A severe disaster is a stress test for communities. It is a test that none of us want to take, but the rate and intensity of disasters are increasing. A 2022 survey of the Main Street network revealed that 75% of Main Streets experienced a major natural disaster in the last five years. Since your Main Street will likely manage a natural disaster or crisis response, this article will highlight effective organizational strategies to minimize damage or loss in your districts. You already deploy all of these strategies during ​‘blue sky days’ as Main Street managers — stakeholder communication, fundraising, and volunteer coordination. Still, they can be shored up or expanded now to ensure an effective disaster response in the future.

This is the second part of a three-part series exploring the Main Street Disaster and Resilience Toolkit. You can read part one here >

Stakeholder Communication: Keep Updates Simple and Responsive

As a Main Street manager, you already convene and communicate with key stakeholders in your downtown district — small business owners, property owners, and residents — but post-disaster, your communications will be lifelines to help your stakeholders navigate an overwhelming set of circumstances. During the COVID pandemic, I worked alongside the Main Street manager at NewTown Macon in Georgia to craft curated daily email updates for our small business owners. We sifted through lots of COVID recovery materials and developed simple guidance on complicated topics, such as filing unemployment claims and applying for SBA loans. Our small businesses had an exceptional success rate in accessing recovery funds. Consider leveraging the specialties or expertise of your Board or Committee members to deliver curated technical guidance to stakeholders in your district post-disaster.

Depending on the disaster, your typical mode for communicating with or convening your stakeholders may not be available. Following the devastating floods in Montpelier, Vermont, in 2023, the downtown had no internet access, and Montpelier Alive found that their small business email listserv was not an effective way to reach their small business owners. A weekly in-person meeting was the solution to keep local business owners informed and connected, and, in time, regional and state officials started to join the weekly meetings, helping Montpelier small business owners advocate for specific recovery needs.

Fundraising: Fill a Gap

From a cash flow perspective, the first few months after a disaster can be exceptionally challenging for a Main Street commercial district. Business has often come to a complete halt, and it takes weeks for insurance claims to be processed and unemployment payments to come through for small business owners and their employees. Federal recovery funding always comes much later as it’s designed to cover ​‘unmet needs’ or recovery costs not covered by insurance payouts. 

For a Main Street to recover from a serious disaster, small businesses must re-open quickly. Lake Orion Downtown Development Authority in Michigan successfully implemented a crowdfunding campaign to help their small businesses cover emergency costs and get back online after COVID shutdowns. Post-disaster is not the time to experiment with a new crowdfunding platform or donor database, so consider researching and implementing appropriate software tools for your annual fundraising or event sponsorship campaigns. If you launch a disaster recovery crowdfunding campaign, make your ask or solicitation very clear and targeted. This will help you effectively deploy limited funds and build trust with potential donors.

Volunteer Management: Play Matchmaker

After a disaster, people will want to help. They’ll want to give money, supplies, and their time, and they will look to your Main Street program to help them plug into your local disaster response. There is often a mismatch in the skills or expertise of your volunteers and your district’s recovery needs. Build a community volunteer hub to create a centralized place to assess volunteer skills and assign tasks. Often, volunteer coordination is focused on physical recovery. Still, there is always a range of needs outside of clean-up and repair efforts where expertise and backup are needed, like small business recovery coaching, construction management support, or crisis communications. Many of these technical recovery needs correspond to the Four Points, and you can start recruiting and building a robust recovery team through committee recruitment and your annual work plans.

In addition to coordinating recovery volunteers, as a Main Street manager, you may need to build a pipeline of local recovery projects. Through DOT’s Thriving Communities Program, Main Street America supports Mountain City, Tennessee, post-Hurricane Helene by mapping and prioritizing local recovery projects. You can use GIS, or you can build a spreadsheet to guide your volunteer management, but combine your damage inventory with stakeholder input to build your project list. A comprehensive database of your recovery needs will also be a valuable fundraising tool.

Dive Into the Toolkit

These strategies will minimize miscommunication, missteps, and loss in the immediate aftermath of disasters. Shoring up these processes and practices now ensures your Main Street can capitalize on recovery resources, funding, and volunteers so you can get businesses back open, community members connected, and your districts rebuilt.

Do you want to learn more about the toolkit resources and how you can use them to increase resilience in your community? Join Main Street America for a webinar on March 6^th from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. CST to explore all three toolkit sections and provide actionable takeaways to help your community plan, prepare, respond, and recover.