Volunteers & Liability

Volunteers are the fuel that power many, if not all of the organizations and ad hoc groups that come together in the wake of disaster to aid a community in their recovery. Neighbor helping neighbor and strangers from around the state and country travel to disaster affected communities putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations to expedite a communities recovery. That speed is largely reliant on the productive use of the Volunteer interest while it's available, because once the disaster falls out of the news cycle (if it made it into the cycle) the Volunteer interest will drop and a community will be left to do it themselves.

The surge of Volunteer interest following disasters is nothing new, and Emergency Operation Plans reflect this in the annexes that have been created to help transform Volunteer interest into coordinated action. Even with plans in place and MOU's signed, the biggest challenge in capitalizing on Volunteer interest after a disaster has to do with Liability.

Sweet graphic huh?

I understand that Liability isn't sexy but it can be the single biggest hurdle a municipality faces when translating Volunteer interest into action, mainly because in our overly litigious society, the prospect of being sued when a city is facing the reality of paying for a disaster is the last thing they want to deal with.

One of the many reasons municipalities want as many people to pre-affiliate with an organization as possible is because it clears up the ambiguity around who is responsible for that individual when they're in the field. One of the challenges that spontaneous groups represent to the pre-affiliation model are the questions they bring: who's liable should one of their Volunteers slip and fall in a basement? Are things like workman's compensation something a Volunteer is eligible for? Who’s going to pay for it? What's the homeowners role in this equation? And in the eyes of the law, how do you define a Volunteer?

While the questions around Liability and Volunteers are fairly consistent from event to event, the way in which states interpret and set laws governing liability and Volunteer coverage varies widely.

Thankfully, the good people at nonprofitrisk.org have undertaken the herculean effort of amassing a comprehensive guide covering State Liability Laws for Charitable Organizations and Volunteers. This resource document provides a detailed look at how each state view the important role of Volunteers and Liability as it relates to Charitable organizations—if you utilize Volunteers in conjunction with non-profit activities, I recommend looking through this document.

If more local non-profits can gain a better understanding of what their exposure is by providing a platform for Volunteers to work in a community affected by disaster, then the necessary steps can be taken to ensure that more organizations can provide a structured opportunity for them that protects both Volunteer and Organization.

In addition to the benefits this guide can offer local non-profit organizations is the potential to incorporate this information into disaster preparedness literature; the goal would be to help set and manage expectations around Volunteer liability for those who would start spontaneous response efforts via facebook/etc. This one-sheet could be coupled with the necessary paperwork: homeowner and volunteer liability waivers, to ensure that all those who are active in the field have some level of protection—it would also be a way to standardize the language and coverage organizations provide.

The role Volunteers play in the recovery of a community following a disaster is undeniable; oftentimes their involvement can mean the difference between weeks and months of response efforts. As a community of practice who rely so heavily on these well intentioned individuals and groups to fuel our work, ensuring that we arm our Volunteers with as much information as possible will ensure that they are making informed decisions about how best they can contribute to response and recovery activities.

The Good for Nothing Club*

 
Civic Engagement: Community Disaster Relief Wagon from Lori H. Ersolmaz on Vimeo.

The reason I posted this video is because it captures the spirit of so many people who just start helping after a disaster...whether it's flying across the country and renting a U-Haul to create a mobile kitchen, or helping someone cleanup their home, the power of people helping people is pretty amazing.

The other reason I posted it is because I think this video captures the sentiment of a lot of Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteers (SUVs) and their motivations for getting involved, which I believe is an important first step in being able to setup systems that work with this type of mentality. Better understanding the motivations of SUVs will help to create dynamic and flexible systems of coordination that support these types of individuals on a local level, while working to integrate them into the broader response context instead of ignoring or marginalizing them and their impacts.

Have a good weekend...see you on Monday.

* The good for nothing club, people who do "good" for "nothing." Kinda corny...but I like it.

The Languages of Disaster

A series of these maps are making the rounds on the internets illustrating the regional differences in vocabulary...the bottom line being, different parts of the country use different words for the same thing: soda = pop / hoagie = sub / sneaker = tennis shoe / etc...























The same can be said for how we talk about disasters, the nomenclature we use is as varied and idiosyncratic as the communities we help. The two camps that exist in the disaster world are those in the traditional emergency management infrastructure and those who are not.

Traditional emergency management is based on the tenants of the command and control structure of NIMS and ICS, and within that camp there's SEMS, the foundational "language" on which NIMS is based. Within this acronym-laden alphabet soup lives a language / structure with it's own HR procedures, protocols, ways of conducting field ops, and ways of requesting assistance from neighboring jurisdictions.

The other camp are the non-profit organizations and everyone else, including people holding positions within local gov't, all of whom speak their own language or are making it up as they go as it relates to response and recovery activities. This is not to say that some of the national organizations / city governments don't have personnel who aren't "versed" in NIMS/ICS, but it's usually only a small percentage and ends up reinforcing a divide between established response organizations and those emergent groups who only stand up after an event.

One of the hurdles that exists in bridging this gap is that a NIMS org chart looks like this:

Nice. Organized. Clear Delineation of Roles and Responsibilities

And a non-profit org chart is more like this:

Too many jobs for too few people

And the org chart for spontaneous groups look like this:

There isn't one

State and Local Emergency Management Agencies speak NIMS/ICS because there are funding strings attached, the non-profit world usually receives their funding from private sources and are beholden to a different set of requirements--none of which have anything to do with ensuring NIMS/ICS compliance.

When NIMS/ICS aren't part of the daily operational vernacular, there are going to be problems in level setting expectations and creating a common place to start from following an event, especially when trying to bring the various players together to create a unified and cohesive response effort.

To help create consistency in operations from a county, state, and federal perspective, a series of frameworks have been created: The National Prevention Framework, The National Mitigation Framework, The National Response Framework, and The National Disaster Recovery Framework. While the debate rages on about whether or not the federal gov't has too many or not enough frameworks, the fact remains that they exist and provide a roadmap in which roles and responsibilities are outlined.

If you turn to the non-profit sector or beyond you'll find that no such guidance exists. National VOAD has consensus and guidance documents but nothing that sets forth expectations around roles and responsibilities following an event, leaving the door open for a re-interpretation of how things should go every time disaster strikes.

The command and control mentality only works to a point, but if the whole of community and community resilience talk is to be anything more than words, a common language and common ground need to be found to bridge the gaps that currently exist. If we don't speak the same language, working together will continue to be a struggle fraught with the same mis-interpretations and mis-understandings that have plagued response for as long as I've been a part of it.