has tents, cots, water, etc. When the supplies are depleted, the corporation replenishes the warehouse. The standby capacity proved very effective in responding to Hurricane Mitch. The same foundation funded rebuilding schools in a way that would allow them to withstand future hurricanes and serve as shelters if an evacuation was needed. The foundation decided, however, that mandating preparedness/mitigation in the Tsunami context didn’t seem appropriate because it was unlikely there would be another tsunami of that magnitude in those areas for decades if not centuries. One grantee has received yearly funding from several foundations in support of its Emergency Response Team (ERT), which is a standby capacity to respond quickly to acute disasters. The piece that is often missing, though, is support for planning, training and coordination – what is needed to make sure that the ERT is able to function effectively. According to the NGO, it is difficult for donors to grasp the need for regular training and backstopping of the ERT members and other standby personnel. They assume that the staff members already are doing jobs that should prepare them for the emergency response, whereas it is necessary to have them train together and hone their skills. In some cases, corporate foundations have used their own crisis management models to help them identify how best to help others cope with a disaster. During the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami, BP (formerly known as British Petroleum) established a London-based crisis team to assess what was needed and do some outside-the-box thinking about how BP could be useful to the relief effort. The team had representatives from various regional offices as well as two crisis management people based in London. The team included on call staff to deal with internal crises – oil spills, refinery fires, etc. – and they used these skills to assess the Tsunami’s impact. A similar model was used when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast.
Capacity building of humanitarian organizations Few donors prioritize capacity building of humanitarian organizations, in part because it is viewed as supporting the internal management costs of NGOs. By contrast, grantees gave very high priority to capacity building as an area in
26