its creation, DHS has routinely partnered with law enforcement agencies in communities. Law enforcement agencies are both a key partner of prevention programming as well as a beneficiary of prevention work. Research shows that many violent plots have been disrupted as a result of community intervention. Many more could have been disrupted if family/community members recognized signs that were troubling, but may not have risen to the level of criminal activity. Like many other forms of violence, the risk factors of ideologically motivated violence are often perceptible to those close to the assailant prior to the violent action. The grant projects funded under this program and envisioned in the future, focus on alleviating the risk factors of ideologically motivated violence on the individual, sub-group, and community levels, so that law enforcement can focus on investigating and engaging with individuals who have or are planning to commit serious criminal violations. Short of a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed or that a violent crime will be committed imminently, prevention activities should have a strong firewall to ensure that solely participating in a prevention activity does not lead to a law enforcement investigation or intelligence collection. DHS activities in terrorism prevention are established in a way that prevents any purposeful breaching of that firewall, and requires our grantees to comply in the same manner.
Notably, many of these projects rely on community based staff to interact with members of the public on a voluntary basis, and all projects work in a way that explicitly does not compromise the individuals’ privacy, civil rights, or civil liberties. As is clear in the notice of funding opportunity, the individual project proposals, and award terms, discrimination on any basis is both prohibited and antithetical to the purpose of these projects. While various terrorist groups and movements (International or Domestic) target specific races, ethnicities or religions for recruitment, others are less targeted, and as such, the program attempts to prevent or intervene in all types of violent ideologies by recognizing that the target group for recruitment of various ideologies, may very well be everyone in the U.S. At the same time, some projects work to counter specific violent ideologies and work with specific groups of people that are more likely to be targeted by domestic and foreign terrorists for recruitment.
DHS is committed to transparency and protecting rights and liberties of individuals who engage with the projects we financially support. DHS does not, and cannot collect information about individuals who engage with or are beneficiaries of this grant program. In order to gauge performance, grantees use anonymous instruments to measure changes in knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, such as enhanced knowledge of recruitment and radicalization methods, enhanced resiliency skills, increased awareness of and willingness to engage with community intervention programs, and increased positive attitudes toward civic engagement.
Grantees by Category and Areas Served
Locations of Grant Project Activities, or Organization HQ
Full project proposals are available here. Note: Some elements of the projects may have changed by mutual agreement of DHS and the grantee. See the program performance reports for the latest details related to project activities.
Developing Resilience
- Heartland Democracy Center: $423,340 (Minneapolis, MN)
- Nashville International Center for Empowerment: $445,110 (Nashville, TN)
- Peace Catalyst International: $95,000 (nationwide)
- Police Foundation: $484,835 (Boston, MA)
- Seattle Police Department: $409,390 (Seattle, WA)
- Tuesday’s Children: $386,670 (nationwide)
Training and Engagement
- City of Arlington Police Department: $47,497 (Arlington, TX)
- City of Dearborn Police Department: $51,521 (Dearborn, MI)
- City of Houston Office of Public Safety & Homeland Security: $500,000 (Houston, TX)
- Denver Police Department: $481,313 (Denver, CO)
- Global Peace Foundation: $453,497 (statewide, NJ)
- Hennepin County Sheriff's Office: $347,600 (Minneapolis, MN)
- Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority: $187,877 (statewide, IL)
- National Consortium for Advanced Policing: $200,000 (nationwide)
- National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices: $500,000 (nationwide)
- Nebraska Emergency Management Agency: $300,000 (Lincoln, NE)
Managing Interventions
- Alameda County Sheriff’s Office: $499,125 (Alameda, CA)
- Crisis Intervention of Houston, Inc.: $500,000 (Houston, TX)
- Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department: $500,000 (Las Vegas, NV)
- Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security: $500,000 (statewide, MA)
Challenging the Narrative
- America Abroad Media: $647,546 (nationwide)
- Masjid Muhammad, Inc.: $531,195 (nationwide)
- Rochester Institute of Technology: $149,955 (statewide, NY)
Building Capacity
- The Counter Extremism Project: $298,760 (nationwide)
- University of San Diego: $634,769 (San Diego, CA)