Private-public partnerships (PPPs) are vital for effective disaster management, leveraging the strengths of both sectors. Public entities offer regulatory frameworks, funding, and coordination, while private organizations provide innovation, efficiency, and specialized resources. PPPs enhance disaster preparedness, response, and recovery by enabling rapid resource mobilization, improving infrastructure resilience, and fostering community engagement. these partnerships also facilitate knowledge sharing and long-term planning, mitigating the impact of increasingly frequent and severe disasters, and building sustainable, adaptive systems for resilient communities. Creating a PPP that can be influential in important disaster resiliency initiatives requires a commitment to build a team across all sectors that fosters an environment that is inclusive and facilitates open and honest exchange. The PPP team requires continuous effort, positive attitudes, and constructive energies to establish clear and worthwhile disaster resiliency goals.
Phase I: Strengthen the Brand
Early branding of an emerging organization is paramount to its success. A brand is a company’s face to the world. It is a representation of how the company is perceived by its customers as well as the associations and inherent value they place on the organization. Dollar for dollar, branding is as important and vital as any other early steps of formalizing an organization.
Establish a Unified Business Strategy
An organization with the mission of building private-public partnerships is much like any business. It requires a clear and unified business strategy (or plan) that defines many core business elements to include services and products to be offered, the target market and size, pricing, competitive analysis, and funding requirements. It also includes an overall marketing strategy that identifies how best to penetrate the market, a strategy to manage growth, channels for distributing the organization’s services and products, and a communication or outreach strategy (which is included herein). An outreach strategy without these core business components will be underutilized and ineffective.
One of the critical elements that the Private-Public Partnership must address in the near term is identifying the products and/or services it will offer its members and partner organizations. Consideration should be made as to how these products and/or services address a current gap in the current marketplace and provide added value to members and serve as a positive contribution to other organizations that are currently championing private-public initiatives.
Invigorate Leadership
An organization’s brand reflects the values and identity set by the organization’s leadership. Leadership involves more than simply the normal exercise of authority that is based on a position in an organization or claimed by a member(s) of an organization. Instead, it involves attribution of particular traits and abilities of individuals to motivate others to achieve common outcomes. It is important to recognize that leadership is not absolute. Successful leadership qualities are instead set by the organization’s processes and limited by internal and external conditions that control self-interests and oligarchy.
Attention must be made to reinvigorate the board of the private-public partnership and empower those that want to champion key functions. Some considerations should be given when selecting board members and champions, including:
- possesses visionary characteristics.
- Have desire and time to commit.
- Demonstrate enthusiasm and motivation.
- Understanding of local politics and issues.
Empower the Team
It is commonly recognized that the region’s private-public partnership and its stakeholders have a clear and worthwhile goal to build disaster resiliency. This overarching goal presents a core value that can facilitate the commitment and unity of its members; however, there is more to unified commitment than simply a goal. Fostering unified commitment requires inclusion and involvement to enhance commitment, balance differentiation and consistency by appreciating differing perspectives and integrating them into a unified view and managing conflict between individual and team goals through individual recognition and team award. Teamwork requires continuous effort, positive attitudes, and constructive energies to establish clear and worthwhile goals. A concerted effort must be made to involve the members of the private-public partnership, reward champions, and stay connected.
Furthermore, committees should be aligned with essential business functions of the organization until a set capacity is achieved to take on new initiatives that are desired by the members.
Phase II: Launch a Marketing Campaign
Organizations are sometimes too quick to launch a marketing campaign. Without establishing credibility and legitimacy of the organization, outreach activities will often falter and not meet established expectations.
Efforts should be made in broadening public knowledge and perception of what the private-public partnership does and why, how it benefits constituents, the resources it provides, and how it is integrated with regional efforts to build disaster resiliency. The development of a regional marketing campaign would clearly explain and identify through a standard unified design and visual element would improve the image of the private-public partnership and the agency. This visual identity should, in turn, support the agency’s corporate image.
Build Legitimacy
Building the legitimacy of the region’s private-public partnership requires a generalized perception of others that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, and appropriate. Building legitimacy can be accomplished with the favorable exchange between partners and by creating an honest and trustworthy organizational disposition that will garner a wise and inclusive decision-making process. Legitimacy may also be established by quantitatively measuring outcomes such as the number of organizations that have joined the private-public coalition or its contribution to building disaster resiliency throughout the region. Organizational legitimacy must be maintained by foreseeing future changes that are necessary for the survival of the organization, by protecting past accomplishments, and by stockpiling goodwill and support.
Appearance is very important to any organization, especially an organization with a grassroots mission of building disaster resiliency throughout a region. Investments must be made to define the principles of the organization through collaborative input, establish a clear and consistent message that is regularly repeated, and convey these values on a professional website that is easy to navigate and offers functionality. The content should promote the positive work of the organization to enhance disaster resiliency in the region.
Establish Credibility
Another critical variable in a successful campaign is establishing a high degree of credibility of the organization. This can be accomplished by establishing governance and garnering the support of influential third parties.
A governance structure is not simply a formality but instead a necessity. An organization with governance is bound by rules and procedures to continuously acclimate to the situation at hand, provides the ability to present the collective voice of its members, and escapes the influence of agenda-setting. Governance structures can take on many forms and therefore the structure should be focused more on maintaining public confidence, resolving conflict, and, most importantly, achieving specific goals and performance objectives.
Testimony and active participation of these key third parties will validate the credibility of the private-public partnership and provide testimony of the organization’s legitimacy. Credibility and legitimacy lead to persistence and is more likely to receive resources from other organizations. Over time, these legitimate organizations become self-sustaining and present a credible collective account of what the organization is doing and why.
Although the current private-public partnership organization maintains an organizational chart, it is void of established processes and routines that are regularly maintained. Additionally, although there are a few large, third-party organizations that are members or national partners of the region’s private-public partnership, efforts should be made to offer reduced or free membership to organizations such as Office Depot, Walgreens, Home Depot, Tide, and Wal-Mart. These organizations have established themselves as leaders in private sector disaster relief. Their involvement in the region’s private-public partnership will strengthen the credibility and legitimacy of the group.
Demonstrate a Commitment Through the Act of Reciprocity
At its core, the concept of private-public partnerships is to influence organizations and its decision-makers to change current behaviors and practices and to make a formal commitment to build a resilient future. A written testimony of commitment provides physical testimony that an act of commitment has occurred. However, written commitments are only relevant to those that read them, and verbal commitments are only committed to those that hear them. The more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater its ability to influence attitudes is. Commitments demonstrated through the act of reciprocity help to not only build trust, legitimacy, and credibility but also aid in developing a sense of obligation to those that performed the rite. The sense of future obligation reduces any inhibitions against individuals and organizations of contributing back in the donation of time or finances. Consideration should be made for the private-public partnership to demonstrate its act of reciprocity to its members or partners.
Implement the Campaign
For outreach to be most effective, the private-public partnership must utilize its vast array of resources to provide a centralized outreach effort under one program. This programmatic approach would ensure the private-public partnership is perceived as a reliable source of information. Maintaining public trust and support and responding to the needs and concerns of all private, public and non-governmental organizations would become an integral part of the Private-Public Partnership (P-P-P) Outreach Program. The P-P-P Outreach Program should be implemented in concert with the local emergency management agencies and be structured to reach key target audiences such as industry, NGOs, organization leaders, and decision-makers. The program should also include an educational component to reach a wide diversity of the target community including but not limited to business owners, risk managers, professional associations, executive leaders, elected officials and the media.
Phase III: Build Membership Through Active Outreach
It is essential that the Outreach Program concentrate on building and improving long-term relationships with important constituencies through memberships and strategic partnerships. Forming partnerships with influential and credible organizations would strengthen the programs and initiatives, thereby creating a higher level of trust and confidence in the agency. Although primary attention will be given to concentrating on outreach activities to target important constituencies such as organizational decision-makers and executive management would be the primary goal, communication should be considered for all potentially interested audiences. By increasing the collaborative opportunities of its members and creating synergies between participating organizations, new initiatives and funding opportunities will be identified that will increase the disaster resiliency of their community. These collaborative projects will place the private-public partnership as a positive force and demonstrate its worth to the region.
