SPP Research Seminar Series: Nonprofit Disaster Preparedness in the Context of Climate Change

Abstract: As weather disasters intensify under the impacts of climate change, an important public policy question is whether the kinds of community organizations most likely to provide disaster relief are themselves sufficiently planning for climate change to assure service continuity. The Indiana Disaster Resilience Project offers a replicable analysis of one state’s experience. A statewide Indiana survey of the leaders of a wide variety of social-safety-net and philanthropic organizations, followed by interviews with high performers, offer detailed information about how community organizations approach disaster planning in the context of climate change. Testing central nonprofit behavioral theories on risk management decisions, we find multiple themes that explain protective behavior. The profile of the more adaptive organization is one in which leaders connect the dots between severe weather and client/staff welfare, and view climate adaptation as mission-related. They also use service networks as sources of adaptive capacity to gain resources that support disaster preparedness. The key barrier to better risk management appears to be boards of directors who view climate-related disaster planning discussions as either too political to address, or outside their purview as an operational rather than strategic issue. This multi-year, mixed methods study was funded by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and the RGK-ARNOVA President’s Research Award.