Prepare Your Non-profit for a Crisis

Sometime in everyone’s career, regardless of how lucky or strategic you have been, something happens that you cannot control. It doesn’t usually happen at the most convenient time, either.
During such a “crisis” you have to stay on top of what is happening and deal with the situation maturely and with control.

A non-profit crisis can come in the form of a scandal (the accountant ran away with $50,000), through an “act of God (as in the Asian tsunami or Hurricane Katrina), or the executive director all of a sudden leaves under “cloudy circumstances.”

However and whenever a serious crisis occurs you should be prepared with a media strategy that minimizes your organization’s risk of going under. So, this week let’s look at ways you can successfully deal with a crisis in your non-profit.

Report from Mongolia – November 8

I spent every day of last week providing intensive training sessions for NGOs at the Open Society Forum (the huge philanthropy funded by George Soros). It was challenging, but it was also great fun. I was training NGOs working on the environment, human rights, open governance, budget reform and other issues. One of the highlights for me was the work with a coalition of 12 organizations that are trying to minimize the impact on mining in the Gobi Desert. I believe that this will become the single largest issue in this country.

The government has been negotiating for years with Canadian and Australian mining companies, and just a few months ago they signed an agreement to allow open pit mining in the Gobi Desert. This will be the largest copper mine in the world and will quadruple Mongolia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The mine should be open by 2014 and is expected to produce copper (and revenue) for approximately 80 years. This will be a huge amount of money for this most rural and isolated country.

Report from Mongolia – November 1, 2009

It has been quite a whirlwind trip-I spent last week in Guatemala where the temperature was in the high 70s, and then arrived in Mongolia three days ago where the temperature was minus 10 degrees. I’ve just facilitated a weekend retreat in a Ger village (Gers are portable felt homes, like yurts) outside of the capital city of Ulaanbaatar trying not to freeze. This is the first time in my life that I’ve hiked to the mountains to stay warm and out of the wind and cold. Oh well, everything is an adventure in life and it is the journey and not always the results that count.

The retreat was filled with amazing people who come from herder families that raise goats, sheep, horses, camels. They have lived their whole lives in Mongolia and it was fascinating talking with them about the issues and the extent of the poverty and social indicators. It was really educational and I began to read some material on this and found:

• 40% of the people live on less than $2.00 per day
• Over 37% are “officially” classified as living in poverty but a much larger percentage of people are simply not counted
• Over 50% of the population has severe addiction to alcohol (Vodka and beer)
• Literacy rates are among the highest in the world at over 95% but unemployment is extremely high.
• The gap between the small pockets of vast wealth and extreme poverty
• is thinning out the middle class

Trip to Guatemala: Reflections on Our Venture

On October 18th I traveled with P.J. D’Amico to spend an intense week in Guatemala working with organizations committed to women’s reproductive rights and independence for people with disabilities. These two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are doing excellent work with the primarily indigenous, Mayan community in one of the three poorest countries in Latin America (the other two are Haiti and Bolivia).

Guatemala is a country of amazing beauty—everything is green and bright with bougainvilleas and other amazing flowers and fruits—no wonder it is known as the “land of perpetual spring.” The country has 22 volcanoes and even through the mist and clouds of the early morning, we could see the magnificent Fuego (Fire) Volcano that dominates the town of Antigua, where we stayed. Antigua is very quaint, with winding streets, cobblestones, courtyards and Catholic churches at every turn. The city is filled with Spanish language schools, artesian markets and wonderful restaurants. It is in no way typical of the rest of Guatemala. It is certainly not typical of the countryside or of Guatemala City, where we flew into.