Management Alert – FEMA Faces Significant Challenges Ensuring Recipients Properly Manage Disaster Funds

The objective of this alert was to emphasize to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) leadership the significant deficiencies with its internal controls and ongoing problems enforcing Federal requirements related to proper grant management and oversight of disaster funds. Given the catastrophic nature of the recent disasters, FEMA faces significant challenges ensuring its grant recipients properly manage FEMA disaster funds. This alert contains no recommendations. However, it does emphasize FEMA must implement and use effective controls to overcome existing problems with managing and monitoring funds for disaster response and recovery. As FEMA moves forward with its recovery efforts, it must hold recipients accountable for proper grant management.