Special Session: The Importance of Internal Marketing of Organizational Continuity Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: An Abstract

Abstract

Nonprofit organizations, like their for-profit counterparts, are susceptible to a variety of disasters and severe outage situations. Examples include (1) the large-scale 2017 WannaCry ransomware cyberattack affecting more than 100 countries, which froze 300,000 computers in 48 of England’s National Health Services trusts until a bitcoin payoff was processed, (2) the 2018 fire which gutted the National Museum of Brazil and over 90% of its 20 million artifacts, and (3) damage from 2018’s Hurricane Florence (estimated, at $170 billion, to be the costliest storm ever to hit the U.S.), which closed many local nonprofit organizations whose mission is to provide support to those in need (CoreLogic 2018) These situations, which are disasters for affected nonprofit organizations and their stakeholders, have something in common. Due, perhaps, to resource constraints, organizations in the nonprofit sector are less likely to have developed, maintained and exercised robust in-house disaster preparedness and recovery plans. A common perspective (shared by many for-profit organizations) on the potential for serious disaster/outage situations is “it’s never going to happen”, “it won’t happen here” and/or “it won’t happen to us”. Nonprofit organizations, however, are particularly susceptible to disaster and critical outage situations, since they tend to operate under tight monetary, operational and personnel resource constraints. They often house significant amounts of donor information (both personal and financial) as well as their own staff employment and insurance data, often without sufficient information systems/security personnel and expertise to properly maintain and protect that data. They may, therefore, be at serious risk in terms of their abilities to manage disruptions, identify and resolve operational and system issues, and prevent cybersecurity breaches and fraud. This special session presentation explores and discusses risks facing nonprofit organizations and the need for organizational continuity planning, which focuses on mitigation of threats related to the nonprofit’s processes, assets, and stakeholders. It operationalizes the ideas of societal order and protection of property espoused by Karnes (Herman 2001) with the use of internal marketing, by an organization’s board of directors and executives, to communicate the criticality of organizational resiliency to the nonprofit’s stakeholders, including donors (who can fund the endeavor), managers (who will manage the endeavor), and staff (who will support the effort). Setting and reinforcing the right “tone from the top” provides an important foundation for development and maintenance of a workable, successful organizational continuity program that provides proactive protection for the nonprofit, its stakeholders, and the community at large.