Funding DFR: Proven Grant Tactics That Win

Welcome to Funding DFR Proven Tactics That Win. My name is Kathy Wood, and I'm working in conjunction with Skydio to bring you this timely grant information.

I truly understand budget shortfalls, and grants will assist first responders in obtaining critical equipment. With technology advancing every day almost like every second, it is important to obtain the latest in equipment to stay ahead. We understand that many organizations rely on older equipment or simply do without due to budget shortfalls.

I truly believe this is when grant funding can make a huge difference in your DFR program. So stay tuned, and let's walk through how we can get there.

Just a little bit about me.

After receiving my bright new shiny MBA, I started out in high-tech finance and eventually made my way into state government. My experience includes being a director of two statewide grant programs with many years in administering grants, evaluating applications, writing grants, just basically the entire grant life cycle. I was also selected to be on a statewide rewrite of grant guidelines and appointed by the governor to a statewide grant related advisory board. Most recently, after I retired from state government, I went back to work, and I had the opportunity to work in an underserved municipality both as an employee, as a consultant. While I was with this city, we were able to acquire over fifty million in grant funding for a city with a population of approximately thirty thousand residents.

A generous portion of this funding went into law enforcement and fire response grants.

Having such a broad based experience has really enabled me to see from many different types of organizations and people, both as a funder and a successful grant recipient, what works. Grants are not some magical unicorn. It is just knowing where to find them and how to put your best face forward.

So let's see what we're gonna cover today.

Our agenda will include just very high level three basic categories of grants that can potentially fund your DFR program and where you can look for grant funding opportunities. We'll briefly discuss federal, state, and local grants that may be available to your organization for DFR purchases.

We will also cover the importance of community support and collaboration, which plays a huge role in not only the success of your grant application, but it'll also play a huge role in the success of your DFR program.

At the end of this presentation, we'll have a live question and answer session. So let's begin.

As I mentioned, the three basic types, federal, state, and local. Now I use local as kind of a catchall for all other grants. This can include corporations, perhaps nonprofits, local community organizations like a rotary club, Kiwanis, and I'm just putting all of those in the other category.

Federal grants will be the same for everyone in our audience, while state grants, of course, will depend on each state. And local and community grants, as you can imagine, depends on your own geographic location.

Federal grants are actually the primary source of funding for most DFR programs. They offer substantial amounts of funding but with specific eligibility and compliance requirements. As most of you know, a grant is not a loan, so you usually do not have to pay anything back, but you do need to make sure that you adhere to the grant compliance documents. Now states will offer their own DFR grants, but will also assist the federal government in funneling their their federal funding dollars within their state. What this means is that a state may offer a grant of their own branding using federal dollars.

States will use these federal grants judiciously and often point to their own state priorities. So there, again, it's always important to carefully read the eligibility requirements for each funding opportunity.

Okay. So you're saying, where do I find these federal grants? Well, all federal agencies are required to post their grant opportunities on grant dot gov. I have the link up on the slide. And grants dot gov is a compilation of all federal agencies offering grants. You can also see what grants are forecasted, what grants are currently posted, and what grants have been archived.

I wanna re I I wanna say that this is a free website. And as you know, there are so many websites that attempt to redirect you, and grants is notorious for that. So when you're searching for federal grants, make sure that you look at grants dot gov and look at the link on the slide and make sure that it is the official government website. Do not get hoodwinked into paying a fee to search for federal grants.

I also have a screenshot of what you will see on Grants dot gov. When you log into Grants dot gov website, remember it's free, you don't have to sign up to search. You can click on Search Grants and the above screen will populate. Where you see Home Learn Grants, click on search and it'll pull up this screen.

As you will see, it is here that you will enter your keywords to start your DFR federal grant search.

Now these are some of the main grants that you will find that will fund law enforcement and first responders.

In addition to Grants dot gov, it is also important to sign up for email notifications for grant opportunities at an agency's website because these are some of the most common sources of law enforcement first responder funding.

Make sure you get on each one of these agencies' websites. Currently, Grants dot gov does not provide notification when new grants that are of interest to you are posted.

So as I mentioned, a few of these law enforcement funding agencies are listed. The first one is Office of Community Oriented Policing or COPS. This is a great site. It has many programs including microgrants.

The Office of Justice Programs includes the BJA or Bureau of Justice Assistance with the ever popular Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistant Grant or commonly referred to as JAG.

Several of these grant programs have not previously allowed unmanned aircraft systems as eligible equipment under their grant guidelines.

This past year, this spring, a new executive order was issued, and the DOJ has been directed to ensure that eligible agencies can use grant funding for unmanned aircraft systems and re related equipment. So you can kinda see where I'm going right here.

These agencies are currently not accepting applications for this fiscal year, but you wanna make sure you get on their websites and their mailing list for next year as because these programs are ones to watch as this new executive order comes into place, they might start allowing and most likely will allow, DFRs to be eligible equipment under their grant programs.

The federal fiscal year will start on October first, so potential new grant opportunities will be posted after that date.

Now moving on to state grants.

States play a huge role, as we mentioned, in distributing federal funds within their own state. Many office justice programs and homeland security grants are awarded directly to state governments, which then set the priorities and award funds within their states. Each state will have their own application deadline.

By clicking the link on this slide for state administrative agency, you can find out which agency or agencies in your state award federal program dollars. There can my overarching theme, get on their email distribution list. Some states use one agency and make it kinda easy on us when we're looking for grants, and other states use several several agencies to distribute funds. Oftentimes, these agencies will have pre application webinars and free workshops that you can attend. I highly recommend that you get on these websites and attend their websites, their webinars, and their workshops. This will give you valuable insight as to how best to compete for their funding because every grant will have their own priorities or their own focus on what they're trying to accomplish.

Now in looking at this slide, it's important to note that these FEMA programs have allowed DFR purchases in the past for these programs.

In fact, in twenty twenty four, the Homeland Security Grant Program allocated three hundred and seventy four million to state governments, and the Urban Area Security Initiative allocated about five hundred and fifty four million.

FEMA has a portfolio of grants that may be available in your state.

Past grant guidelines have required a nexus to the National Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Plan, which is a long phrase. It's also known as the National THIRA, t h I r a. And then also FEMA will have direct nexus to national priority areas. When you're looking at these two grants in particular within your state, in twenty twenty four, there were six priority areas, funding areas, where DFRs easily have the ability to integrate into these priority areas. And this was under the SHSP and the UASI grant. These priority areas, as you can see on on the slide, are for, I'm sorry, protection of soft targets, enhancing information and intelligence sharing and analysis, enhancing community preparedness, and enhancing election security.

I am sure you can see how a DFR program will be an incredible asset in each of these priority areas.

Another grant that is available to some states is the Operation Stone Guard, And this program allocated eighty one million dollars in border regions with a priority on information sharing and collaborative programs. DFRs do play a clear critical role in these programs.

I want to reiterate that due to each state administering these federal grant programs, application due dates will vary by state. For example, in Texas, a majority of public safety related grant applications are due in either February or March. But in Florida, grant applications are due late July and August. So there again, go back to the link for the state administrative agency and find out who your agencies are that will roll out these federal funds and get on their email list.

Now I wanna go over just a quick case study here, and I'll have a couple sprinkled throughout this presentation.

In twenty twenty one, the Salem, New Hampshire police department received a grant from FEMA DHS to start their own DFR program. Now they wanted to do this after they saw how beneficial drones were when the New Hampshire Fish and Games had success with the their DFR program. Now I love this example because this is truly what has happened in my own experience. We had a county SWAT team that used DFRs, and then a nearby fire department saw how effective it was, and they wanted to get a DFR for their hazmat team. As you can see from there, the ones just began to multiply and continue to multiply.

Now moving on to, let's see, state specific grants.

We have ones that are not federal dollars, but states might legislate legislatively appropriate funds for these particular grants. The California Specialized Training Institute grant offers grants to fund training and equipment for California first responders. First responders can apply through the state's Emergency Management Agency.

In New York, there are several grants, and one of those is offered from the State Division of Criminal Justice Services. And this offers grants to provide law enforcement technology grants, including drones, and a variety of equipment to support New York law enforcement agencies.

In Arkansas, the Public Safety Equipment Grant Program offers several grant programs that allows first responders the purchase of drones. And another really great resource is your highway and transportation department.

They often allow UAS equipment. These grants often provide accident reconstruction or hazmat spill detection nexus, and this is where an unmanned aerial system would definitely come in handy.

Again, that's the transportation departments.

Now then, in addition to states offering those grants, some states offer grants specifically for drone replacements or purchases.

Florida has allocated drone I'm sorry, allocated funds for drones replacement open to law enforcement agencies, fire service providers, and others as outlined in their grant documents. This application is currently open until I'm sorry. This grant application is open until October fourteenth twenty twenty five.

Virginia has established a grant program to assist first responders in acquiring drones. The goal of this program is accessibility and public safety and is offered through the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. The application is projected to be released later this year. So while this opportunity is not currently available, make sure if you're in the state of Virginia to put it on your your radar.

The North Dakota state agencies North Dakota state agencies, including institutions of higher education that owned a UAS prior to January one twenty twenty five, are eligible for replacements that comply with federal standards for national security. The program has been available and includes a very simple one page application, making replacement funding rather easy.

Additional funding was recently voted down by the North Dakota legislature, but this is definitely a program to watch.

Then we also have Ohio that is will recently received, funding for two point five million for DFR programs within their state.

And let's move on to a a case study.

In New York State, in twenty twenty four, the Monroe County Sheriff's Department Sheriff's Office won eleven point seven million dollars for a state grant awarded by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice.

The grant was part of the law enforcement grant program. A portion of this funding will be used for DFR purchases. So you can see how in this case, you don't need to just have a grant for a particular DFR. You can make it part of a whole program and make the DFR part of that program.

We have another case study where the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation in twenty twenty three awarded a grant to the city of Willard to purchase two DFRs that have greatly assisted the city's safety services department.

And that was just a a smaller grant that perhaps bought two DFRs, and we can see how valuable that is to the entire city. And I'd be really curious. I bet we see that multiplier effect where monkey see, monkey do, where we have one department using it, and it multiplies into more ones.

As you may know, grants can come from almost any type of organization. You can have a city. You can have a county. You can have a foundation.

Almost anyone can offer a grant. These can grants can be found by going directly to the local business and asking them or going to their website and looking up the company or organization.

Many corporations have established nonprofit foundations that will willingly support local first responders. Again, when you make these contacts, get on their distribution list.

Now then another case study.

In December of twenty twenty four, the Manistee Police and Fire Departments won a local community grant awarded by the local revenue sharing board to start their joint drone program.

And, again, I say joint because it's a multiplier effect. Someone finds out how effective DFRs is are, and they wanna go for it. So we're all for that.

Just as your Rochester Police Department won a four hundred and sixty seven thousand local community grant awarded by the Mayo Clinic's Community Engagement Grant Program. So you can see funding is out there.

You need to look at in your community, in hospitals, universities. Those are all good resources to get more funding for your DFR program.

Now most org you say, that's great, Kathy, but we just don't even have a grant person.

That's okay. Most organizations do not have a dedicated grant staff. Looking for grants other than federal or state agencies can be challenging. Now remember, federal grants are all posted on one website. In state agencies, you're going to go back and find your state administrative agency and get on their list.

There are numerous subscription based grant services that can take literally the pain out of searching for grants. But you need to look at your options and decide what your what works for your budget. Grant databases can range from anywhere from twenty dollars a week to several thousand a year.

And you might not have robust enough staff to really take advantage of the one that costs two thousand dollars a year.

So poke around, look at GrantWatch, Grant Stations, some of the other ones on the slide. You might have ones locally.

And when you get on these grant databases, you can put up your own search with your own criteria and save that search.

That way, if you go in, I recommend once a week, maybe you only have time to do it once every other two weeks, you can rerun that search and find out grants in your community. Oftentimes, you can get very specific with grant databases, like maybe even down to a ZIP code of those organizations. If you're a more rural or smaller area, you can expand it. So they're very robust, and I have found for the most part that most of these grant services have excellent support, customer support.

The one thing I do wanna mention is the great thing about grant databases is that when you search for grants, oftentimes they will bring up federal and state grants, which to me is important simply because right now grants dot gov does not save your search. So you can put in this great search on the federal grants dot gov website, And the next time you go in there and wanna search for the same thing, your search is gone. So you have to basically recreate the wheel. Most state and and community local grant databases do not kick you out, and they will save your your information.

So let's move on.

What do funders want?

I can tell you right now, it literally pays to have established relationships with all type of community groups and businesses. The more your organization can repeat the same messaging about needing funds for a DFR program, the better your chances of receiving funding.

I would like to ask you to maybe consider putting together a flyer with your DFR project needs. Make it a one page and just, you know, like you get advertisements slapped on your car windshield. Use these as talking points in your community as to why you want a DFR program, potentially how much it's gonna cost, and what you wanna do with it. And when you go out to, you know, your community outreach, your Kiwanis meeting, rotary clubs, I'm kind of picking on those organizations today, but they're all awesome.

There are tons of other ones. Hand them your one pager and say, okay. This is what we wanna do. Because unless you get out in the community and let people know that you need this funding, you're not gonna get it.

So be creative with it. With public outreach and demonstrations showing how DFRs address many complex community needs, including resident and personnel safety, communities are able to support robust DFR programs.

So you wanna make sure that you're when you put this one pager together or when you consider about your DFR program, you wanna make sure it includes, you know, the local need and relevance, and you wanna make sure it includes as many partners as possible.

Grant funders should always receive a letter of support from one or more of your community organizations with your grant application. Now you might say, okay. Our funder isn't requiring a letter of support.

Don't kid yourself. Include that letter of support as an application attachment. You want to show the grant funder that you have community support.

So let's talk next about how you engage them. Now creative ways to build your DFR community support and collaboration are key to your funding success.

I mean, seriously, as more grants roll out and the government is wanting more federal agencies and state agencies wanna stretch their dollar further and further, they're gonna wanna see that not only are you using it, let's say, for your hazmat team, which may go out once a week, twice a week, you also wanna find out, okay. What collaboration do we have within the community? So let's go out and identify groups of people, large or small, corporations, whatever, and talk to those stakeholders and show them how they can support your program and might be interested in participating in your program in the future.

In just a few minutes, we'll hear about Skydio for all. These innovative programs are a great way to get the local explorer unit or other STEM program involved in your DFR mission. By providing hands on instruction to local scouts, several law enforcement agencies have sparked interest in their explorer recruits, you know, they're using that as a potential recruiting tool for their fire department or their law enforcement agency. And then, also, you're helping that young learner build a pathway in STEM education.

Now this is truly a win win. Grant funders appreciate the educational outreach and also very importantly, sustainability. So when you're looking to engage stakeholders, you want to see if the local university or the local explorer troop, you want to make sure that they continue to help your program and foster your program, not only during the year that you might have grant funding, but continually for the next three to five years. Grant funders don't wanna see that they're giving you funding, and then after one year, it's gonna fall off the map because, once again, most people do not or most budgets do not have enough support or money in their budget to continue these programs to be as robust as they need to be.

So make sure that you address the sustainability.

If you need to, local media, form a task force of, you know, couple of guys and gals in your organization that will be using drones all the time, and have them as the external face and talk about the need for DFRs in your program.

They're getting continually continual messaging.

Alright. Tips for success. Reach research continuously.

Leverage those partnerships and engage the community.

As I wrap up this portion of the presentation, we cannot emphasize how important it is to continue these three steps.

DFR funding is available, but all grants have a posting date and a due date.

As you may know, if you don't get the funding opportunity early enough in the life cycle of the grant application, you could only have two days to write an entire grant application. This is not putting your best face forward.

So the sooner you have the funding opportunity, the better. And partnership and collaboration are very important parts of the grant process. So once you find those grants, make sure you know how to schmooze your funders and talk to why they want to give your organization funding for a DFR program.

All funders want their dollars to assist as many people as possible. The more partners and community collaborators you can list on your application, the greater sense the greater chance of having your application funded. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Kathy. I'll take it over from here for you. Hey, everyone. Kathy, appreciate all of your information on grant programs. Quite a few questions in the chat, so we'll get to those in a moment.

You know, the last thing that Kathy spoke to was about community engagement and really involving your communities that you can point to these situations and circumstances when you're applying for funding and grants. And I wanted to touch on our Skydio for all program in case it's something that you are not aware of.

Mira on the Skydio team leads this, and she is a phenomenal person who unfortunately just couldn't join us today. So I will try to do this justice on her behalf.

So Skydio for all, our CEO and cofounder, Adam Bry, is very passionate about this program because he believes that companies should have a role in shaping how new technology is deployed and the impact that it has on the communities and the world at large. And so through this program, we really aspire to build trust and awareness through community outreach and education.

So get into kind of a little bit more of what this means. Study for all is our social impact program, and this supports all of our customers in the various different industries through STEM education, community engagement, disaster relief support, veteran support, and historic preservation initiatives.

STEM and community engagement is typically what is most requested from us to help in different agencies across the United States or different communities. And there's a high interest in Skydio for All programs to come out. So when you think about community oriented policing and trying to get more out into your community and, you know, show them that law enforcement might not be what they think it is because of what they see in papers or on the news or on the Internet, You're really trying to build these bonds and relationships with the kids and the community. This is a program where you can come out and show them the future of drones, how you are using them today, how you plan to use them in the future.

Get their hands on the sticks. Get them flying them. We are, you know, shaping the future of this country and potential jobs in STEM for the youth. So these are great programs where we can come out and really help you shape your program, shape the event, and bring the support from the Skydio team to help you do it as well.

So when we think about the different ways to engage with your community, again, to Kathy's point about the importance of this for funding, we are happy to support in any way, and we'll help you get this programming off the ground if it's something that you don't already have in place. And so some of the ways that we can do this is via schools and nonprofits. We can go help you visit schools and get these students flying. Right?

Get the drone in the air, get the controller in their hand, and show them all of the things that they can do with this kind of technology.

We are visiting boys and girls clubs and YMCAs. We're also just attending community events and getting out in front of people with our customers in the different industries to just develop awareness around what drones are for, how you're not using them, and just so they have a better understanding of the tech.

This is also for workforce development, different career opportunities that people can have with drones. So whether it's something like what you are doing in public safety, serving your communities, and using drones to do that better, or it's something like we're doing on the opposite end with engineering teams and research and development and all of the different careers that go into the world of drones.

And, additionally, transparency dashboards and building trust, and I'm gonna touch a little bit more on that on the next slide.

So we talked about community transparency. You know, our program currently gives you the ability through DFR command to publish your flights for the community to have better understanding of when you're flying, how you're flying, and for what reasons.

And totally up to you what you're publishing and what you're not publishing. Obviously, cases, you probably don't wanna have out there until everything's buttoned up.

But this is an example of which is what Wichita Police Department is doing. They have a drone dashboard. You can go visit it. You can see what they're doing with their drones. They are very public about their program.

They have an excellent social media push for well done Wednesday where they put these stories out into the world. A lot of them now are including drone footage, and it's just a better understanding for the community to know how they're using drones and how they do not intend to use them.

And this is just kind of a handful of engagements that Skydio has participated in in the first half of the year. It just dawned on me that these GIFs do not work through this platform. So you're gonna imagine that these are short little videos playing here on the screen. But, we've been to several locations, just in the first half of this year from, Jefferson County Sheriff in Alabama, San Francisco, PD in California, Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, and Philadelphia most recently.

And so, basically, this is just my plug for you to know that we are here to support any type of community engagement that you would like to do.

We've got the teams in place who will show up with all of the equipment and the technology and help you do presentations to your community to develop that engagement and just a better understanding of what you do and what you are doing with Drone. So if you are interested in getting any more information on that, Skydio for all at Skydio dot com, or you can go ahead and visit our website. We have a whole page there that really highlights our mission and what we're trying to do here.

So we hope to hear from you if you need some help. And the last thing I wanted to touch on, Kathy, before I throw it back to you for the q and a is the Axon SkySwap program. If you are not aware, Skydio is a very strategic partner with Axon, and they currently have what is called SkySwap. And that is a way to future proof your drone program and kind of turn in your noncompliant drone hardware and get some funds back for Axon Air TFR credits for, you know, Skydio hardware and software and services. So a way to kind of trade in and get something new from the Skydio end for your current program. So when you're looking for funding, that's a way to swap some things out and get into a Skydio program and build on from there.

If you have any questions about that as well, we can absolutely send you more information. There's also a page on our website that highlights our partnership with Axon, what that means, what that looks like, and you can certainly get more information about this program there. So with that said, Kathy, I appreciate you letting me take a couple minutes here at the end of your session to highlight Skydio for All and the SkySwap program. We will kick it off to q and a. And if you wanna go ahead and jump in that doc and handle some of that questions, that would be great.

Okay. And the first question I had was, is there a particular time of the year where quest or where grant applications are more available?

I would say yes. You want to look at the legislative year. For instance, if you're dealing with a a federal government, usually, their new legislative session starts in October. So you will see grants coming out after October for the new year. So that'll be FY26.

For local communities, municipalities that work in do state grants, oftentimes, it follows the same timeline as the federal agencies, so after October first. And for foundations and businesses, organizations, and so forth, they usually follow a calendar year. But there, again, it depends on the organization.

Well, let's see.

I'm also looking for some more questions here.

I got you, Kathy. I can read them off to you if that's helpful.

Okay. That'd be great.

Yeah. Excellent. So we had a question that says, can we apply for multiple federal grants at once if our program supports multiple use cases? Like, they wanna use them for patrol, and they also wanna use them for search and rescue.

Usually, you can apply for multiple programs.

It it really depends on the agency. And so let me back up here. If you want to use, let's say, a drone in a a hazmat and then your police department, you really need to be very judicious and look at the amount of funding that is available through that grant opportunity. For instance, it might be to your advantage to break it off into two separate grants, one for hazmat and which would be fire related services and then one for the police department. If there is enough funding in that particular opportunity, you might wanna just create one large program and have a couple of different components within that program. So say it's a a a million and a half dollar cap, You probably wouldn't have any problem putting four different projects in it if that is what you desire. If you have a fifty thousand dollar cap, you might wanna break it off into two different grant applications.

Does that answer your question?

I'm sure I'll get something in the chat if it doesn't.

We'll go with that one, and then we'll move on to the next. And if anyone has questions or needs clarity on that, feel free to drop it.

There's there's a question here about Axon Air, so I can take this. Do I have to use Axon Air if I participate in SkySwap?

So you will get credits for DFR through, like, an Axon contract. So if you wanna, you know, trade in the current drones that you have that are noncompliant, and there is a matrix and a list to how much money you get depending on which type of drone you want to trade in, that those credits will go toward your DFR purchase, which, because we are partnered with them, is for Skydio equipment.

Is there a base template for DFR federal grants?

Federal grants, depending on what agency, have a very prescribed format. So it's best to go onto the agency, the funder's website, and see what materials they're asking for. As far as a template, there is DFRs are very unique depending on what program you're you're using it for and what your funder's requirement are might be. There is not currently a template available. Now we do have some blogs posted on the Skydio website that will walk you through how to create a strong narrative and how to put together a program.

And there, again, unfortunately, it's pretty much dependent on the grant. You can be proactive while you're waiting for a new grant to come out, and there, again, you you refer back to one of our blogs. But you can start putting together a project that includes everything you wanna say, how many drones you want and so forth, and get it ready, kinda like park it on your shelf, if you will, until that grant application becomes available.

Okay. Hopefully, that helps. And to everyone on the chat, I just dropped both links to the blogs that have currently been posted on our website. One is kind of writing the narrative for your grants, and then the other one is some additional information as well. And Kathy has two more blogs that will be coming in the very near future, so more to come in this space.

Kathy, question for you. Have you seen any success stories from smaller community foundations or corporate grants and not just the federal ones?

Definitely.

Then also many smaller foundations. The Heroes Fund is one that I had on my slide that I highlighted. They also award, drones funding. But there, again, you really have to search and be very granular with this. Oftentimes, with grants, if it doesn't specifically call out under the grant guidelines and say it is not an eligible piece of equipment, then it it is eligible.

So just by process of elimination, if a drone or DFR is not listed as being ineligible, then you can assume that it is. And many programs will allow it. And because it's a rather new technology, you might have to ask your funder before you go to all the effort of applying for that grant. But, yes, there are agencies out there.

We've received I I've been in an area where we received even battery packs, for instance, from Walmart and some equipment even though Walmart, I believe, caps their ask at about five thousand.

But there, again, you can ask for a lot of bits and pieces of equipment. So get creative and also, you know, have that discussion with the funder.

Excellent.

Kathy, I think I can take this one. The question is, will Skydio provide any assistance with grant writing? Absolutely. Yeah. You can reach out to grants at Skydio.com. We will help where we can in whether that's, you know, looking for the right grants for you or helping you position your request for money for your DFR program. So please feel free to reach out to that email address.

We had a note on here, and I don't know if we can speak to this, Kathy. So please just say, you know, no if you cannot. But someone, mentioned that they had a grant for drones, but it was later denied because they stated they are no longer allowing the drone purchase. There was a question if anybody has any extra information on, that or being able to acquire drones to that. I don't know if you have any information on the USC grant, Kathy.

That's interesting because there again, that particular grant is offered through your state even though it has federal funding. So when a state sets their priorities, they can be in my experience, sometimes they are restrictive And where a federal program will allow certain equipment or certain organizations, the state might make it more granular. So I would say continue to watch that particular funding opportunity and see if it does change. And I I feel also that the landscape will be changing just kind of in the grant world because of the executive order that was signed earlier this year saying that, you know, the DOJ has to start integrating DFRs into different programs. I I firmly believe that as we go into the new federal fiscal year, which will start after October first, we'll see a lot of this changing in the landscape, and states will also be changing their programs to accommodate this request.

Perfect.

There I'm seeing a couple questions in the chat that are relative to specific states. And then just in general, I kind of wanted to mention that if you are part of our database and you get our email communications probably more than you want to on a weekly basis, let's be honest, we obviously, our teams track all of that. So, you know, when we were aware that the grants came out the state of Ohio, we made sure that agencies in the state of of Ohio got an email letting them know that that's coming and that will be available to them so that they can start preparing to request funds for their agencies. So for all of those of you that are in states that were not specifically listed in a slide today, if you're on our mailing list, you will absolutely get notified if something pops up in your state.

Let me see what else is on here. I think this kind of is a catch all just for everything that we've been talking about today. But another question about suggestions for a new drone program to get more drones and equipment. We have one drone, a small team. We are in a very rural area. I think in general, to what Kathy just mentioned, a lot of this stuff is changing, and it's changing very quickly.

So there are obviously the resources that she mentioned, and I can let you reiterate those as well for federal and state level where you can go check these databases, search these, you know, on a specific cadence. Kathy, is there something maybe you suggest as a cadence for these agencies to refresh and check these places for potential funding?

Yeah. Unfortunately, it it's sometimes feels like you're trying to find a needle in a haystack. But I I will say that we've had some success.

There's nothing not that I'm pushing any particular company, but GrantWatch, for instance, which is a grant database service, they have grants that will pop up from foundations, for instance, like Georgia Pacific or, you know, Caterpillar or so forth, and those programs are open oftentimes into funding drone programs. So I would say start start researching, you know, in your your own backyard as to organizations that might be geographically, like, you know, fifty, seventy five mile radius around your location. State and federal grants, you know, absolutely correct. They're much more restrictive and, with their funding request and how it's going to be used and, of course, many more guidelines and restrictions for law enforcement and first responder agencies. Oftentimes, you can kinda tiptoe around, that subject if you go to a corporation or a foundation, like a a family foundation or so forth, which is often found in some of these databases.

I hope that helps. It it it can be very frustrating at times. Do not give up.

This is kind of a side story, and I won't mention the agency, but we have an agency who's running DFR flights now. And they've been having so much success with retail theft in the area where they have their local mall, their shopping mall, that the owners of the shopping mall were like, how do we help you get more of these dock systems, and how can we put them on our rooftop so that you're here even faster than you are from your current location on dock? So sometimes it's kind of just starting small, showing that proof of concept to your community, to the people who are being affected by crime in your community.

Oftentimes, is retail theft, and these companies, they just here, we'll donate the money. We will fund this program for you if it means that, you know, we're not losing as much money year over year because we have a reduction in crime. So there's a lot of different ways you can get creative with it, and I encourage you to do that. Sometimes it is just a proof of concept.

And if that's something that you need help with on our side as well, like, we're more than happy to help you, figure that out and get something set up and see what that looks like in your city.

Go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. No. Rain, that's a great example because it it brought to mind we have a very large manufacturing facility, in in our region, and, they wanted to the fire department was wanting to get a drone with thermal imaging.

And because they didn't have the funds for this particular drone, they were able to sell it to this large manufacturer to show them through, just like you're saying, through a relationship with them as to how a drone with a thermal imaging camera can spot fires in their facility much easier than having, you know, a a security guard or whatever or send people in and have, you know, a safety element there. So so drones have very many different applications. And, like, in your case, you know, the retailers are are getting creative. This particular manufacturer was getting creative too because when they realized this little rural area could not afford a a drone, but when they saw what it would do or how it would potentially impact the manufacturing facility and keep it safer, they were all for it.

So they went out and they assisted through their foundation, the fire department to purchase a drone. So it's really a win win. And just like Noreen said, it's really relationships and collaboration because oftentimes if the funding is not available at the federal or state level, which come out at very prescribed times, there are other, you know, avenues to get that funding that aren't necessarily as structured.

Yeah. So just get creative with it. Just think about who you're serving in the community, what impact this program will have on them, and see if you can get them on board for for some potential funding. You know, a lot of our agencies that are currently flying dock based DFR got funding from, you know, people that gave donations in the city because they're just looking for a safer community to live in.

To those of you who had questions that were specific to your state or something that may be specific to your agency, we will absolutely follow-up directly with you in email after this event. Also, for those of you that were asking, this has been recorded. This will be available to you on Live. I do suggest you head over to the blogs for some additional information that Kathy has, graciously put down for us in the blog so that you have that as some content to help you move along in this process to fund your DFR program.

I think, overall, just here to say, we're here to help you along the way. We have so many different teams in so many different areas of the company that have, all different kinds of expertise that can help you no matter what it is, whether it's getting a program up off the ground, a proof of concept, helping with funding. We're here for you. So just please reach out if you ever need anything.

Kathy, thank you so much for your time. We are very grateful for you and your partnership with Skydio.

Any any words for the team here before we close-up?

For me, no. But thank you very much. And as Noreen said, get creative, and don't forget if you have police academies and so forth that are nonprofits, you can apply using your nonprofit status if certain funding is not available to municipalities or other state or, you know, government organizations. But it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.

Perfect. Thank you so much, Kathy, and to all of you that joined us. Thanks. Take care. Stay safe. See you.