This paper examines nonprofits’ capacity for responding to simultaneous hurricane-pandemic threat, addressing: (1) strategies nonprofits use to deliver services during the COVID-19 pandemic, and (2) how natural hazards may affect nonprofit roles in emergency service delivery during a pandemic. Data come from a survey of New Orleans-based nonprofits demonstrating effects of pandemic on local nonprofit service delivery, and workshops with U.S. coastal community stakeholders exploring expectations for nonprofit roles in emergency operations nationwide. Nonprofits have applied resilient strategies including virtual operations, staff reductions, and funding diversification, but vulnerabilities remain. Findings guide a research agenda for building nonprofit and community resilience.

This study examines households' prospective evacuation behavior during a hurricane‐pandemic compound threat. Data from a 2020 survey of coastal Virginia households help answer two questions: (1) What factors associated with the threat and impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic and hurricanes influence the prospective evacuation behavior of households during a compound hurricane‐pandemic event? (2) What are the equity implications for emergency management policies and practices to support evacuation and sheltering during a compound hurricane‐pandemic event? Households in the sample were split between those who stated they would evacuate away from the at‐risk region and those who would stay. Greater household vulnerability to hurricanes and COVID‐19 and having sufficient financial resources increase the likelihood of evacuation. Higher‐income households were more likely to have resources to evacuate and were less likely to suffer financial consequences from a hurricane or pandemic. Racial minorities are more vulnerable to the pandemic and face greater resource challenges when evacuating.

Coastal reservations are increasingly vulnerable to hazards exacerbated by climate change. Resources for restoration projects are limited. Storm surge, storms, tidal flooding, and erosion endanger artifacts and limit livelihoods of tribes in coastal Virginia. GIS offers a platform to increase communication between scientists, planners, and indigenous groups. The Pamunkey Indian Tribe engaged in a participatory mapping exercise to assess the role of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in coastal management decision-making and its capacity to address flooding. Priorities and strategies were spatially referenced using maps of potential sea level rise for 2040, 2060, and 2080, input into a resilience matrix to identify benchmarks for each phase of disaster resilience building, and contextualized with oral histories. Results highlight increased immediacy to protect housing and heritage sites along the shoreline as well as maintain access to the Reservation. Preferences toward structural solutions guided by and facilitating TEK options were expressed. Additional community capacities, tribal council support, federal assistance, impact assessments, and coordination would facilitate risk reduction project implementation. The screening process integrates TEK with planning and is transferable to neighboring tribes.

In New Zealand, where nonprofit and government partnerships have been formally developing since the 1990s, pathways for nonprofits to improve outcomes for affected communities were open when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake occurred in rural Canterbury on 4 September 2010. As more than 13,000 aftershocks followed, including a 6.3 magnitude event on 22 February 2011 that caused fatalities and widespread structural damage in the city of Christchurch, significant action was organized in the nonprofit sector to revitalize the city. New nonprofit initiatives emerged in the central business district to address social concerns and foster engagement across the sector. This case study, undertaken three to four years after the most severe earthquakes, compared experiences from thirty-six local nonprofit organizations regarding collaboration within the nonprofit sector. Results showed that integrating nonprofit commitments to and perceptions of demands for social services into representative collective efforts supported sustainable organizational resilience into midterm recovery. Overamalgamation and prolonged restructuring, however, limited some collective efforts. Longitudinal analysis enabled development of a scalable connective structure for sustaining network resilience into long-term recovery, including collective action and collaborative issue assessment groups. Proactive implementation of similar partnerships might facilitate sustainable resilience in other urban multihazard settings.