Festivals already build temporary infrastructure, manage complex logistics, and coordinate volunteers under pressure—experiential foundations for disaster response. What’s often missing is the operational capacity that makes these skills deployable–documented plans, trained staff, formal protocols– and leveragable to attain new partnerships, grants outside traditional arts models, and alternative revenue streams as service providers. Commit 5% or more of operational budgets and staff time to:

• Invest in team training, safety plan development, and operations documentation that builds organizational capacity and marketable workforce credentials, working in-house or with safety consultants as needed
• Implement resilient operational systems (for example pre-event safety briefings and post-event reviews) that strengthen daily operations while demonstrating partnership-ready protocols
• Position festivals as training grounds for emergency responders and community resilience programming through paid service contracts or agreements

You hold infrastructure individual venues lack: convening power across networks, direct funder relationships, capacity to aggregate trained professionals into workforce narratives, and platforms to create tools that scale sector-wide. Commit 5% or more of operating budgets and grant portfolios to:

• Model preparedness as a core pillar, allocating 5% of your own resources to readiness planning, staff training, and revising funding guidelines to explicitly allow preparedness investments
• Equip your members with tools to succeed: Revise grant guidelines to allow preparedness investments, provide implementation tools and templates, document existing venue capacity through case studies
• Open funding pathways: Advocate with foundations for preparedness as mission-aligned, target non-arts vehicles (climate, emergency resilience, workforce development, etc), develop model legislative language explicitly including arts venues as eligible service providers, submit coordinated letters with emergency management associations.
• Fund preparedness expertise for member organizations through consultant support, expert trainers for network-wide capacity building, or shared resources that help smaller organizations access professional emergency readiness guidance
• Reframe the conversation: Position preparedness as opportunity generator not compliance burden

With natural disasters occurring on average every four days, the question isn’t whether disruption might occur; it’s whether your jurisdiction will be ReadyWhen it does. Your community already has professionals skilled at building temporary infrastructure, managing crowds, and coordinating complex logistics. When properly prepared, these capabilities translate directly to distributed disaster readiness. Deploy 5% or more from resilience, disaster preparedness, climate, or related budgets to:

• Fund operational upgrades through grants or incentives that enable venues to function as resilience hubs (microgrids, HVAC/air-filtration, water/sanitation, accessibility, communications)
• Support certification development or workforce training programs that formalize disaster-ready skills
• Establish a disaster reserve corps so trained workers can serve in emergency roles without income loss
• Integrate festivals and venues into emergency operations plans as activation sites and training grounds

More strategies for government

Faith-based organizations and community centers already serve as trusted gathering spaces with strong physical infrastructure and established networks. While some are recognized in emergency plans, most aren’t—despite having facilities that could readily serve a variety of disaster response and recovery needs. Commit 5% or more of operational budgets and volunteer coordination time to:

• Build preparedness infrastructure, working in-house or with emergency planning consultants, through volunteer training programs, facility resource inventories, and safety protocols that strengthen daily operations while documenting emergency capabilities
• Use arts, cultural, and youth programming as recruitment strategies to expand volunteer capacity and multi-generational emergency response networks
• Establish formal partnerships with emergency management agencies for paid services as cooling/warming centers, family reunification sites, volunteer coordination hubs, or community information centers

Preparedness spending can reduce expected loss exposure by over 90% relative to its cost. And yet, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy found that just 3.4% of institutional disaster giving in 2022 went towards preparedness, while over 66% went towards recovering losses through response and relief.

You probably already give generously after disasters to support community recovery. Those funds can make over a ten-fold difference when invested in the community to prepare for the next disruption. Commit 5% or more of arts, culture, and creative‑economy portfolios to:

• Fund preparedness training and workforce programs that skill professionals across event and emergency operations
• Support dual-use infrastructure and resilience-hub pilots at anchor venues and festivals, including training programs that build capacity to operate and maintain new systems
• Revise funding priorities to explicitly support preparedness investments, prioritizing organizations that adopt 5% commitments, develop emergency management partnerships, or build systematic preparedness capacity
• Provision preparedness expertise through consultant support, expert trainers, or shared resources that help grantees access professional emergency planning guidance