Crisis Planning – What to do When Your Crisis Planning Needs Outrace Your Budget
Recently a distressed private school in the Midwest called seeking crisis consulting assistance. Their plight was bleak with rampant internal discord, faculty fighting with administrators who, in turn, were fleeing the institution in droves. Recruiting was in danger and fundraising flat. They began the conversation by saying, “We really need your help, but we’re not sure we can afford a national higher education consulting firm.”
Later I pondered the question, which was far from out of line, and asked my partners how SimpsonScarborough can help institutions with vital crisis needs on a shoestring budget.
Our answer is a web seminar and consulting assistance package. The first offering, How to Respond Effectively in Times of Campus Crisis, is a webinar combined with an hour of consulting.
The April 19th online seminar is a 90-minute interactive web-based session outlining how to design, implement and fully evaluate a crisis plan. Elements of media training will be interspersed with the session content. Your assignment following the seminar is to write an institutional crisis plan and then send it to me for critique and review.
Don’t make the mistake of allowing a crisis to remain on the front pages. Look at William & Mary, the picturesque public college in Williamsburg, Virginia, whose president recently removed a cross from a popular chapel and then appeared shocked when a donor retracted a $12 million pledge to protest the move. William & Mary’s private support, image and reputation are on thin ice as the crisis receives national media attention. Find out how to diffuse similar situations before they become crises.
Learn the steps in building a crisis plan; I will review and critique your plan post seminar. And let us know what you think of this new concept. It is part of SimpsonScarborough’s constant quest to offer cutting-edge services to our higher education friends.
The bottom line is that in times of crisis your institution’s image, reputation and financial stability are in jeopardy. Your job is to protect it. Even on a shoestring budget.