Committed to Supporting Our Communities in Extraordinary Times – Our Partnership With FEMA

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations worldwide have helped in any way possible. Airlines flew healthcare workers to hot spots free of charge, liquor companies produced hand sanitizer and automakers made ventilators.

At the beginning of the pandemic, in addition to the everyday support we provide to our state, local and providence clients, we supplied free software to customers to support their transitions to remote work environments.

In December 2020, when Congress passed its second COVID-19 stimulus package, including $2 billion for FEMA to pay funeral costs for COVID victims, we worked closely with FEMA and our partners at Trillion LLC and Booz Allen Hamilton to support these citizen services.

We knew we could help provide some peace of mind during one of the darkest times of these citizens’ lives – losing a loved one to COVID-19.

The number of lives this pandemic has claimed is heartbreaking – over 600,000 American lives lost. Our long-standing partnership with FEMA helped us get this program up and running as quickly as possible. We’ve helped over 170,000 families across the country with funeral costs in the past 5 months – around 8,500 families each week.

And while our work with FEMA on COVID-related funerals have made an incredible impact on Americans across the country, it’s not our first or last project with FEMA.

We’ve worked closely with FEMA for over 20 years to support Americans in times of crisis. For example, during Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Maria in 2017, over 4.5 million families applied for support and our system paid out over $3.6 billion, primarily for home repairs, rent, and hotel fees. Our team has proven our ability to rapidly develop and deploy software to support FEMA in assisting disaster victims.

Just this year, we supported FEMA in assisting over 150 disaster victims after the Miami condo collapse in July. Then, when Hurricane Ida hit in August, we quickly updated and enabled our platform to help FEMA pay out more than $550M to over 450K victims and register 800K victims in Louisiana, New York, and New Jersey for FEMA program assistance consideration. With these resources, the individuals affected by the hurricane can get the assistance needed faster and without endless paperwork.

This is the power of government technology – effectively reaching citizens quickly, securely, and efficiently, especially in their time of need. This modern citizen service delivery is critical during times like this. No one wants to have to apply for FEMA assistance, but our technology and services make it as easy as possible – allowing victims to deal with what is most important – laying a loved one to rest, replacing flooded furniture after a hurricane or finding a new place to call home.

While many of the citizens we support never know they’re working with CentralSquare, we still make the process smoother, faster and as simple as possible. That is what modern government technology is all about – making our communities smarter, safer and more connected, especially in times of need.