Foundations Help Communities Emerge From Disasters Better Than Before

Like the Rockefeller Foundation, grant makers and community leaders who have embraced resilience say the approach offers a silver lining amid all the talk of catastrophe and disruption. Resilience provides the chance not just to bounce back—the status quo, they point out, isn’t always ideal to begin with—but to bounce forward: to enable communities in all their social, environmental, and economic complexity to operate more smoothly and equitably than they did before.

Community foundations are adopting this approach to grant making, eagerly collaborating with government, nonprofits, and other foundations to promote preparedness and resilience at a local and regional level.

Philanthropy can be critical in fostering social cohesion so essential to resilience in communities and also in tackling interconnected problems that affect a particular area, says Emily Young, vice president for environmental initiatives at the San Diego Foundation.

The San Diego Foundation has invested more than $2.75-million since 2006 in resilience work tied to climate change. In doing so, the foundation is trying to address problems caused by the region’s drought and wildfires and to understand how climate change would impact its ongoing work in disaster response and regional conservation. As she and her colleagues worked, Ms. Young says, they noticed that business owners, government officials, university leaders, and policy makers in their region were hungry for more locally focused research that would help them understand the problems associated with climate change and better prepare for the future.

Global studies on climate change are helpful, she adds, but people wanted to know how the San Diego region, in particular, would be affected. What would be the reduction in the water supply? How much hotter would it be? Will floods, droughts, and wildfires occur with greater frequency? So the foundation is now investing in local organizations positioned to do that kind of research and providing technical assistance to local governments tackling those problems. And it is conducting an economic resilience study to assess how climate change will impact local businesses.

“Where we’ve really seen an incredible amount of nimbleness and innovation and action is at the local level,” says Ms. Young, who is also interim vice president for the foundation’s Center for Civic Engagement. “That’s where we’ve come to realize how important it is for community foundations to play a role.”

Another Leader

The Kresge Foundation, like Rockefeller, has taken a broader approach. But where Rockefeller’s resilience work pans wide, aiming to help communities across the world tackle an array of vulnerabilities, Kresge zeroes in on the impact of one force that threatens resilience: climate change. So far Kresge has invested $68.5-million in climate resilience. Lois DeBacker, a managing director at Kresge who oversees the foundation’s environment grant making, says she’s noticed more grant makers who focus on urban sustainability talking about how resilience–particularly in the context of climate change–shapes their work. Rockefeller’s efforts are “exceptional,” she says, particularly with its global focus and “all-encompassing concept of resilience.” She views Kresge’s work as complementary to Rockefeller’s and says the two foundations consider each other “close colleagues.”

One of Kresge’s latest investments in climate resilience is at Island Press, a nonprofit organization that has published much of the literature on ecological resilience. This includes Panarchy, by C.S. Holling, which Charles Savitt, president of Island Press, refers to as “the Bible of resilience thinking.”

Over the next several years, Island Press will publish several books and shorter works aimed at connecting leading thinkers in the many fields where resilience is taking hold–hazard management, social justice, transportation, sustainability–so that they can find ways to collaborate.

“We see a really interesting opportunity for people to work across those borders,” Mr. Savitt says.