Our top five tips for Covid-19 crisis response and recovery planning

Earlier this week we were asked by one of our clients for our top five tips for each of the following:

• Coping with the current Covid-9 situation.

• Planning and preparing for post Covid-19.

We’s like to share what we sent in response to this interesting challenge, so here goes.

Coping with the current situation:

1. Take time to ensure that you and your family are settled and safe; you won’t be able to work effectively for your organisation unless you know all is well at home. There are a number of useful guides to managing mental health during the pandemic including this one.

2. Then start with your beneficiaries; how will the crisis be impacting them? What help do they need? What can you do to help? Can you divert existing resources to offer that help (with funders’ permission where required) or do you need to secure additional funding to do so?

3. Be alert to a rapidly changing funding environment; funders are quickly channeling funds from existing programmes to crisis response and emergency support. In particular, pay attention to what your existing and recent funders are doing and get in touch with them to sustain dialogue and explore options, without overwhelming them with communications.

4. Follow some of the Covid-19 hubs that many organisations are setting up (such as NCVO, CAF, ICAEW, Chartered Governance Institute and many more) - they are full of helpful advice including sources of funding. Be aware that there is a lot out there, so perhaps stick to the 2 or 3 sites you find most helpful rather than trying to follow them all.

5. If you need to, take reasonable steps to minimise expenditure (including furloughing staff who cannot work etc); cashflow will be critical for many. But be careful not to prejudice the future by cutting costs in the present - saving some capacity and head space for future planning is essential. If you have reserves then this is what they are for, so without being reckless, use them.

Planning for the future:

1. Accept that once the initial crisis is over things will not return to normal. There will be a new normal defined by significant economic, social and possibly political change - spend some time thinking through how that might impact your organisation.

2. Then, again start with your beneficiaries; what help are they likely to need to recover from the crisis and thrive in the new normal? What can you offer to help them with that? Don’t just think about what new services you might offer to support the recovery, be honest about how existing services might need to change (perhaps radically) or even whether some existing services may not be needed or, perhaps more likely, may need to be sacrificed because the capacity or funding is not available due to the need to support recovery.

3. Don't leave planning too late; many are starting that work now, even as the crisis continues to unfold. Make sure you have time and capacity set aside to think about the future; it’s an investment absolutely worth making.

4. Find “friends"; working in partnership with others is likely to help you develop a better, richer recovery offer and therefore both increase impact and enhance chances of securing funding. This applies equally to your crisis response offer and you will have made new friends through that work who could be important partners for your future work.

5. Stay in touch with your current and recent funders (and those you were building relationships with) and be on the look out for new funding options; some funders are already setting aside money for recovery funding programmes, be ready to move quickly when those options present themselves.

We hope that these thoughts are helpful for you and your organisation in an uncertain and challenging time.

If you would like to explore further how your charity can be part of the solution to the needs presented by the pandemic and in turn improve your resilience and sustainability, please do drop us a line at julian@almondtreeconsulting.co.uk.