Heidi Jedlicka Halvarson
Senior Philanthropy Program Manager, Medtronic
Jason Jackson
Group Director, Global Emergency Management, Walmart
Published
July 24, 2024
As disasters grow in frequency and severity around the world, businesses are becoming more calibrated in how they invest in partnerships and programs to support communities. Cross-sector collaboration is more important than ever. Organizations are assessing the prepositioning of supplies and the engagement of potential partners across the globe to build capacity and ensure a unified response to achieve community-based recovery following a disaster. At the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Building Resilience Conference last month, the Medtronic Foundation and Walmart came together to facilitate a discussion on how organizations can work together to best position themselves for successful disaster response initiatives.
We were thrilled to host this conversation, as this topic is critical to what we do at our organizations. Both the Medtronic Foundation and Walmart prioritize getting activations off the ground as quickly as possible during disasters but measuring the impact of our investments can be a challenge. At the Medtronic Foundation, we coordinate disaster response through our internal crisis management team and nonprofit partners worldwide. Medtronic activates within 48 hours of a disaster and quickly funds the response activities of its community partners. The company then releases impact metrics within 90 days of funding distribution. In the last 4 years, they have responded to over 25 major crises and enabled teams to develop programs that can be standardized and scaled across multiple scenarios. Limitations on budget and staff capacity, decision-making conditions, and stakeholder expectations, can limit response capacity and remain key issues to resolve.
Walmart’s Emergency Management team’s primary focus is making Walmart the safest place to work and shop, with a deep cultural emphasis on safety. The company’s investment in its people has reinforced its capacity to respond quickly to disasters, prioritizing its employees and community. For example, Walmart sets an internal benchmark to get an impacted store back up and running within 24 hours of a disaster. This is a boon for the community, supplying needed resources while restoring community commerce. During disasters, Walmart relies on its resources to assess things like internal and external supply chains, distribution capacity, and risk environment to act quickly and support the community as appropriate. Ten different support groups and employee support functions partner internally to address disasters. This response capacity is possible due to Walmart’s belief that the key to dealing with crisis and emergency management is fostering relationships.
Key Takeaways from the Discussion
In the discussion portion, we posed three questions to the audience to assess their organizational investments in improving response. Common themes emerged related to prepositioning resources, fostering successful relationships, and involving cross-sector partners in post-crisis recovery activities.
Pre-positioning Resources in Crisis Response
Prepositioning resources takes a sizeable investment of time and money, especially when assessing how to refine and replicate existing models of response. Supply chain knowledge and commitment to empowering all levels of a corporation to make decisions allows for resources to move quickly to crisis zones. While this permits resources to flow quickly, it can be challenging to measure the effectiveness of the response. Prepositioning relationships can help in that regard; trusted community partners not only can serve to move response items quicker but will have vetted mechanisms of impact assessment that companies can use to determine how they can improve their resource allocation in the future. As one attendee put it, “the greatest power is who you get to know around the table.”
The Key to Fostering Successful Partnerships
Building strong relationships with partners is crucial to improving and measuring the impacts of crisis investment—and offering incentives is an important piece to building those relationships. As many attendees noted, it is important to approach partnerships as mutual opportunities to benefit from each other’s strengths. Information access varies between organizations, so leaning on partners and stakeholders helps keep everyone informed and allows them to respond when needed. However, more time is required to cultivate these partnerships. At the community level, people may have needs they want to address first before discussing a solicited problem.
Building trust takes strategy and investment; knowing what you have to offer and in what areas you’d like to address risk can help you assess which organizations would be best to partner with.
Evaluating Response Efforts Post-Crisis
The crisis recovery stage is another opportunity to build and maintain relationships with community partners. Following the response stage, gaps in resources become more apparent. This is an opportunity to share data and information amongst partners, to better understand the recovery landscape and inform decisions. Taking the time to discuss what you did well and what could be improved also helps guide future response and recovery efforts. Tools like after-action reports are tangible resources that can be shared for disaster managers and humanitarian response staff to assess their activities.
Life during a crisis looks different than the day-to-day rebuilding; adequate training on decision-making processes and resources from past response scenarios can help people better serve others in a disaster.
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About the authors
Heidi Jedlicka Halvarson
