Crisis Communication

NPOs in American already have enough difficulty in creating relationships, seeking out new clients, appeasing donors, creating fundraisers and maintaining a well organized communication plan. Now imagine taking that same NPO and sticking it in a country with not much infrastructure, a different language, different communication styles, plans, and see how much success can be emitted? Surprisingly many international NPOS are quite successful especially in crisis situations.
International NPOs, especially relief agencies, have to be able to operate transnationally, across multiple barriers such as language, borders and governments. Plus any international relief agency must be able to work with a variety of organizations. All of these variables could prevent relief being able to reach the crisis situation but relief agencies are able to get their job done even amid all these difficulties since they have an effective communication plan.
This author of this article interviewed Jason Kravitz, Direct Relief’s communications director. The mission of Direct Relief has been to provide essential material recourses to locally run health programs in areas affected by natural disasters, wars and famines. Kravitz emphasized the importance of having an effective communication plan and this allows them to handle stressful situations, just like any for profit business. Kravitz said that the “communication structure is a work in progress”, and I think that is a very true statement. Communication is a two way and many times multiple way street, with inputs and outputs coming and going constantly. The only way to keep up is to constantly change and alter your plan if you want to be successful.
I also agreed with another one of his main points. He emphasized the importance of finding local contacts in the area to facilitate most of the relief. During the Pakistani earthquake or East Asian tsunami aid was brought from the US but it was handed over to local representatives of the agency in order to facilitate smoother transitions, and organization. The locals know the area and the people and are able to make things happen much faster instead of having agency and bureaucratic headaches. I have done a lot of traveling and mission work in other countries and the success of our trip or project was usually because we had made local contacts. Once the relief is given, workers don’t have to stay around and check on things because the locals are in place to do just that. That’s why Direct Relief has long-standing relationships with partners and the donors of Direct Relief respect these relationships.
Once again NPOs were related to businesses in that they need an effective communication plan especially in order to handle crisis situations. Relationships and reputation are also an important aspect of successful relief aid.