Nonprofit Disaster Preparedness in the Context of Climate Change: What Can We Learn From the Leaders?

ABSTRACT Along with more extreme weather, climate change threatens nonprofit service continuity, potentially causing cascading problems for communities that depend on these same social services after disasters. This situation calls for more research on risk management in the nonprofit context, including connections between climate change awareness and natural disaster planning and preparedness. Structured interviews were conducted with 32 Indiana nonprofit executive directors or key staff in organizations with higher‐than‐average preparedness profiles. Testing leading nonprofit behavioral theories on risk management decisions, we find multiple themes that explain preparedness behavior. The profile of a more prepared organization is one in which leaders make connections between severe weather and client/staff welfare, and view climate adaptation as mission‐related. They also use service networks as sources of adaptive capacity to gain resources that support disaster preparedness. We also explored perceived barriers to climate adaptation actions. A key finding is that even when they recognize the threat of more severe weather, boards of directors may view climate adaptation as either too political an issue to address, or as outside their purview as an operational rather than strategic issue. We conclude by offering practical recommendations for nonprofit executives and a clearer conceptual path for researchers interested in testing the sector's capacity for climate‐change‐related risk management. This is the first study that attempts to understand determinants of disaster preparedness by nonprofits that are themselves likely to respond to disasters, and the first to do so in the context of the complicated politics of climate change.