When fire and explosions in a fertilizer factory killed 14 people last month and devastated the small town of West, Tex., Ashley Allison, head of the Waco Foundation, was 2,000 miles away—on vacation in Cancún, Mexico.
It sounds like a community fund leader’s worst nightmare. But Ms. Allison says her group didn’t miss a beat in responding quickly to the crisis, because it had so thoroughly planned ahead.
“We had already created strategies and networks that we could step into and start using immediately,” says Ms. Allison. “It was a full week before I got back to Waco, but thanks to the plan we had in place my staff was able to get right to work and I was able to manage the situation remotely.”
Whether it’s a natural catastrophe or the result of terrorism, shootings, or other causes, the needs charities can fill almost always boil down to the same things, says Mary Fetchet, director of Voices of September 11th: the immediate crisis response and the long-term healing and recovery that follow.
“Knowing this, it is absolutely possible to prepare,” says Ms. Fetchet. Her organization is using its research into mass shootings in places like Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., as well as natural disasters like hurricanes Katrina and Sandy to produce a resource kit to help charities respond to disasters, scheduled for release in September.
Nonprofit leaders who have faced recent tragedies in their own backyards share some tips for planning ahead:
Define your organization’s role. Experts say it’s important to identify the ways your group is best able to help long before that help is needed. Mary Jo Meisner, vice president for communications at the Boston Foundation, says at least one organization, such as a community foundation, should be ready to concentrate on the big picture when disaster strikes, when everyone else’s focus is on immediate crisis response.
“If we do our job, the moment focus shifts from ‘What’s happening?’ to ‘How do we begin recovering?’ we have already laid out a framework that can help the community start to heal and move forward,” says Ms. Meisner.
Create relationships now. After the fertilizer factory explosion, Ms. Allison says, she realized that many people in nearby small towns had no idea that the Waco Foundation existed, much less how it could help in an emergency. Now she is making it a point to introduce herself to government officials and charity leaders in those towns.
Experts agree that an essential step in disaster preparedness is to connect ahead of time with both other nonprofits and government officials. It is particularly important to build relationships with local officials in charge of disaster response, as well as city or municipal managers, say charity leaders who have experienced a crisis.
Terri Lee Freeman, president of the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, also urges organizations to form ties with local chapters of the Red Cross and Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster to help direct the inevitable influx of volunteers.
Foundations should join a national or regional association of grant makers, which can provide legal advisers to create and handle a relief fund and connect donors with similar interests,
Coordinate with other nonprofits. Hurricane Katrina taught the Greater New Orleans Foundation the importance of forming relationships with other grant makers in the region.
Before 2005’s Katrina, local grant makers hadn’t aligned their funding, resulting in a lot of duplicated effort, says Marco Cocito-Monoc, the group’s director of regional initiatives. “There’s nothing like a natural disaster to reveal the flaws in your system,” he says.
Since Katrina, he says, grant makers and government agencies have better coordinated their efforts; as a result their response to last summer’s Hurricane Isaac was much more effective.
When building a network with other nonprofits, determine each group’s responsibilities in a crisis, says Marilyn Gelber, president of Brooklyn Community Foundation. Decide who runs the relief fund, for example.
“It doesn’t matter who does what, so long as it’s worked out ahead of time,” she says. “That way you’re not stumbling over each other.”
Establish a communications strategy. “When disaster strikes, the media descends,” says Martha Landrum, vice president for communications at the Greater New Orleans Foundation. She recommends preparing draft news releases and draft content for Web sites as well as an up-to-date list of key media outlets, with contact names and information for each.
She also suggests picking a spokesman—plus a backup—to speak to the media in an emergency situation.
Twitter and other social media can help get information out, says Francis Zamora, public information officer for the city of San Francisco’s Department of Emergency Management.
Because the public will be posting its own coverage of events, he says, social media “can amplify any message you’re trying to get out to the public.”
The city of San Francisco, in fact, recently joined with local community organizations and businesses to start a social network-based preparedness program called SF72, named for the crucial first 72 hours after a disaster.
Establish an emergency fund ahead of time. As soon as news broke in December about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, “the world started calling,” says Kim Morgan, CEO of the United Way of Western Connecticut. She had to schedule round-the-clock staffing to handle the hundreds of calls an hour from people who wanted to donate money to the victims and their families.
Tragic events inevitably inspire an outpouring of public support, Ms. Morgan says, and “at first you have no idea what will be needed or how the funds will eventually be best distributed. But you have to be ready to receive the donations anyway.”
While the purpose of a relief fund—such as victim compensation—must be designated before accepting donations, she says, it can be helpful to establish a general emergency account that can be activated any time.
Build or update a system to track responses. Ms. Morgan suggests creating a database capable of tracking and managing all the calls and donations that pour in following a disaster. “You might need the help they’re offering eventually, even if you don’t right now,” she says. People who give when a disaster first arises, she notes, might help with long-term recovery efforts.
Practice. Rehearsing crisis-response strategies ahead of time, Mr. Zamora says, makes them “muscle memory.” Later this month, he says, in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, San Francisco government agencies and charities like the San Francisco Food Bank, Salvation Army, and Red Cross are coordinating a large-scale disaster exercise, just in case.
And such practice need not be an actual disaster simulation, notes Ms. Allison, of the Waco Foundation. Since most communities have seen some calamity, like a flood or tornado, she says, they can extrapolate that experience to a large-scale disaster.
“Walk through step by step, imagining the aftermath and how you’re going to need to respond,” says Ms. Allison.
It’s key to periodically review everything and make updates as needed so that everyone in the organization is familiar with the plan’s details—as a refresher session for some and to help new staff members learn the steps.
Preparing ahead of time for a local crisis, says Mr. Zamora, can give charity workers, and the people they serve, reassurance should the worst happen. If community organizations are able to coordinate their efforts, he says, they can make “actual emergencies look more like people coming together than cities falling apart.”
Crisis Planning: What Charities Can Do Now to Prepare
- Define what role your organization would play if a disaster struck.
- Create ties now with government officials and other nonprofits to coordinate responses in the event of an emergency.
- Create a communications plan, including draft news releases and a list of media contacts.
- Establish a general emergency fund that can be activated if necessary.
- Build or beef up a database to handle an influx of donations.
- Practice the crisis-response plan. The first time anyone handles an emergency job shouldn’t be during a disaster.