International Disaster Response is a cluster...

The Philippines, an archipelago comprised of 7,000+ islands, is a paradise where the warmth and friendliness of the Filipino people make it a top travel destination. When Yolanda mowed her way across the island chain and it became apparent that it was going to be an event requiring significant humanitarian response, aid organizations put out appeals for donations and sent in assessment teams to figure out how best to provide their special brand of assistance.

With the overwhelming need created by the Typhoon, coordinated response remains a top priority. But how do you coordinate that many moving parts? In the U.S., coordination is a consistent challenge faced by federal, state, local, and community-based response structures. Internationally, aid organizations, foreign and domestic military assistance, and agencies representing the alphabet soup of UN agencies also need to be taken into account on top of everything else. With millions affected, thousands dead, and hundreds of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed across multiple island communities, where do you begin, how do you begin, and who's in charge?

The international humanitarian aid community has something that we in the United States do not--something that helps alleviate a lot of the guesswork around how the response will be shaped so that the focus can be on the provision of aid to those in need. On the premise of improving humanitarian response in emergencies, the United Nations (UN) created the IASC (the InterAgency Standing Committee), and in 2005 the Cluster System for coordination in humanitarian emergencies was adopted. The cluster system provides a scalable and replicable way for handling the delicate dance of leadership and coordination based around functional needs in response operations.

Cluster Overview

The thematic focus of the cluster system alleviates confusion around roles and responsibilities and makes it easier to highlight competency within a specific response function. While clusters aid in the dissemination and consumption of operational data, they also create unique funding opportunities. Because of the way the cluster system is structured, pooled funds managed by the UN are available to help support humanitarian operations and are oftentimes granted through the cluster system:

• The Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF)
• The Common Humanitarian Funds (CHFs)
• Emergency Response Funds (ERFs)

Because complex humanitarian emergencies require so many aid organizations working together, a system to coordinate their activities is needed without limiting their independence. The Cluster System, for any faults it may have, is a system that has the buy-in needed and the ability to fill the most critical of role's--coordination that enables a stronger and more cohesive response.

While every system has its proponents and detractors, the fact that there's a unified system to point to is a big accomplishment. Domestically, emergency support functions (ESFs) would be the mechanism that plays a role most similar to that of the clusters, but unfortunately I think that the cluster system succeeds in combining the focus of ESFs with the coordinative function of a VOAD.

Coordination will always present a challenge to governments, municipalities, donors, and any other moving component involved in the disaster response machine. For whatever faults it may have, I applaud the IASC for endorsing the cluster system and for the organizations who operate within it's framework...I look forward to seeing all the good it can do in expediting a coordinated response to the communities struggling in the aftermath of Yolanda.

Nonprofits and Long Term Recovery

Volunteers and nonprofit organizations have an undeniable impact on expediting a community's recovery in a post-disaster timeframe. The depth of experience and resource brought to bear by voluntary organizations can have a significant impact on the speed at which recovery progresses in communities on the mend. Volunteers and the nonprofit organizations that exist to support their activities are cornerstones of recovery efforts; from cooking and distributing meals and doing the physical work of mucking, gutting, and debris removal, to disaster case management and repair and rebuild work, nonprofit resources provide continuity as a community transitions from response into long-term recovery (LTR). Key to leveraging those resources however, comes with better understanding the types of challenges nonprofits face in sustaining LTR efforts.

Before looking at these unique challenges, one needs to understand the role nonprofits have as recovery plays out. To put it simply, they are the one's who provide the resource: human, material, financial, and experiential that guide and drive the long-term recovery process. In partnership with residents and local officials, nonprofits can be a wealth of insight to help steer Long Term Recovery Committees. And yet, even with all the responsibility that falls to local and national nonprofits to advocate and move the needle in a positive direction day after day, there are challenges. Because nonprofits rely on the goodwill of the communities they serve, after a point in time as a community tries to re-establish a new normal, some of that goodwill can be eroded.

1. Progress is powered by people. Response is dominated by the spontaneity of volunteers proactively addressing unmet community needs. What usually starts as an overwhelming crush of interest quickly dwindles. Because nonprofits rely on a volunteers, their ability to sustain operations 6-12 months down the road can be compromised when the flow of volunteers has been reduced to a trickle. The changing seasons, competition for people's time, and a lack of media attention highlighting the needs can make generating interest a challenge. When nonprofits don't have a consistent workforce it causes delays in returning people to their homes.
2. You've gotta have skills. One of the reasons so many people get involved in early recovery activities is because many of the problems that need solving require hands--lots of hands. However, when it comes to replacing floor joists, installing subfloors, hanging sheetrock, or mudding and taping, the number of hands needed drops drastically, and the hands you do need have to know what they're doing. Given that getting general volunteers is challenging, getting one's who could conceivably be getting paid for doing the same thing is even more difficult. Nonprofits need skills, the more volunteers with construction-related skills means helping more people on a shorter timeline.
3. Vetting the need. One of the biggest departures from early recovery work that is central to long term recovery is being able to vet need. With so many pots of money that homeowners can apply for in addition to Federal dollars and any insurance money they may have received, doing the homework to understand a homeowners financial situation is key. Ensuring that those who are being helped with voluntary resources aren't able to afford a contractor is central to maintaining the integrity of long term recovery and to keeping the peace within the community. Communities with high concentrations of people who work in the trades (contractors, etc) raise concerns that nonprofits can "steal" potential work. Being able to confidently say that the homes nonprofits work on don't have the financial means to afford a professional contractor is important, however collecting the necessary information to say that takes time.
4. Housing. While nonprofits work to put roofs back over the heads of individuals and families who lost them, there is a concern that they themselves may not have a place to live. As normalcy returns, one of the costs that becomes less palatable is having an organization reside your basement or annex building. During the response phase, civic organizations and the faith-based community are all too happy to help bring resources in, but what worked in the weeks following the event can create challenges when host sites want their space back to resume their full scope of programming months down the road.

In our society of instant gratification where faster and more efficient are the order of the day things, even as complex and involved as rebuilding neighborhoods, take "too" long because they operate on a timeline and scale outside everyday expectations. Unless a community has had the unfortunate luck of suffering through multiple events in a short period of time, residents have no frame of reference to create a shared understanding of what recovery means for them beyond what is reported in the media. Given the challenges associated with getting the public to take initial steps in personal preparedness, trying to educate them about the nuance of long-term recovery would be time wasted. However, I believe that city officials and cadres of local civic leaders should be educated on timelines and long term recovery expectations because they are the one's who will ultimately be leading these efforts when the time comes.

In 2012 there were 112 federally declared disasters, in 2013 there have been 90 so far. Each of those events encompasses multiple communities, communities going through the same process and experiencing the same frustrations as those recovering from Sandy. One would think that given how often the model of Long Term Recovery is employed that it would be perfected, and you would be incorrect. While there are commonalities in recovery that apply to all communities and disasters, because each community has different needs, priorities, people, and a vision for how they want to rebuild, means that each recovery will be different. Like everything about disasters, nothing is easy, but thankfully there are nonprofits who continue to work in partnership with communities to ensure that those who need help can get it. 

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast -- Sandy Recovery

Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast. In theory this beautifully crafted statement would be the tagline for Long Term Recovery. Unfortunately, the reality that many renters, homeowners, and municipalities face during the Long Term Recovery process can be characterized as anything but ‘smooth’ or ‘fast’. You needn’t look further than any one of the stories that the news media has published in light of Superstorm Sandy’s 1-year anniversary for evidence of this fact. Recovery dollars are delayed; homeowner’s continue to wrangle with FEMA, their insurance companies, and contractors on money owed or how best to proceed in the face of the ever-changing landscape that is Long Term Recovery on a wide scale.

 

Staten Island, NY - Midland Beach Area (Credit: Natan Dvir/Polaris)

Given the lasting social, financial, and political impacts Sandy has had on the Mid-Atlantic region, one post devoted to understanding where things stand didn’t seem appropriate. With that said, I’m going to spend this week looking at Sandy through a number of different lens and explore:

The speed of Long Term Recovery

Within hours of Sandy’s passing communities were calling to be rebuilt, urging for the expeditious return to pre-Sandy conditions. At the same time though, another narrative surfaced, one with a focus on building back stronger and smarter to create more resilient communities. These opposing views are at odds with one another and have created environments strained by competing interests, which is affecting recovery speed and responsiveness.

The Mental Impacts of Disaster

While much of the impacts of disaster are quantified by the physical damage done to communities, there are mental impacts that disaster brings that don’t get attention because they’re usually silent. The passage of Sandy was a traumatic event, creating, uncovering, and exacerbating mental illness, adding to the strain of an already difficult situation. The mental toll Sandy exacted on families already struggling isn't a story often told, but one that has impacted everyone who went through the storm in some way.

Nonprofits in Long Term Recovery

In the aftermath of response, images of armies of volunteers doing cleanup work, distributing meals, and generally giving everyone a warm fuzzy feeling were everywhere. In the interceding 12 months the volunteer interest has waned, and many of the groups that descended on the mid-Atlantic region have long since packed up and moved on. So, what role do nonprofits play this far into recovery operations? What challenges are they facing? And how is a balance struck between contractors looking for work and Nonprofits providing similar services for free?

The Future of Long Term Recovery

What have we learned, and will we as a collective conscious care when it happens again in a smaller community? Will the pressure be as intense? If every community that experiences a disaster will go through the trials and tribulations of long-term recovery, how can we make them better prepared so that the speed of recovery is no longer a problem?

The Recovery of any community is a complex and drawn out process where competing interests lobby for how recovery dollars should be spent and opposing viewpoints clash over who should be leading the efforts. While the statement: 'slow is smooth and smooth is fast' would be a great way to characterize long term recovery, until communities are stronger and better prepared for dealing with the realities of what recovery entails, they will have to remain an aspirational ideal. 

Coordinating Cleanup 1.0

Crisis Cleanup has a great logo

Nonprofits setting up operations in Colorado are abuzz with talk of Crisis Cleanup, the brain child of Aaron Titus, a guy who said "there's got to be a better way to organize some of the chaos of early recovery cleanup" (I made that quote up) and created a tool that's doing just that. He created a tool that works to advance how nonprofit organizations engage in cleanup activities following a disaster.

The cliff's notes version is that Crisis Cleanup is a google map populated with cleanup needs represented by pins dropped on the location of said need. Registered organizations can claim pins so that other responding groups don't accidentally send teams to a home that has already received help. There is a reporting aspect that accompanies this so that hours can be tracked and volunteer numbers logged, an innovative solution that helps manage the nonprofit aspect of early recovery cleanup following disasters.

I had an opportunity to be a user of the system after Hurricane Sandy as part of its beta testing during response and saw the potential. Since then the system has been implemented several times with what I hope are fixes and advances making it easier to use and more comprehensive from a data capture perspective.

Screen shot of the user interface -- Superstorm Sandy

With the system being used in Colorado to coordinate nonprofit cleanup activities, I'm interested in hearing from anyone who uses it to manage their infield work flow to get your thoughts on the system within the context of cleanup coordination.

And while I'm optimistic about how Crisis Cleanup can work to provide the autonomy nonprofits seek while working within a defined system, I feel that it's important to remember the need to be inclusive.

Spontaneous response in disaster and the substantial impact it has during early recovery activities is no longer an ignorable trend. Social media is being used to organize armies of volunteers to aid in response and recovery, and it's happening as I write this in Colorado. As a community of practice we must strive to include as many of these emergent groups as possible in response coordination. Not only is it key in working towards enacting the "all of nation" or "whole of community" approach to preparedness and response as outlined by Presidential Policy Directive 8, but its important for unity of effort to provide better coordinated service delivery to those affected.

As it stands the crisis cleanup tool is largely for vetted organizations, those with a response history or those who are "known" entities. And while I understand why the system is setup this way, to help ensure consistency in the work done on behalf of homeowners, I feel that there is a solution that can set an expectation as to the level of work needing to be done, while encouraging broader inclusion of locally responding groups.

All Disasters Are Local, a tired expression but one that holds truth; and while Crisis Cleanup has taken a monumental step in unifying early recovery cleanup from a nonprofit perspective, I believe that there is work to be done to ensure access to this tool makes its way down to the emergent groups on a local level. For it's those groups that have the biggest stake in ensuring that their communities make a full recovery and as such rightfully deserve to be included within the broader coordinated effort.

A tip of my cap to you Mr. Titus, I look forward to seeing how we can evolve the model moving forward.

Social media and Calgary Flooding

The hashtag #SMEM (social media emergency management) is flourishing on twitter. I've mentioned VOSTs (virtual operation support teams) that have formed in response to the need for remote support in communities overwhelmed due to infrastructure and personnel limitations. I've talked about the proliferation of technologies that organizations are utilizing and the questionable impacts they're having on nonprofit response, but I haven't talked about Canada. Canada got sucker punched earlier this year by unforeseen flooding, a north-of-the-boarder Sandy if you will. Well just as everyone went agog over the social media stats for Sandy here is the first consolidated dataset on social media use during the flooding in Calgary.

Social media and its ability to empower an organized voluntary response is no longer debatable...it's time we re-wrote some volunteer management annexes and figured out how to truly integrate local response (grassroots efforts) into the broader context of emergency management.

Thanks to Inbound Interactive for putting this together...

Do a little, change a lot. The Future of Philanthropy?

Google announced a few days ago the launch of their charity app 'One Today.' The premise is simple, choose from a list of organizations on the app and donate a dollar towards that cause--easy. Think of it like an indiegogo or kickstarter page for charities except with the tacit endorsement of our friends at Google...although Google will deny that they endorse any charity they promote.

Nonprofits looking to post projects need to be a member of google for nonprofits first, once that happens, an organization can be featured on the app. In looking for more information it turns out that a 1.9% fee is taken on each donation and that unless directed otherwise, your donation will go towards the organization's general fund--meaning they can do whatever they want with it.

"The nonprofit will get all of your donation except the payment processing fee of 1.9%, so for every $10 donated, the nonprofit receives $9.81. Unless mentioned otherwise, your donation goes into unrestricted funds that will be used by the nonprofit at its discretion. One Today partners with Network for Good, an industry leader in Donor Advised Funds, to collect money from donors and disburse it to nonprofit recipients. For each transaction that you approved, you will see a line item on your credit card receipt, with the label GOOGLE *One Today NfG." (http://www.google.com/onetoday/faq.html)

While I like the fact that lesser known organizations have the potential to gain exposure through this app, I'm not the biggest fan of a processing fee being taken on every donation given the fact that this app exists to serve the organizations it features. I would suggest that if you find an organization that you like via 'One Today' that you give directly to that organization, that way 100% of your donation goes to them...and remember to specify where you'd like your donation to be spent if you're not comfortable with it going into a general fund.

Aside from some of my misgivings around the business practices that make 'One Today' run, I don't know how I feel about this app and its potential impact on how donors give: Will encouraging individuals to give micro amounts change how they feel about philanthropy in general? Will donors place less importance on a donation of $1 vs $100, and if they do, will that somehow alleviate the burden on the nonprofit to report on their impacts and be accountable to donors because it was only a buck?

Don't get me wrong, I think 'One Today' has the potential to open doors for lesser known nonprofits and help them gain exposure, but wonder if/how pushing a model of micro donations will impact the overall landscape of philanthropic giving.

Thoughts?

'Liking' your way to impact

Social Media is a powerful tool; it has the ability to sway public opinion and shed light on issues that would otherwise never see the light of day: Kony 2012 anyone?

According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, donations to the charitable sector stood at 2% of the gross domestic product and posited that if everyone gave up a morning coffee, $220-billion more could go to charity on a yearly basis. Easy, direct, and something that won't break the bank...but we're not doing it...why?

Because social media, has created a "new" way for individuals to feel like they're making a difference-through likes and retweets. The buffer that the social media sphere has created insulates many from actually doing...as a result, liking something on Facebook or getting something retweeted is the new way of defining impact...what I don't understand is, how can you claim impact when a 'like' doesn't really do anything.

While exposure to a message is good, as Unicef so cleverly illustrates, it means nothing if there is no action to back it up. The awareness generating machine that is social media can quickly create exposure for a cause or group (Kony/Invisible Children), however, the goal of the charitable sector is creating impact and change, and that can only be accomplished through action, and likes or retweets aren't designed to do that.

So why, if likes and the social currency generated from them, are doing little to actually advance the missions of charitable organizations, is so much time and energy being placed on getting more of them? When you read about the US State Dept spending $630,000 on Facebook likes, it makes you wonder, to what end? Are those likes influencing foreign policy? Do they really matter? Couldn't that money have been better spent elsewhere?

Some social media campaigns like tweetathons, or text to give, when successful, generate revenue, a clear cause and effect relationship that enables groups to continue carrying out their mission. The success stories while few and far between offer a foundation upon which growth and lessons learned can be derived from. However, with the ubiquity of social media, taking a stand no longer means sticking your neck out and running the risk of being associated with an issue by attending a protest, rally, community meeting, etc...it means changing your profile picture to this:

While supporting issues you believe is important, and social media enables broad exposure, what are you actually doing? Are you writing your congressperson? Are you donating money to support the causes that align with your societal views? Are you Volunteering your time to causes that make you warm and fuzzy? My guess is no...and therein lies the problem.

Social media is making it so that everyone is a brand, and how we market our brand has become more important than what we stand for. As Nilofer Merchant, from the Harvard Business Review so succinctly puts it: "Your Brand is the Exhaust Fume of the Engine of Your Life."