Churches need disaster planning

Are you prepared for a disaster?  Many are not despite the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, and by hundreds of tornadoes in the South and Midwest in just the first few months of this year.

The Small Business Administration recommends that disaster preparedness should be part of a church’s business plan from the start, but many never get to it because they’re concerned with the day-to-day operations of the business, keeping the members happy.

Without disaster planning, you really stand the risk of losing everything that you’ve worked for.

Disaster preparedness once meant buying property and casualty insurance and making your physical plant less vulnerable to weather, fire and other catastrophes. That is still important, but proper planning now includes ensuring as much as possible that your church can get back into operation as soon as possible.

Arranging for secure data storage and buying the right insurance to cover expenses– two very simple tasks — are often overlooked.

It’s not enough for a church to put their member data and financial ledgers on tapes or CD-ROMs — such storage devices are often put in a “safe” place right in the office. But what if there’s a Katrina-like flood, or, a fire that destroys your office overnight?

The answer is to make the investment in backing the data up in a remote storage facility; the SBA suggests choosing one at least 100 miles away. And, as some business owners discovered after Katrina, they needed to have their applications stored in a remote location as well. Without that step, it took them much longer to access and use their information.

Business interruption insurance has saved some companies from foundering after a disaster, but the SBA noted that many owners don’t bother to buy it. This type of insurance covers operating expenses that must still be paid even when a business is shut down. The interruption doesn’t have to come from a natural disaster; an extended power outage can also threaten a church’s viability.

Business interruption insurance may or may not be part of a business insurance package you buy from a broker. You need to ask about it when you purchase insurance to cover any physical losses from a disaster.

Disaster preparation of course is much more complicated. Churches need to figure out in advance where they might set up temporary quarters if it turns out their own premises will be unusable for some time. They need a system for reaching employees, volunteers, and members after the disaster has occurred. They need to think about how they’d operate their church if they can’t get employees and volunteers together — a situation many New Orleans churches faced as their workers scattered to far-off places.

They need to think about back-up plans, too — if Plan A doesn’t work, what is Plan B?

Putting a comprehensive disaster plan together can be daunting, and that’s another reason why some churches procrastinate. The best solution is probably to delegate the planning to an employee or independent contractor who can draw up a plan for you.

There are resources on the Internet to help businesses formulate plans. The SBA’s Web site has a disaster preparedness section at http://www.sba.gov/beawareandprepare/business.html. It contains the SBA’s own checklists of things you need to consider in creating a plan, plus it has links to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s site, which also has preparedness information, and a link to the Institute for Business & Home Safety Web site.

At the IBHS site, you’ll find a downloadable toolkit called Open for Business that includes a comprehensive list of considerations to be made in preparing for a disaster, and forms that you can use in putting your disaster plan. You can link directly to it at http://www.ibhs.org/business(underscore)protection.