Crisis Portfolio
Rank each item in your crisis portfolio 0-10 for 1) Potential Severity and 2) Chance of Occurring.
| Client: Genesis Women’s Shelter & Support | Ranking: 1-10 |
| 1. Safety and Confidentiality | Potential Severity: 10 Chance of Occurring: 3 |
| 2. Client Info Leaked | Potential Severity:10 Chance of Occurring: 2 |
| 3. Ineffective Volunteer Training | Potential Severity: 8 Chance of Occurring: 5 |
| 4. Funding Cuts | Potential Severity: 9 Chance of Occurring: 6 |
| 5. Natural Disasters | Potential Severity: 3 Chance of Occurring: 5 |
| 6. Negative Media | Potential Severity: 6 Chance of Occurring: 1 |
| 7. Overload Capacity | Potential Severity: 3 Chance of Occurring: 3 |
| 8. Illness | Potential Severity: 2 Chance of Occurring: 7 |
| 9. Mental Health Issues | Potential Severity: 5 Chance of Occurring: 8 |
| 10. Drug Use / Alcohol Abuse | Potential Severity: 7 Chance of Occurring: 6 |
Resolutions/ Suggested Crisis Communications:
1. Safety and Confidentiality:
a. Description: If a disgruntled spouse or family member finds the shelter location or information about Genesis clients, retaliates, and comes to find them.
b. Audience Affected: This directly affects the women and their children in the shelter because it could cause them further abuse and harm. This also harms Genesis’s reputation as a safe place for women to come for shelter.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Ensure all information on clients and shelter locations is secured and stored behind passwords and locks. Ensure enough security around the clock to monitor who comes in and out of the shelter.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Be transparent about what happened, but first and foremost, make sure everyone in the shelter and who works for Genesis is safe. It is important to share how the company will work to prevent this from happening in the future and explain how unlikely this situation is.
2. Client Info Leaked
a. Description: Personal information of the clients and residents of Genesis is being leaked to the public.
b. Audience Affected: This affects the women and children in Genesis’s care because it exposes where they are and what they have been through. It also harms Genesis’s reputation as a safe place for women to come for shelter.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Ensure that all information about the women in the shelter is secure and that only trusted employees have access to it. When it comes to volunteers, everything should be on a need-to-know basis.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Share how this happened and the steps to fix the technological or human error. Ensure everyone is safe and secure, and express that to your clients first and then to the public.
3. Ineffective Volunteer Training
a. Description: If volunteers are not adequately trained, they could harm themselves and the victims.
b. Audience Affected: This would directly affect the women and children in the shelter, as well as the volunteers. It would also affect Genesis’ reputation.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Ensure that all volunteers working directly with victims are adequately trained using the “Volunteer Tool-Kit.”
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Be transparent and admit the problem. Make sure everyone affected by the issue is okay and safe. Explain what changes will be made to prevent this from happening again.
4. Funding Cuts
a. Description: Genesis Women’s Shelter depends on donations and grants to run programs, pay staff, and support survivors. If funding gets cut, the shelter might have to reduce services, delay programs, or even let go of staff.
b. Audience Affected: This could affect the women and children at the shelter, the staff, volunteers, and donors.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Apply for multiple funding sources (with different views), maintain strong relationships with donors through regular updates and success stories, and build a savings fund to help during emergencies.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Be transparent and admit the problem to the public, explain how this issue affects everyone involved with the shelter, ask for help, and ensure a plan to prevent further cuts.
5. Natural Disasters
a. Description: Natural disasters, such as tornadoes, extreme heat, floods, etc., are common in Texas.
b. Audience Affected: women (and their children) who use the shelter (whether they are currently there or not during the time of the natural disaster)
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Have weather training drills, an evacuation plan, a protected tornado shelter, weather alerts and be prepared, updated fire alarms, and extra water and food in storage.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Create an alert app (like SMU Aware) that warns clients and staff about weather advisories and announces on social media or to news reporters about how the public can help after a natural disaster.
6. Negative Media
a. Description: Negative news stories or public backlash against Genesis Women’s Shelter. It could be from anyone, such as an old client, volunteer, staff member, or anonymous account. Anything that would hurt the reputation of the organization and could hurt funding or credibility for the organization.
b. Audience Affected: donors/funders
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Have media training for all key executives/spokespeople, track social media mentions, be open and transparent with stakeholders, and share positive stories online.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Show you are resolving the issue, respond quickly with a credible spokesperson, show concern and empathy with all the people affected, update stakeholders about new developments / new steps taken, and create a full apology by accepting full responsibility.
7. Overload Capacity
a. Description: The shelter exceeds its capacity due to an unexpected increase in women and children seeking refuge, leading to overcrowding, resource shortages, and safety concerns.
b. Audience Affected: Women and children at the shelter, staff, volunteers, and the overall effectiveness of Genesis’s services.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Develop an overflow plan, establish partnerships with nearby shelters for referrals, increase staff or volunteer support during peak times, and maintain a crisis fund for emergency accommodations.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Acknowledge the situation transparently while reassuring the public that the organization is working to provide support. Share how Genesis handles overflow cases and outline long-term solutions to prevent recurrence. If needed, issue a public call for assistance, such as donations.
8. Illness
a. Description: A contagious illness, such as the flu, COVID-19, or another outbreak, spreads among clients and staff, affecting shelter operations.
b. Audience Affected: Women and children at the shelter, staff, volunteers, and potential visitors.
c. Avoid/Mitigate: Implement regular health screenings, provide access to vaccinations, enforce hygiene and sanitation protocols, have an isolation area for sick clients, and educate staff and residents on illness prevention.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: Quickly communicate the outbreak’s status while maintaining confidentiality. Share how the shelter addresses the situation (e.g., increased sanitation, medical support, temporary intake limitations) and reassure the public that measures are in place to protect everyone’s health. If necessary, request assistance from healthcare providers or public health organizations.
9. Mental Health Issue
a. Description: Women in situations of domestic violence go through a very distressing situation that, more often than not, negatively affects mental health. Mental health issues can often debilitate the life quality of a person, so allowing mental health issues to go untreated by Genesis would be a crisis.
b. Affected Audience: Women and children at the shelter
c. Avoid/ Mitigate: In order to avoid this kind of crisis, we recommend that Genesis has mental health professionals on staff to help guide women in the shelter and their children. We also recommend that the organization hold events for women and children in the shelter to share information about mental health support systems.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: We recommend that if there were to be some kind of psychotic break within the shelter, volunteers or employees immediately get help from doctors and thereby publicize their partnerships with organizations that handle mental health on a professional level.
10. Drug Use / Alcohol Abuse
a. Description: Women who are recovering from an abusive relationship can often look towards drugs and alcohol for some source of comfort, which may present an issue to the organization as to how they will handle a woman with addiction and her behaviors when affected by substances.
b. Audience Affected: The women in care with Genesis would be affected by an inefficient way of handling this issue because they would not be able to get the help they need. Additionally, those volunteering with the shelter may not be prepared to handle women struggling with substance abuse or addiction, making their jobs potentially more dangerous.
c. Avoid/ Mitigate: We would suggest addressing the women in the shelter engaging in drug use and alcohol abuse by creating a partnership with the local AA organization in Dallas and having contacts with organizations that prevent drug abuse.
d. Recommended Crisis Communication: We would suggest quickly finding abuse help for the woman affected by addiction and deferring back to professionals who are trained and medically knowledgeable about the issue.
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