Issue link: https://blog.providence.org/i/1367431
13 post-2017 wildfires, what has not worked as well, and why. The findings celebrate community wins, reveal gaps, codifies unresolved topics of contention, and will invite those included in the research as well as those who might not have been to join an ongoing conversation about planning, prevention, and resilience. It is not a summary of damage wrought by the fires, and it is not exhaustive. There will be players whose voices are missing. This is not intentional. We invited as many people as possible to the conversation and captured over 60 organizational perspectives through surveys and interviews. It does not offer certain solutions, but instead ideas and recommendations, and an invitation to rework them until they are ready to be launched into collective action. DISASTER RESPONSE BEST PRACTICE: WHAT THE LITERATURE SAYS Philanthropy In the context of disaster response, the donor and public pressures on philanthropy to do "the right thing" – to be fair, efficient, and effective – are very high, and understandably so. A review of best practices has a few recommendations that foundations and private donors could heed to cut through some of the haze of those pressures. Best practices suggest the following strategies in terms of grant process. In order to best sup- port the work of CBOs in a post-disaster environment, it is important to shift the burden away from them and having funder staff heavily facilitate and support proposal development. For example, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation asks potential grantees to make a simple request in a brief format. Key documentation is partly prepared by Foundation staff rather than grantees. Another best practice is to require in all grant agreements that grantees outline their evaluation policy. Ask for quantitative measures, how they use them to evaluate performance, and how they ensure lessons are applied. Despite the challenges of requiring grantee evaluation efforts in a post-disaster response, it is important to include at least some aspect of evaluation. Fi- nally, a third recommendation from the literature is to increase transparency and spur perfor- mance, such as by posting the documents for all grants on the Foundation's website. In terms of funding priorities, best practices suggest the following. First, one recommenda- tion is for funders to give mini grants to support better on-site coordination. For example, it is possible that a $25,000 grant can catalyze greater synergy of millions. Similarly, it is rec- ommended to consider relief grants will help to jump start something larger when greater funding is on the way, making the contribution more catalytic than just a 'contribution to the pot'. Another recommendation from best practices is to make active cooperation (not just co-funding) a key criterion for funding, such as making grants to two organizations working together. For example, a grant could support cross organizational care management to pro- vide holistic services to disaster victims. Finally, a major recommendation from the best prac- tices literature is to fund in three rounds: relief, recovery, and disaster risk reduction. A 2017 study by the National Institute of Building Sciences finds $6 saved for every dollar invested in mitigation activities to reduce risk and disaster losses. Risk reduction can be both in the form of environmental planning as well as development of community resilience.