Jewish nonprofits now spend more than $1 billion a year on security, federations' study estimates
The Jewish Federations of North America put the cost at $1.015 billion, 33 percent above its 2024 estimate, or about $225,000 for each of more than 4,500 synagogues, schools, camps and community centers. Guards and security directors take the largest share.
New York. Synagogues, Jewish community centers, schools, summer camps and other Jewish nonprofits across the country spend an estimated $1.015 billion a year on security, according to a study the Jewish Federations of North America released on Sept. 3, a week before the High Holidays.
That is 33 percent more than the federations' previous estimate, $765 million for 2024, and works out to roughly $225,000 for each of more than 4,500 institutions. The release does not say how the estimate was made; the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported the new figure as spending in 2025.
Where the money goes
By far the largest share pays for security personnel, both guards and security directors, the federations said. About $150 million goes to security technology and building hardening, new installations as well as upkeep of existing systems. The count leaves out privately owned businesses, among them more than 1,600 kosher restaurants and some 500 kosher markets and groceries.
In a July 2025 letter to a House Homeland Security subcommittee, Eric D. Fingerhut, the federations' president and chief executive, wrote that a typical Jewish organization spends 14 percent of its annual budget on security, and that a guard costs $90,000 a year and a full-time community security director $160,000, on average.
“Every dollar our community spends on guards and cameras is a dollar not spent on Jewish education, on caring for our elderly, on taking care of those in need.”
The federal grant and a bill to enlarge it
The federations paired the figures with a call on Congress to pass the Jewish American Security Act, which they say they drafted. The Senate bill, S. 4576, introduced May 19 by Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, and Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, would raise the authorized size of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which pays for security at houses of worship and other nonprofits at risk of attack, to $1 billion a year for fiscal 2027 through 2031, from $360 million. It would also have the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the program, tell states not to cap the share of a grant spent on contracted or in-house security staff, except to prevent misuse or fraud. The House version, H.R. 9211, was filed June 9. Both remain in committee.
The program had $300 million for fiscal 2026, and on Sept. 28 FEMA announced awards to more than 1,600 nonprofits, most of them houses of worship.
The federations' release cites FBI hate crime data. The FBI's 2025 figures, as summarized by the Anti-Defamation League, count 1,528 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents, down 21 percent from a record 1,938 in 2024 but still 63 percent of all religion-based incidents reported.
About this story
501c3.help wrote this story from the sources listed with it, not from material an organization sent. Our editors approved it on Sept. 29, 2026. Stories in The Nonprofit Herald are free, and nothing is asked in return. Editorial rules.
Found an error? Write to [email protected] and we will correct it.
For the organizations in this story: put the badge on your website
Put it on your About page or wherever you list press mentions, rather than in a footer that repeats on every page. It links to this story.
Linking is welcome and never required. Nothing about the story changes either way.