FREE 10+ Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan Samples in MS Word | Google Docs | Apple Pages | PDF

Not at all times, the weather is fair in your nonprofit organization. Sometimes, life throws a curveball at you and places your organization in an awful situation you didn’t expect to happen. Whether your organization is facing an internal challenge or caused by external reasons that went public, having a crisis plan to address these situations is important to mitigate these unprecedented events and save your organization from having your image gets destroyed. Read the article to know how to make a nonprofit crisis communication plan.

Not at all times, the weather is fair in your nonprofit organization. Sometimes, life throws a curveball at you and places your organization in an awful situation you didn’t expect to happen. Whether your organization is facing an internal challenge or caused by external reasons that went public, having a crisis plan to address these situations is important to mitigate these unprecedented events and save your organization from having your image gets destroyed. Read the article to know how to make a nonprofit crisis communication plan.

10+ Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan Samples

1. Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan Template

2. Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

3. Nonprofit Association Crisis Communication Plan

4. Sample Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

5. Standard Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

6. Formal Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

7. Nonprofit Organization Crisis Communication Plan

8. Basic Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

9. Printable Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

10. Editable Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

11. Nonprofit Crisis Risk Communication Plan

What is a Crisis Communication Plan?

A crisis communications plan is a useful guide for organizations such as nonprofits to know how to respond to crises quickly and helps mitigate the damages that the crisis brings from getting any bigger through the process of communications. It works hand in hand with a disaster plan, which also focuses on mitigating disasters of every division in a company.

A crisis communication plan (along with the disaster plan) must be done in advance before a crisis will occur to help people foresee and think through what actions they need to do to deal with the crisis and use the plan as their guide map when the crisis happens.

A usual crisis communication plan outlines the following:

• Designating an official speaker
• Producing materials needed to control the crisis
• Assigning who should be involved in the process and who shouldn’t
• Preparing a crisis hotline that will be available to reach critical people 24/7

How to Make a Nonprofit Crisis Communication Plan

1. Assign People Who Will be Involved

Before you make the plan, hold a meeting and assign people who will be involved when a crisis will arise. Most nonprofit organizations assign board members, human resources team, marketing team, and communications team. Assign who will be the main decision-maker. Assign next who will be the main spokesperson of the organization. The spokesperson is responsible for relaying the message from the organization towards the press and replying to all queries the press is going to ask professionally. Assign also a team who will be ready 24/7 to address the situation by acting right away to lessen the impact of the crisis on the organization before it gets worse.

2. Assess the Situation

As mentioned before, the crisis may come in various ways so you need to assess the proper procedure for handling different types of crises. To do this, you need to consider the following questions:

• Does the situation present an immediate danger?
• What needs to be done first in the case when the crisis happens?
• How to inform the staff about the crisis and the plans to act on it?
• Are there any other stakeholders who need to be informed?
• Is there more information that is needed to know before going public?
• What questions are the press likely to ask?

3. Know Which Media Channels You’ll Be Using

Once you’ve assessed what to do in different types of crises, it’s time to identify which media channel is appropriate to send your message. Do you need to send a press release to the media? Do you need to conduct a press conference Send a message on social media platforms? Send emails to your sponsors and subscribers? It’s up to you which channel to use.

You also need to assign a team who will be responsible for making the official statement, sending them to the public and the media, and updating them on the next series of events that you’ll be doing to address the crisis. When updating the public about the current issue and your action on addressing those, decide how often you’ll be giving updates and communicating with the public using the channel you’ve decided to use to discuss that certain crisis.

 

4. Make a Strategy on Monitoring the Public’s Reaction

Once the story with your crisis is out in public, assign a team who will monitor and take note of how the public (and even the government) react and respond to your official statement. This will help you decide on what action you can do next regarding communicating and providing updates to the public and even help you prepare for the worst.

When assessing the public’s reaction, take note of the following:

• The number of people is talking about it
• What the media and the public are saying about you and the situation
• What new information has come to light regarding the situation
• What the public wants to hear from you

5. Assess the Whole Situation

You also need to prepare your process for handling post-crisis situations when the crisis has passed. Decide on how you will evaluate the team responsible for handling the crisis and do a formal retrospective of the action you’ve done to mitigate the situation publicly and find out what you can learn from it so can decide which things you can do for the next crisis, and which things need to be improved.

FAQs

It’s better to prepare the crisis communication plan before the crisis happens so now (if you’re not in the middle of a crisis) is the best time to make one. Gather your team and brainstorm on this. Provide training to your team for them to efficiently address the crisis. You can even review and assess any crises situations that may arise and do a dry run simulation to see how you will handle those. As the saying goes, better be safe than be sorry. To help you get started on making the crisis communication plan, download our sample templates above to use as your reference!