Pennsylvania Has $10M for Nonprofits Facing Hate — LGBTQ+ Groups Are Eligible

If you sit on the board of an LGBTQ+ community center, a health nonprofit, a youth program, or a cultural org anywhere in Pennsylvania, this one is worth forwarding to whoever handles your grants.

The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency has reopened its Nonprofit Security Grant Fund with $10 million available, and it pays for exactly the unglamorous things that make a building safer: surveillance equipment, protective lighting, electronic locksets and deadbolts, emergency communications gear, trauma kits, theft control devices, security and threat-awareness training, structural upgrades, and vulnerability assessments. There is also a catch-all for any other project that enhances safety or security, which is the most useful line on the list if your particular need isn't named. Awards run from $5,000 to $150,000, as the commission announced on Monday.

One thing to be clear about up front: this is not an LGBTQ+ earmark. The fund was created by Act 83 of 2019 and is open to nonprofits that principally serve communities at heightened risk of hate crimes, using the FBI's bias categories as the frame — race, ethnicity and ancestry, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Gay and trans organizations sit squarely inside that eligibility list. They are not the only ones inside it, and they will be applying alongside synagogues, mosques, and disability-services groups.

Two hard gates, before you spend an hour on this

You have to be a 501(c)(3), based in Pennsylvania. That's written into Act 83, and it is the requirement most likely to knock out an otherwise obvious candidate — a fiscally sponsored project, an unincorporated mutual-aid group, or a 501(c)(4) advocacy arm does not clear it on its own.

The money has to protect a facility in Pennsylvania that your nonprofit owns or operates. A fully virtual organization, or one that gathers as a guest in someone else's building, falls outside the program.

You don't need to have already been attacked

This is the part we'd guess quietly makes groups count themselves out. The commission's guidance tells applicants to zero in on whichever communities their group mainly serves — the ones that have already been targeted by a hate crime, or that are strongly susceptible to one. A previous incident is not a prerequisite. Neither is a finished security assessment: the commission states outright that one isn't needed to be eligible to apply.

The commission also puts the eligibility judgment on you rather than on itself. It says plainly that it will not make that determination for you, and nonprofit documentation gets supplied both in the final Egrants application and upon award.

The mechanics

The initial request goes in through a SurveyMonkey form, and it is due Thursday, September 10, 2026. (PCCD's own announcement calls that date a Wednesday. September 10 is a Thursday — the date is the deadline; the weekday label in the release is wrong.) QBurgh, which covers LGBTQ+ Pittsburgh, reports the window closes at 11:45 p.m. that night; the commission's own notice gives only the date, so don't test the margin. From there, submissions go to a workgroup that seats commission staff alongside the state police and homeland security officials from the governor's office, and a full application follows in the state's Egrants system.

On money: requests of $25,000 or less carry no match requirement at all. Above that line, applicants have to bring a non-state match, and the commission publishes a match calculator on the program page — worth running before anyone settles on a number, because the match is what should size the ask.

Questions go to RA-CD-NPSEC-GRANT@pa.gov, with one limit worth knowing in advance: because the grants are competitive, the commission says it can't weigh in on whether a specific project or expense is allowable.

This round has a track record behind it

The program isn't theoretical. The previous solicitation, awarded in March, put more than $10 million into 191 nonprofits across 28 Pennsylvania counties, and the commission estimates roughly seven million people statewide have been touched by the funding so far.

Forty Allegheny County organizations were on that list, and three of them are LGBTQ+ Pittsburgh groups. SisTers PGH, which is Black- and trans-led and serves trans and nonbinary people across southwestern Pennsylvania, was recommended for $50,000. TransYOUniting, which provides mutual aid to trans, LGBTQ+ and HIV-positive Pittsburghers, was recommended for $70,000. And Persad Center, the city's longest-standing LGBTQ+ and HIV human-services organization, was recommended for $25,000.

Since taking office, the Shapiro-Davis administration says it has secured $35 million for the program in total.

“Protecting public safety is our mission every day at PCCD, and this program truly exemplifies that,” said Kirsten Kenyon, the commission's executive director. “… I strongly encourage eligible nonprofits to apply and take advantage of this funding.”

Just over six weeks is not a long runway for an organization whose board meets once a month. It is long enough for a form.

Correction: July 28

This article originally gave the deadline as Wednesday, September 10, 2026. September 10, 2026 is a Thursday. The date itself is correct and has not changed — PCCD's own announcement carries the wrong weekday and we reproduced it without checking.

It also said two Pittsburgh organizations were funded in the March round. PCCD's published award list contains 40 Allegheny County organizations, three of them LGBTQ+ Pittsburgh groups; we had omitted Persad Center, recommended for $25,000. Both passages are corrected above, and the piece now names the SurveyMonkey form the initial request actually goes through.