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I. OVERVIEW EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Through the pervasiveness of social media and technology advancements, consumers and the Y’s stakeholders are living in a world with instant access to news and information. This connectivity is a great opportunity for us as we continue elevating our brand, but it can also be challenging when bad things happen.

With more than 2,700 Y’s around the country, we must be prepared to identify and manage crisis situations, swiftly, with consistent processes and procedures every time.

A well-prepared organization can emerge from a crisis situation with its reputation, consumer trust and brand value intact, and we are responsible for working toward that goal together.

A key to preserving the Y’s reputation when issues arise is to build good media relations in the community by placing positive stories about the Y regularly. This not only informs the community of the impact and all of the good that it does, but serves to build a “halo”, so that when things go wrong, the community also remembers the positive.

One of the most important mandates of any professional organization is to preserve brand reputation in times of challenge, change or crisis. At YMCA of the USA (Y-USA), reputation management has been a longtime discipline, preserving the reputation of the national brand and offering local Y's communications counsel, support and best practice guidelines, tools and templates. In this way, the Y maintains and enriches its reputation as a charitable nonprofit worthy of individual and institutional support.

OUR NATIONAL STANDARD FOR CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS

Since the launch of the Y’s revitalized brand platform in 2010, Y-USA has worked deliberately to further build its national profile as a leading, charitable, nonprofit organization worthy of support. Knowing that with greater visibility comes greater exposure and reputational vulnerability, Y-USA’s Marketing Communications group has developed a crisis communications plan to elevate and enhance overall crisis preparedness and define response processes and protocols.

Y-USA also utilizes a social media monitoring system to act as an early warning system in real time.

HOW TO USE THIS DOCUMENT

This document titled, Y-USA Crisis Communications Manual, (serving as the current master-guide for crisis response, communications and stakeholder engagement for both Y-USA and local Y’s) supersedes all other versions of Y-USA Crisis Communications Plans. As necessary, and when required, the Y-USA Communications Team will issue updated versions of this plan to reflect changes in policy, procedure and team composition.

INTEGRATION

Various teams have been involved in the creation of this plan and the best practices defined herein.

Disciplines refers to the Crisis Communications Team working in unison with the Disaster Response and Business Continuity teams as strategic partners.

Additionally, because Y-USA is a resource office, reputation management also requires Y-USA to provide guidelines to the Movement –to assist YMCAs in developing their own crisis communications, disaster response and business continuity plans. *Note: Tools and templates are provided on Link. (Reference notes in the appendix include hot links to each respective file.)