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This Month's topic: Business Recovery Plans
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| This Month's Topic: Business Recovery Plans |
Sites of the Month
Each month, this area provides with a
number of my favorite and most helpful sites regarding the topic of the month.
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Management
Tip of the Month
Each issue, I start with a discussion
of my management perspective on the month's topic, and give you a few hands-on
ideas to consider.
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Recommended Publications
Here, I provide you with my
recommendations on the materials available that can help you
become more mission-capable in the area of Business Recovery Plans.
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Technology
I provide you with some good ideas for
uses of tech to better your organization in the area of Business Recovery Plans.
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Marketing
Tip
So much to say, so little space to say
it.....
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Next
Issue
In February, we'll get into an issue that is important enough that I've written a new book about it: Generation Change, and we'll look at one issue within this larger challenge: Generation Change and Your Staff.
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Websites of the
Month
Here are my recommendations for websites of interest
on this month's topic: Business Recovery Plans.
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Top
Management Tip of the Month
Business Recovery Plans
Hurricanes. Tsunamis. Tornadoes.
Blizzards. Ice storms Floods. Earthquakes. Do you live in an area that
is not prone to one or more of these?
I met a guy once who had carefully checked the entire continental US to
find one small area in central New Mexico that was not prone to
any of these disasters. He and his wife moved there. And,
of course, the next summer their house burned down in a freak electrical storm.
That story, plus our recent experience with mega disasters, and our
national concern about terrorist attacks, should be fair warning that
our organizations need to plan for the worst, while hoping for the
best. And, the time to plan (and practice) is now, not later.
So, here are some scenarios to consider.
1. There's a widespread 10 day power outage that includes our organization's site(s). How do we keep doing our mission?
2. There is a flood in our building (from a storm, or a simple
plumbing failure). All our computers are ruined, all our paper files are under
water. How do we recover?
3. We have a disaster that affects not only our operations, but the
homes of our staff (think earthquake, hurricane, blizzard, flood). What
should they be expected to do?
What are your preparations for these and the myriad of other things
that can go wrong? I know you don't want to think about this: but
neither did many of the nonprofits in the path of Hurricane
Katrina...and we know how hard they got hit.
So, what should you do? Start here:
First, talk
about this issue at the staff and board level. What part of your
operations are critical, which ones less so? For example, if you run
24/7 mission (like a homeless shelter) what are your plans to protect
the shelter residents while at the same time maintaining staffing? If
you are an art gallery, what resources do you need to commit to protect
your collection?
Second,
decide what can be done now to prepare. Generators, Satellite phones,
first aid kits, etc. may wind up on your list, as may off site data
backups, and regular scanning of key records to prevent flood
damage.
Third,
develop a disaster plan for the organization. Review and practice this
plan at least annually. Look at the links I've provided above as a
place to start.
Fourth,
make sure that your employees are prepared in their own homes. Hold
some training (the Red Cross, or county disaster officials would be
happy to help in this area), and perhaps even provide some simple
disaster kits for your staff.
Few of us really want to spend time worrying about a disaster, but good stewardship mandates
that we are prepared. Consider this a different kind of insurance. It's
expensive (in time) now, but could save your organization and its
ability to provide its mission if the worst happens.
If
you found this hint helpful, there are lots more management, marketing, and
technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
And, remember to take a look at the
Mission-Based Management
Blog.
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Top
Print Resources
My recommendations for texts on Business Recovery Planning are
shown below.
Business Continuity Planning: A Step-By-Step Guide with Planning Forms on CD-ROM,
by Kenneth Fulmer
The Disaster Recovery Handbook, by Michael Wallace and Lawrence Webber
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Top
Technology Tip
How can Tech help with Business Recovery?
It can only help if it works. So, backup, backup, backup...and backup again.
Then, get the backup data off-site.
That's basically it, but this is so important, that we need to look a
bit deeper, and give you some more resources. Your technology, whether
you have only one computer for email and accounting, or a huge IT
department, is one of the most crucial parts of your organizational
continuity--and the most susceptible to disaster. While computers and
monitors may get destroyed by any number of things, it's the data you want. And the data can be protected, with a little internal discipline, some planning, and some regular monitoring.
I could talk about this for pages and pages, but the people at TechSoup
have done a better job already, so I'm just going to give you some
great links to their articles on:
Disaster Recovery (nicely written overview of how to think through this issue for your organization. Includes some good tools.)
Technology Planning for Civil Emergencies (Really well done and detailed discussion about nonprofits' roles in disasters)
Online Backup (the smart way to get your data off site--waaaay off site.)
These will get you a long, long way on your road to better tech disaster recovery. Start now.
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
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Top
Training Schedule for Peter Brinckerhoff
Below you'll see the date, location, and topics
of public training I'm scheduled to do in the next few months. For more
information on a particular speaking engagement, get in touch with the contact
person listed in the right hand column, or
email me.
For more information on my availability throughout
the next 12-18 months, available topics, sample agendas, and fees go to
www.missionbased.com/training.htm
Marketing Tip
Business Recovery and Marketing
First and foremost, after a
disaster, you need to let people know your organizational status.
Employees will want to know about coming to work, donors and funders
will be concerned about operations, vendors will want to know about
making deliveries, your board and volunteers will be concerned about
their responsibilities and, of course, the people you serve will want
to know when and how you will be back doing your mission. Just as with
your overall disaster plan, this requires a bit of planning.
First, sit down with your management team and think through who would
need to be contacted if there were a major disruption. Make lists of
board, staff, key vendors, funders, and others who are critical to you.
Plan on contacting these people in five ways: email, phone, snail mail
(or on foot if necessary), by the general media, and through your
website. Develop a listing of the phone, email and street addresses of
the local broadcast media. Add to this contact information for your
Internet Service Provider (ISP) and gather as many cell phone numbers
as you can for staff (remembering that most people under 26-28 don't
have land line phones--so you can't find them in the phone book!)
Now, take that data off site. Put it on a CD, make 10 copies and give
them to all your key employees, and perhaps even a board officer. I
know one organization that keeps this information in a safe-deposit box
at their bank. It doesn't do much good to have all this information on
a hard drive that is destroyed by a fire, flood, or tornado.
What you want to have is the capacity to respond to a variety of situations, and to not be Dependant on any one method of communication.
During the recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina, one of the biggest
problems rescuers had was that their plan depended on cell phones---and
the entire cell grid was down for weeks.
Note: one
simple method to cut down on work for any one person is to have a
"phone tree", where all staff (and perhaps board) are on the tree. I
call two people, they each call two more, etc. This really reduces the
time needed to get information out--if email is down, and/or for people
who don't have access to email--or whose power may be out.
Finally, remember that post-disaster communications need two
components: Whatever you say in print, by email, or that you put on
your website need to be facts, not rumors, and they need to be short, and to the point. No one has time to read 12 paragraphs about how upset you are. Save that for later, or for your blog.
People want to know these things (usually in this order):
- Are your people OK?
- What kind of emergency help does your organization need right now (if any)?
- Are you open (and if not, when will you be)?
- Who should I contact (and how) if I want to know more?
Remember that in the aftermath of any disaster, one of the central keys
is to communicate, communicate, communicate. Planning on how to react
now will save time, money, angst, and effort later on.
If you want to see more about this in detail, take
a look at more about my book
Mission-Based Marketing; Second
Edition
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
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Top
Future Topics for
The Mission-Based Management Newsletter....
| February |
Generation Change and Staff |
| March |
Are Admin Costs Important? |
| April |
New Tech Uses for Nonprofits |
| May |
Generation Change and the People You Serve |
| June |
Board Restructuring |
July
|
Better Cash Planning |
| August |
What if you are a (really) small nonprofit? |
| Send me
your topic suggestions at: peter@missionbased.com |
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You asked, so here they are:
Past Single-Topic Issues of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter...
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Copyright 2007,
Corporate Alternatives, inc.
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