When the phone rings at 3 a.m., the story is out, and a narrative is forming. What you do in the next five minutes may be the most important thing you ever do for your organization.
PR veteran Mike Swenson, who spent more than 30 years advising nonprofits and corporations through crises, says the organizations that come out stronger are almost always the ones that were ready before anything started.
Most organizations make the same mistake: They react instead of responding. In the age of social media, the difference can be fatal to your reputation.
Here's what prepared organizations do differently: Before any crisis arrives, they identify a crisis team drawn from across the organization, map every plausible risk, establish the first seven steps they'll take, build three to five key messages for each potential scenario, and designate a spokesperson. When the phone rings, there's no scrambling. The team is already assembling, the first message is already drafted, and the organization is on offense within minutes rather than hours.
Nonprofits have a real advantage in a crisis that most executives underestimate: goodwill.
Years of community trust, a board of engaged civic leaders, corporate partners, and loyal volunteers are assets that can actively carry an organization through a difficult moment, if leadership knows how to activate them. (There's a sharper edge to this: The same mission-driven identity that makes a nonprofit scandal feel like a bigger betrayal is also what gets you forgiven faster, if you handle it right.)
Mike also makes the case for measured response over reflexive action. When a named person or associated organization gets caught up in a public controversy, pausing before acting (gathering information before making a final call) is almost always better than a quick decision you can't walk back.
The fundamentals of good crisis communication haven't changed: Be authentic, be succinct, and repeat your message more times than feels comfortable.
What has changed is the speed at which you have to do all of it. And whether you're navigating a crisis or just trying to communicate more effectively every day, those three principles are a good place to start.
Mike brings a perspective few crisis advisors have. He spent years as a broadcast journalist and television reporter before serving as press secretary to a governor, which means he has sat on every side of the table. He knows how reporters think, how politicians survive, and how organizations fall apart when they aren't prepared.
The media environment makes all of this harder than it used to be. Newsrooms are a fraction of what they were, reporters are stretched across multiple states, and the old news cycle (morning paper, evening broadcast) is gone. The story moves whether you're ready or not.
The good news is that getting ready doesn't have to be complicated.
Mike Swenson developed a simple five-step process called Crisis Track, and in this episode, he walks former newspaper editor and reporter Lee Wochner through how it works and where you can go to put it into practice for your own organization. Any nonprofit, regardless of size or budget, can build a plan.
So if the phone rings at 3 a.m., you're already on offense.
Links
https://crisistrak.com/
