Crisis Communication Plan

Introduction

Crisis communication is a specific part of public relations. It is good to have a plan ready just in case a crisis occurs: created by your organisation itself or an external one. A Crisis Communication Plan can be pages long or simply one page with emergency phone numbers and a description of roles and responsibilities or relevant staff.

Why

In case of an emergency or unexpected event, it is necessary to have a clear set of guidelines on how to communicate with the public, which messages to use and who is responsible.

What you can expect

In 6 steps, we will guide you towards a complete crisis communication plan. You will understand the need for a crisis communication plan, how to write it and how to evaluate the plan afterwards.

Make a difference between crisis communication and crisis management: even though ‘crisis management’ and ‘crisis communication’ are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a very important difference. Where crisis management deals with the reality of the situation and its effect on your operations as an organisation, crisis communication deals with the perception of the reality by the public. Like in the case of COVID-19, crisis management deals with for instance fundraising events that can't take place whereas crisis communication will be about explaining why the events are cancelled and what will happen next. This toolkit is about crisis communication. If you want to learn more about crisis management, you can use this toolkit.

What you get

• Guidance towards creating a Crisis Communication Plan
• Tool/format to create a Crisis Communication Plan
• Example of a Crisis Communication Plan from the Colorado Nonprofit Association