So far this year, we've heard about fires decimating museums, volcanic eruptions threatening historic sites and employee strikes that have brought to light some harsh realities of working in a nonprofit organizations. Whether you work at a large organization like the U.S. Park Service's Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park or the all-volunteer Aberdeen History Museum, having a crisis communication plan BEFORE you are experiencing a crisis is a must-have item for any organization.
What is a crisis communications plan?
As part of your organization's emergency preparedness plan, a crisis communications plan provides the framework for identifying a spokesperson for your organization, and creating and delivering messages about the crisis to a variety of stakeholders and audiences. I recommend having a template on hand to help you craft the plan and storing the plan as well as information for key contacts on both a jump drive as well as in paper form. This will ensure that you have access to that information regardless of the situation that you are confronting.
How do you create one?
There are a few key steps to create a crisis communications plan. I have included in the Resources section some templates and guidebooks that may be helpful as you do this work as each organization is different in mission, size, scope and staffing. Overall, I recommend starting with these five steps:
1- Assess Your Team Who should be your spokesperson/people? While you may want your Executive Director and/or Board President to take the lead, how comfortable are they under fire? It may be necessary to have different people from your organization communicate with different audiences. Additionally, I would add that whomever is in charge of your digital outreach be included in this plan as they will need to act quickly to create and implement messaging.
2- Determine Your Audiences
Every organization will be unique in its audiences. Some standards across sectors would include program participants, media, board members and employees. These four are key groups to keep up-to-date on the situation and each one will have different concerns.
3- Identify Concerns
What will people want to know about? A program participant might want to know where they can access services during the crisis or what the options are for them. Your board will want to be prepared with information that they can relay to their connections and colleagues. And of course, the media will want to be kept up to speed as the story develops.
4- Craft and Deliver Messages
In response to the concerns, crafting messaging for each audience is essential. Take time to understand how you can relay the facts as well as communicate that your organization is on top of the situation. Clear, calm and consistent is the point here.
4- Test and Review
Like any emergency plan, you must actually run a drill to identify missing pieces. No plan is going to be perfect, but by testing and revising you are not only finding weaknesses but also running through a scenario which will be helpful when you are in the middle of a full-blown crisis situation.
Resources: