Requiring your staff to be prepared, trained, and ready to deal with emergencies helps our communities to be more self-sufficient, better able to respond, and ultimately more empowered. Simple requirements for staff include:

• Carry a whistle and flashlight – and know the code (1=Yes, 2=No, 3= Help)
• Keep employee emergency contact information updated
• Program cell phones with key contact information, medical data, rally points, etc.
• Have basic safety and preparedness information in wallets, glove compartments, back packs, etc.

Check periodically to make sure that everyone is maintaining this simple level of required preparedness. Have your team track the successes that arise from having these tools with them every day. This will help your employees to be heroes for themselves, their families, and their communities. They will become more confident as they walk the world prepared.

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May 10th, 2010 | Tags: CARD, CUE, employee, Preparedness, require, Safety, staff, whitle and flashlight | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

Preparedness educators often seek to inform their audiences about specific hazards and threats, paying extra attention to the most likely threats for a particular geographic area. News outlets also put out large blocks of information. Educators then provide standardized information on what they think the audience “should do” to address the threats. For motivated audiences it’s often not a lack of information, it’s a lack of implementation.

Review your preparedness offerings with an eye toward easy-to-implement solutions. Create a list of the “low-hanging fruit” – safety/preparedness tasks that virtually any group CAN DO quickly and will leave them with a sense of meaningful accomplishment. Help your audiences to answer the simple questions: “What can I do today?”, “What can I do this week?”, and “What can I do this month?”

Tip: Share STAT messages – it’s a simple thing you CAN DO to help your colleagues and community members get prepared!

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April 19th, 2010 | Tags: accomplishment, educators, Information, Preparedness, Safety, threats | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

Facing budget cutbacks and staff reductions, savvy preparedness promoters are seeing the true wisdom of embracing long-term sustainable preparedness results, rather than short-term attainable preparedness projects.  For example, it seems like a good idea to have hundreds of people attend a big public preparedness event (they’re short-term, attainable), but it’s exponentially more helpful to empower fewer people to take on specific efforts targeting particular communities of interest. It’s more feasible to focus on a handful of motivated partners than hundreds of fleetingly-curious members of the public.

Review your current preparedness offerings through the attainable vs. sustainable lens.  Voluntarily cut or revamp any preparedness efforts that take up your time and resources without providing proper returns on your preparedness investments.  Choose sustainable over attainable: You’ll make your preparedness programs more resilient and less vulnerable to funding cuts!

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April 12th, 2010 | Tags: attainable, communities, focus, partners, Preparedness, sustainable | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

Preparedness campaigns are often declared a success simply because several people reacted and took some (not necessarily sustainable) action. We fail to see the millions who experienced the same message but took no action, or were even put off by the message. They aren’t counted because they are silent; they are the “Silent Evidence” that a particular approach is ineffective or even harmful. The results: wasted resources, unsustainable preparedness, distrust, and the false belief that more of the same is needed to get more people “prepared.”

Be sure your community is actually being prepared by your efforts, especially those who cannot or would not speak up on their own behalf. Review your outreach materials and strategies. Ask the brave, hard questions about whether your efforts are achieving sustainable preparedness for a significant portion of your target audience.

Tip: The book “The Black Swan” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, has an entire chapter on “Silent Evidence.”

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April 5th, 2010 | Tags: black swan, message, Preparedness, silent evidence, success, sustainable | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

The warmer weather that Spring brings encourages outdoor activity. This is a great time to plant some preparedness ideas with anyone responsible for maintaining outdoor and green spaces near homes or offices.

Some helpful actions to make outdoor spaces more safe and secure include:

1. Search the space to find the best places for people to congregate. Good spaces are often flat, easily accessible and far from falling hazards, power lines, gas mains, etc.
2. Clear the area of common natural hazards, including rocks, vines, dead leaves, fallen branches or overgrowth.
3. Choose plants, flowers, trees, and ground-cover with preparedness in mind. Depending on your likely hazards, consider fire resistant, low maintenance options which stand up to weather extremes, and won’t attract bugs, vermin or other pests.

Tip: Make sure everyone knows specifically where to rally in your outdoor space.

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March 29th, 2010 | Tags: CARD, hazards, ideas, outdoor space, Preparedness, Safety, vegetation | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

• Carry a whistle, flashlight, programmed cell phone, CUE card
• Choose comfortable shoes
• Review in your head some helpful response tips, such as the proper way to use a fire extinguisher: P.A.S.S. (Pull, Aim, Squeeze, Sweep).

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March 15th, 2010 | Tags: CUE, Fire, Phone, Preparedness, response, Shoes, St. Patrick's Day, tips, tools | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

At 2:00AM, this coming Sunday, March 14th, most of the US will “Spring Forward” and set clocks ahead one hour.  Be forward thinking in your preparedness, by taking on as many of the following as you can:

• Check and refresh your fire extinguishers, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
• Examine and cycle your food and water. Consume anything about to expire, and replenish your supplies.
• Check any stored medications; you can take expired prescriptions to your local pharmacy for safe disposal.
• Use that handy Sharpie marker to clearly mark the expiration dates on all of your supplies.

Tip: Use online reminder systems to nudge you to do these and other preparedness tasks, especially if your clocks automatically reset the time for you!

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March 8th, 2010 | Tags: fire extinguisher, Preparedness, reminder, spring, spring forward, supplies | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

The month of March ushers in Spring and the Vernal Equinox. That means it’s a perfect time for a vitally important (but often dismissed) aspect of preparedness and safety: cleaning! Make the following part of your 2010 Spring cleaning:

• Ensure emergency exits are clear and that paths leading to them are unobstructed.
• Get rid of dangerous items you don’t need, e.g., old paint or chemicals, expired food, hazardous materials no longer needed.
• Store combustible and/or flammable items in a safe manner – away from sources of heat, flame, or sparks, etc.
• Clear safe spaces under desks, tables and counters, where people will go to Drop, Cover, and Hold On in earthquakes and other emergencies.

Tip: Recycle or dispose of all hazardous materials properly! Being green and environmentally conscious is itself a preparedness action!

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March 1st, 2010 | Tags: Earthquake, Preparedness, recycle, Safety, spring cleaning | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment

When setting 2010 preparedness goals, it’s great to follow the SMART goal model: Specific, Measurable, Accountable, Realistic, Time-bound.  But for emergency preparedness — a topic that is met with some resistance — it’s even more important to have a BHAG (pronounced “BEE-hag”) – a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  Popularized in the best-selling book by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, a BHAG is both clear and compelling; it’s “an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future.”

With feedback from your team and community, create and share a positive uplifting, big picture BHAG. Ideally, all of your related SMART goals, milestones, projects, and objectives should clearly and directly help fulfill this larger, more empowering goal. Tip: Even a draft or “straw man” BHAG can help!

CARD’s BHAG: Have EVERY nonprofit prepared to prosper!

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January 11th, 2010 | Tags: empower, future, goal, objectives, plan, Planning, Preparedness, project, read | Category: 2010, STAT, STAT 5MM | Leave a comment