Emergency Preparedness for Small Nonprofits | Give Back Prince William

By Rebecca Barnes

A power outage closes your office. Your volunteer coordinator cannot get to work. The internet goes down just before a scheduled distribution.

Who makes the decisions? How do volunteers find out? Can someone else access the information needed to help the people counting on you?

Emergency preparedness for small nonprofits starts with answering these questions before a disruption happens. For organizations serving Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park, a useful plan connects people, information and the services your community depends on.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management’s October preparedness newsletter offers a timely reminder to prepare supplies, practice emergency procedures and build community partnerships. Locally, the Prince William County Office of Emergency Management emphasizes three basics: build a kit, make a plan and stay informed.

Identify the Services That Cannot Wait

Start by listing your essential services. Which activities could pause for a day? Which interruptions would create an immediate problem for the people you serve?

For each essential service, identify the people, records, equipment, supplies and partners needed to deliver it. Then consider what happens if one becomes unavailable.

A food distribution program, for example, might need to examine transportation, building access and communication with participating households. Use these questions to identify alternatives without promising continued service under unsafe conditions.

FEMA’s continuity guidance explains how to identify essential functions and the resources needed to sustain them during disruptions.

Give Critical Responsibilities a Backup

Small organizations often depend on one person who knows how everything works. That person may also have an emergency at home.

Identify a backup for decisions such as closing a facility, changing service hours, contacting volunteers and posting public updates. Document each person’s authority and where they can find the instructions they need.

Ask a simple question: If our usual coordinator were unavailable tomorrow, could someone else follow this plan?

Continuity planning includes leadership authority, communications, alternate locations and staff training. The Be Ready Utah business continuity resources provide a planning framework that organizations can adapt to their operations and local guidance.

Decide How You Will Reach People

Review contact information for staff, board members, volunteers, vendors and partner organizations. Assign someone to keep it current.

Choose a primary communication method and a backup. Discuss how you would reach people if your normal email, internet connection or scheduling platform were unavailable.

Include the people receiving services in that conversation. Consider language, disability access and whether everyone can reliably receive online updates.

The county offers multilingual preparedness resources and information for people with access and functional needs. Use those resources to help identify questions your organization should address before an emergency.

Protect the Records Needed to Operate

Identify the records your organization would need to continue essential work or begin recovery. These may include service schedules, vendor information, financial records and key organizational documents.

Review how those records are backed up, who is authorized to retrieve them and whether recovery has been tested. Protect confidential information when planning alternate access.

A contact list or client file should not become public because normal systems are unavailable. Use FEMA’s guidance on continuity and essential records to support a review with the person responsible for your technology and records.

Share Verified Information

Assign someone to monitor official emergency information and someone to communicate changes to your services.

Public updates should state what is affected, what people should do and when another update is expected. Confirm partner availability before referring people elsewhere.

For county locations, review enrollment in PWC Alerts. Organizations serving Manassas and Manassas Park should also confirm the appropriate official information channels for those jurisdictions.

Preparing a basic closure or service-change message in advance gives your team a starting point. Before sharing it, confirm the details and include a clear date and time so people can tell whether the information is current.

Practice Before You Need the Plan

At your next staff or board meeting, work through one scenario: Your building is unavailable and your coordinator cannot be reached.

Who decides what happens next? Who contacts volunteers? What information is missing?

Write down the gaps, assign responsibility and set a date to review the changes. Testing and updating the plan are part of continuity planning. A document becomes more useful when the people responsible for carrying it out have practiced using it.

A Starting Checklist for Your Next Meeting

• List essential services and the resources each requires.
• Name a decision-maker and backup for critical responsibilities.
• Update contact information and choose backup communication methods.
• Review authorized access to essential records and test recovery.
• Identify official alert sources and assign public-update responsibilities.
• Practice one disruption scenario and assign follow-up actions.

You do not have to solve every problem in one meeting. Start with the services people depend on most, the people responsible for them and the information they need to act.

For more tools to strengthen your organization, explore Give Back Prince William’s resources for nonprofits.