Emergency Preparedness for People with Disabilities: What Do Grantmakers Need to Know?

The Disability Funders Network has launched a project to ensure that foundations and corporate giving programs have the information they need to include people with disabilities in their efforts to address emergency preparedness and conduct disaster grantmaking. DFN is a grantmakers’ affinity group whose mission is to promote awareness, support and inclusion of people with disabilities and disability issues in grantmaking programs and organizations. The project, funded by The New York Community Trust and the Milbank Foundation for Rehabilitation, will cover:

1. Grantmaking for emergency preparedness, disaster response, and longer term recovery;
2. Convening community groups to gather information and address preparation, response and recovery;
3. Raising the level of awareness of emergency preparedness issues (both within the philanthropic and nonprofit communities and general public awareness); and
4. Foundations’ own internal disaster planning as well as planning-related advice they offer their grantees and applicants.

Products will include a manual addressing these issues for corporate, community and private/independent foundations; workshops for grantmakers; and resource lists/links. To produce these materials, DFN is working with the National Organization on Disability; The Law, Health Policy and Disability Center at the University of Iowa; and other experts in the field of emergency preparedness for people with disabilities.

The following Web sites are both direct sources of information on emergency preparedness for people with disabilities and portals with links to other sites:

• National Organization on Disability (NOD), Emergency Preparedness Initiative Guide on the Special Needs of People with Disabilities: www.nod.org/cont/dsp_cont_item_view.cfm?viewType=itemView&contentId=1267
• The Law, Health Policy and Disability Center at the University of Iowa:
  www.its.uiowa.edu/law/lhpdc/projects/disastermit.html
• Center for Disability Issues and the Health Professions & June Isaacson Kailes:
  www.cdihp.org
  www.jik.com/disaster.html