Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Series editors’ preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The public’s philanthropic response to disaster: plus ça change?
- 3 Disaster fundraising: readiness matters
- 4 Roles of philanthropic foundations as funders and distribution agents in disaster response
- 5 The private sector and disasters: from reactive response to disaster resilience
- 6 Fundraising, grantmaking and regulatory issues: regulating good in bad times
- 7 Doing good better: public policy for disaster philanthropy
- 8 Philanthropy’s place in community-based capacity development for disaster resilience
- 9 Nonprofit collaboration and coordination in disaster response: lessons from the 11 September recovery
- 10 The promise and reality of philanthropy in disasters
- 11 Conclusions and looking forward
- Index
8 - Philanthropy’s place in community-based capacity development for disaster resilience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Notes on contributors
- Series editors’ preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The public’s philanthropic response to disaster: plus ça change?
- 3 Disaster fundraising: readiness matters
- 4 Roles of philanthropic foundations as funders and distribution agents in disaster response
- 5 The private sector and disasters: from reactive response to disaster resilience
- 6 Fundraising, grantmaking and regulatory issues: regulating good in bad times
- 7 Doing good better: public policy for disaster philanthropy
- 8 Philanthropy’s place in community-based capacity development for disaster resilience
- 9 Nonprofit collaboration and coordination in disaster response: lessons from the 11 September recovery
- 10 The promise and reality of philanthropy in disasters
- 11 Conclusions and looking forward
- Index
Summary
As novelist James Baldwin (1962) observes, ‘not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced’. This invites us to address the systemic challenges and inequities underpinning the design of our organisations, social structures and communities. Yet to redesign and remake our community systems amid accelerated uncertainty and volatility from disasters presents a journey without any certain destination. Is the unequal distribution of resources and capacities across communities the cause or a symptom of the accelerating incidence of disasters? Disasters demand we (researchers, practitioners, activists and community leaders) collectively plan and build more resilient systems and structures that persist and are reflexive, rooted in justice and mindful of the plurality of perspectives and people across nations and communities. The work of building local community capacities to manage disasters requires charitable leaders to assume diverse, bold new roles of disruption, adaptation, agitation, collaboration, questioning and experimentation.
The catastrophic health, psychological, environmental and social impacts from disasters, feel omnipresent. The eerie ongoing nature of modern disasters – the global pandemic and climate emergency – requires a more direct analysis of the root causes and impacts of disasters of all kinds (environmental, terrorist, health, cyber, and so on). While the very definition of disaster has traditionally incorporated their episodic and unusual nature, current crises and disasters feel unending. We are living through a spectrum of ongoing major disruptions including COVID-19, racial injustices and climate disasters. Indeed, ‘Things fall apart’, and with the world deeply unsettled, ‘the centre cannot hold’ (Yeats, 1920). Practitioners and researchers interested in strengthening community must deepen their understanding of the influence of disasters on community planning and community development strategies and approaches.
The central question of this chapter is how community philanthropy supports disaster response and management and, more specifically, how communities mobilise to build local capacities to manage disasters in inclusive, adaptive and place-responsive ways. I examine this question through four distinct frames. First, I situate myself and my own narrative about disasters as a starting point guiding the discussion. Then, I present key definitions of community, capacities and capacity building and resilience. Next, I conceptualise and explore the limitations of community philanthropy in disaster management by unpacking the tensions inherent in dominant frameworks of community philanthropy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Philanthropic Response to DisastersGifts, Givers and Consequences, pp. 165 - 185Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023