Learning from disaster: A natural experiment exploring disaster preparedness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by houses of worship.

This study illuminates how congregations adapted to an unfolding crisis in real-time and reveals areas of organizational learning and vulnerability. The driving question of this study asks "how has congregational disaster readiness changed during COVID-19?" From this, three measurable corollary questions emerge. First, how has experience during the pandemic changed risk assessment and planning? Second, how has disaster networking changed due to pandemic experiences? Third, did pandemic experience lead to a change in collaboration activities and actions? A natural experiment research design is used to answer these questions. Data collected from survey responses from 50 congregational leaders in 2020 are compared to their baseline responses and interviews as part of a more extensive study from 2019 of over 300 leaders. Descriptive analysis is used to evaluate how congregational leaders changed their risk assessment, disaster planning, disaster networking, and collaboration activities from 2019 to 2020. Open-ended questions provide qualitative context for the survey responses. Initial results support two themes for scholars and emergency managers: learning is immediate, and network maintenance matters. First, while awareness of pandemics has grown, congregational leaders narrowly applied the lessons they learned to temporally and spatially immediate hazards. Second, congregational networking and collaboration became more insular and local during the pandemic response. These results could have substantial implications for community resilience, especially given the role congregations and similar organizations play in community disaster resiliency.

Bridging cultures: Nonprofit, church, and emergency management agency collaboration after the May 2013 Oklahoma tornado outbreak.

Community-based organizations, such as nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and churches, play an important role in helping individuals and communities bounce back after a disaster. The nature of disasters requires organizations across sectors to partner together to provide recovery services; however, collaboration is difficult even in times of stability and requires trust and communication to be built through prior collaborative relationships. These prior relationships rarely exist between the majority of the nonprofit sector, churches, and existing emergency management structures. Furthermore, these organizations often have very different cultures, values, and norms that can further hinder successful postdisaster collaboration. The authors use data collected from interviews with nonprofit and church leaders involved in recovery efforts after a series of devastating storms impacted central Oklahoma in 2013 to understand how well nonprofit and church leaders perceive their organizations collaborated with each other and with government and emergency management agencies in response and recovery efforts. Interview data suggest that NPOs and churches without a primary or secondary mission of disaster response and recovery have a difficult time collaborating with organizations involved in existing emergency management structures. The authors suggest that nonprofits with a primary or secondary purpose in disaster response are a potential bridge between other nonprofits and emergency management agencies.