Disaster + Community Resilience: What Corporations Should (And Should Not) Do
published 8.31.26
At qb., our work on disaster readiness and resilience has always started the same way: by listening.
Over the past four years, my team and I have sat in church gyms, buses, gardens and community centers with people who’ve lived through hurricanes, floods, heat waves, winter storms and industrial disasters. We’ve heard what it’s like to still be rebuilding a home years after a hurricane. To create your own communication network when the official ones fail. To navigate an evacuation without reliable transportation. To check on neighbors door-to-door when the power goes down. To live near refineries and rail lines knowing a chemical leak, fire or explosion is another kind of disaster you may have to prepare for.
And again and again, we’ve heard some version of the same thing: the people who live in a community know where its vulnerabilities are. They also know a lot about what would make it stronger.
The question is whether anyone asks them before making decisions on their behalf. That has shaped how we think about the role corporations can play in disaster resilience.
Because communities don’t only need help when a hurricane makes landfall or wildfire smoke fills the sky. They need investment in the relationships, local organizations, physical spaces, communication networks and everyday capacity that make it possible to prepare, respond and recover.
And with disasters increasingly colliding with housing costs, aging infrastructure, extreme heat, insurance challenges and other pressures people are already navigating, corporate investment in resilience matters.
But how companies show up matters just as much.
After more than a decade of people-first work—and several years listening directly to residents and community organizations in Houston, Los Angeles, Appalachia and beyond—here’s what we want companies considering this work to know.
1. Map What Already Works Before Funding NEW
Corporate problem-solving tends to start with: What can we build? Your best bet is to start by asking:
What does this community already rely on?
Who do people call when something goes wrong?
Where do they gather?
Which organizations have earned trust?
What failed during the last disaster?
What informal solutions emerged because the formal ones didn’t work?
In Houston, residents told us about communication failures during Hurricane Harvey and Winter Storm Uri, particularly for older adults and people with disabilities. They also told us how neighbors, churches and community organizations stepped in. Existing infrastructure is crucial. Before funding another platform, program or tool, understand what people are already using—and what would make it work better.
2. Stay for the Unglamorous Part: Recovery
Preparedness and emergency response understandably receive enormous attention. Recovery is much messier. It can take years.
In one analysis our team conducted of more than 100 disaster-related tools and services, only 32% addressed recovery. Yet residents we spoke with described the pain points in navigating home repairs, insurance, financial assistance, mental health impacts, and displacement long after any immediate emergency has passed.
The corporate instinct to mobilize quickly after a disaster is valuable. But communities also need partners willing to remain after public attention moves somewhere else. If your resilience strategy ends when the emergency response does, it ends too early.
If you need ideas of what to fund or where to start, reach out. We’ve got LOTS.
3. Invest in the People Who Make Communities More Prepared
Residents have talked to us about trauma counseling, workforce support, intergenerational learning, neighborhood networks and the importance of simply knowing who will check on whom.
There’s growing evidence for investing in that social infrastructure, too. The Trust for Civic Life’s recent Local Advantage report found that nearly three-quarters of rural residents surveyed believe their communities can come together to solve problems—and that people report greater agency when they’re actively involved with local organizations improving their communities.
That finding has implications well beyond civic life. Preparedness is itself a form of community participation. Every time neighbors make a plan together, learn where resources are, check on someone who may need help, or work through a shared local risk, they’re building capacity that matters when something goes wrong.
Corporate resilience investments can create more opportunities for that to happen: fund community organizers and local navigators, support preparedness training, invest in gathering places, and give trusted local organizations the resources to bring people together before a disaster.
4. Build with AI AND Simple Things
There is enormous potential for AI, sensors, predictive analytics and other technologies to improve disaster preparedness, response and recovery. There are also plenty of ways to build something technically impressive that nobody wants, trusts or can actually use.
We've heard communities ask for remarkably practical things: clearer information, fewer places to search for help, tools that work when connectivity is limited, better coordination between organizations, and information relevant to their neighborhood and circumstances.
So before investing in a new resilience tech, ask:
What problem are we solving?
Who experiences it?
What do they use today?
What would make that experience meaningfully better?
And what happens when the power, internet or cell service goes down?
Sometimes technology will be part of the answer. Sometimes the better resilience investment will be strengthening what's already there.
So, where should your company start?
Companies have money, expertise, technology, people and philanthropic dollars that can make a real difference in how communities prepare for and recover from disasters. The question is where those resources can be most useful.
If your company is asking what role it should play in climate resilience, disaster preparedness or recovery—or where your philanthropic dollars could make the biggest difference—we’d love to talk! We’ll help you figure out where to start.
by Sam Hartsock
Strategy Lead + Cofounder
by Joy Semien
Executive Director, L.E.E.D. With Joy LLC
