Nonprofit Crisis Toolkit

Abstract

This toolkit is designed to help leaders of small, community-based nonprofit organizations effectively manage and succeed in moments of crisis. Research on crisis response, prevention, and management has been a major topic of discussion for scholars since the Industrial Revolution. Seminal theorists such as Kevin Burnard & Ran Bhamra (who developed the Resilient Response Framework in 2011), W. Timothy Coombs (the father of Situational Crisis Communication Theory, 1995), Bernard Burnes (a leading scholar on Organizational Change Theory), and many others have discussed the topic and produced a wide range of scholarship, frameworks, and methods for crisis response in both the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. While the breadth of literature is vast, the scholarship does not yet address how these methods can apply to small, community-based nonprofits (defined here as ones with annual budgets under $300,000 and less than 4 full-time employees). In fact, most of these crisis response resources are financially out of reach, simply try to directly convert for-profit crisis response methods, are improperly scaled, and fully reliant on a large employee base to be effective. Moreover, most of these tools are geared towards other scholars and are therefore not easily accessible/digestible for the nonprofit leaders and board members who need them most.

This toolkit addresses that gap in the literature by discussing how predominating theories on crisis response and change management can be more effectively scaled for small, community- based organizations. In doing so, the author identifies 5 key characteristics that recur in nonprofits that successfully weather crisis and then proposes a 10-step process for how leaders at small organization can effectively sort through the literature on these topics. Each section breaks down and assesses best practices highlighted by leading scholars in the field, later using the author’s own experience as an executive director at a small nonprofit in crisis as a lens to help guide readers through the topic.