Author: Carmen Adamson
If you’re like me towards the end of 2022 and even the beginning of 2023 you consumed a lot of content around predictions for the new year. Something that seemed to popup again and again was the prediction that disaster relief will need more support. This prediction made #7 on Future of Good’s article: 23 Daring Prediction that will Shape the Social Impact World in 2023.
“Following floods, hurricanes and a pandemic as well as their cascading effects, most social purpose organizations will still not have emergency preparedness plans in 2023”
The article called for social purpose teams to lean into coordinated action, to understand the immediate and cascading risk for a variety of emergencies. From the start of the new year to now the YourCause customer success team has already launched disaster response resources for companies responding to:
- California Flooding
- Gun Violence Prevention
- Turkey-Syria Earthquake
A disaster strategy is a vital element to corporate social responsibility programs. Companies can work towards preparing their employees, investing in nonprofit relationship and connecting to their community to build resilience against disasters. This blog provides an overview of the content within our disaster response checklist. You can download the resource by clicking the link.
Businesses can be leaders in helping the whole community mitigate risk to bounce back faster and decrease overall costs and disruptions from disasters.1
Risk Assessment
Your executives are probably familiar with a business impact analysis for determining the potential impacts resulting from a shutdown. CSR leaders can also plan ahead to take care of their employees and respond to community needs throughout disasters.
Risk assessment includes identifying the possible disasters, looking for vulnerabilities and considering the impact an incident could have on your relationships with stakeholders including your customers and the community.2 Consider regions of the world and times of the year to determine the potential impact to your business.
Identify Stakeholders
Stakeholders may be decision-makers, CEO, HR, CSR and others responsible for implementing your disaster strategy. It might also include employee representation. Identify other key stakeholders in your supply chain and in the community that your organization can partner with to get relief items out quickly or mobilize volunteers.
Identify Business Resources
What key resources, in-kind donations, employee skill set, or services can you utilize in your disaster response framework? Have a designated budget for the year to setup disaster relief matching funds, grant funds or product donations.
Prepare Employees
Employees are the life of every organization and companies saw first-hand how some struggled through the unexpected hardships from the pandemic. The annual stress in America survey reports that money-related stress is the highest recorded since 2015.3 Your employees could be one hardship away from not being able to support their lives or families. Determine how your company can support affected employees if disaster threatens close to home. Employee Assistance funds can be a great way to provide a scalable opportunity to collect donations and allow employees to support each other. Research on employee relief found that among those surveyed:
75%
said grants they received provided breathing room to figure out next steps
73%
felt less stressed
20%
felt less alone
18%
were able to direct more attention to work.
Employee relief grants can directly contribute to emotional well-being and financial well-being.
Connect and Collaborate
Solving problems with nonprofits can help the community recover quickly during a crisis. Your business has already identified resources to help during emergencies. Determine a strong nonprofit partner and work together to define different areas of response: immediate relief, direct care, long-term recovery. Establish a partnership to create a strategy for communication during disasters to map the needs of the community to your business resources and employee response opportunities. You can work with a nonprofit partner to get employees registered, trained in response and have background checks completed.
