This chapter of Mastering Foundation Law reviews how U.S. public charities, private foundations, and corporations can provide hardship relief funding to communities and individuals, including to employees of a particular company, in the wake of natural and man-made disasters.
Disaster Philanthropy
Current Disasters
The links below provide information, tools and resources on current disasters taking place across the United States. Please reference these individual pages for specific details.
In-Depth knowledge on Disaster Grantmaking
Give2Asia's report looks at 15 years of its grantmaking to understand giving patterns, program impact, and opportunities in the philanthropy sector.
You may wonder whether you can make grants to GoFundMe campaigns that are supporting localized efforts during disasters. Proceed cautiously: GoFundMe and many similar crowdfunding platforms are not registered 501(c)3 public charities, and therefore you need to examine carefully whether the campaigns hosted on these sites are charitable in nature.
It is an unfortunate reality of our times that all too often foundations are needed to respond to mass casualty events in their communities. Here are a few resources from foundations about how they responded and what lessons they learned along the way.
This Community Foundations of Canada resource provides insight into the unique role of a community foundation and outlines key ways they can contribute to supporting their community in the event of a disaster.
Recovery, rebuilding, and healing after a disaster know no timetable. However, small and big acts can ease the suffering of the survivors and help build stronger and more resilient communities. We just have to pay attention to the lessons learned by those who have already been through it.
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy has an excellent primer of basic tips for disaster giving that can help funders ask the right questions about how they can help.
This web based tool is a central location for State/Local/Tribal governments, emergency managers, and planners to view programs from Federal, State, For-Profit, Non-Profit, and Charitable entities.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has compiled a useful summary of disaster resources for corporate foundations and giving programs.
Options for private foundations for disaster grantmaking