So, questions still remain about the ability of the U.S. disaster relief system to handle a large-scale catastrophe.  What can we do? (1) Develop a national disaster relief fund With such a fund, private contributions for relief and recovery would be collected and distributed by an independent entity, with independent oversight, whose sole purpose is [...]

I’ve been silent on the blog for a few weeks due to paternity leave. In my absence, events continued to raise questions about the capability of the U.S. disaster response system. There were criticisms of the response to Hurricane Ike, a report from the GAO that the American Red Cross and other leading nonprofits lack [...]

As Hurricane Gustav approached this weekend, the president and both would-be presidents engaged in a bit of fund raising, mostly for the American Red Cross (ARC).  Barack Obama directly asked all those in his fund raising network to send funds to the ARC; John McCain made mention of the ARC in his remarks and the [...]

On Monday, the Nonprofit Sector and Philanthropy Program at the Aspen Institute released Mobilizing Change: 10 Nonprofit Policy Proposals to Strengthen U.S. Communities.  Full disclosure: I helped edit the paper and wrote much of the introduction, and its recommendation for FEMA to create a high-level coordinating body to better integrate community-based nonprofits in disaster relief [...]