Disaster Recovery

The challenge

When disaster strikes, the volunteer coordination challenge is the opposite of a planned event — there's no lead time, the scope changes by the hour, and the stakes couldn't be higher:

• Speed matters — you need volunteers mobilised in hours, not weeks
• Locations shift — affected areas change as the situation develops; you need to redeploy people quickly
• Skills matching — you need the right people in the right places (chainsaw operators, first aiders, translators)
• Communication is critical — volunteers need real-time updates about where to go and what to bring
• Coverage visibility — incident commanders need to see where help is deployed and where it's needed most
• Accountability — accurate records of who was where and when, for safety, insurance, and reporting
• Scalability — the response might start with 50 volunteers and scale to 500 in 48 hours

In an emergency, the usual volunteer management approach (spreadsheets, email, phone trees) completely breaks down. Decisions need to happen in minutes, not days.

How PurposeTech Disaster Recovery solves it

Rapid campaign deployment

Spin up a new campaign in minutes:

1. Create the campaign with a descriptive name ("Cyclone Gabrielle — Hawke's Bay Response")
2. Add affected areas as regions and jobs
3. Create initial shifts (even rough ones — you can adjust later)
4. Share the signup link immediately

Volunteers can sign up from their phones as soon as the link goes live. No approval workflow, no account creation — just name, email, phone, and they're registered.

Geographic coordination and coverage

PurposeTech Disaster Recovery envisions disaster response as a geographic coordination problem. The platform's structure — regions, areas, and sites — maps naturally to affected zones with varying severity levels.

The concept: affected areas are colour-coded by severity, with real-time visibility into volunteer deployment and coverage gaps. Coordinators could filter by area to see active opportunities, volunteer progress, and which zones need the most help.

This kind of geographic awareness is what makes the difference between an organised response and chaos — knowing at a glance where 24 volunteers are deployed but 60 are needed, or where a critical area has no medical coverage.

Skills-based opportunity matching

Disaster response requires the right people in the right places. The platform's flexible registration fields and category system support matching volunteers to opportunities based on their skills:

The custom field system could capture these skills during registration, allowing coordinators to filter and assign volunteers to specialist roles where they're needed most.

Evolving structure

Unlike a planned event where the structure is fixed, disaster response needs flexibility:

• Add new sites as the disaster unfolds — new affected areas, new staging points, new distribution centres
• Adjust shift times as the operation evolves — from 24/7 in the acute phase to business hours in recovery
• Increase capacity at sites that need more help — change the desired volunteer count and the site immediately shows as available
• Cancel sites that no longer need support — coordinators see the roster go read-only

Organisation coordination

In a disaster, multiple organisations often respond simultaneously — NGOs, community groups, faith organisations, corporate volunteer teams. PurposeTech's multi-tenant architecture could support this coordination:

• Shared visibility — organisations could see overall coverage across the response, reducing duplication
• Independent management — each organisation manages their own volunteers while contributing to a unified picture
• Resource allocation — coordinators could identify where multiple organisations are covering the same area, freeing resources for gaps

This kind of cross-organisation coordination is often the biggest challenge in disaster response — not a lack of willing volunteers, but a lack of visibility into who's doing what and where.

Real-time coverage dashboard

The reports page becomes your command centre:

• See which areas are covered and which are understaffed — broken down by region, area, and individual site
• Drill into specific sites to see exactly who's confirmed, who's on their way, and where the gaps are
• Monitor signup rates — if registrations are slowing, push the link through additional channels
• Identify over-staffed areas where volunteers can be redeployed

Live roster for field coordinators

Site coordinators and area coordinators manage from their phones:

• See who's on the ground — confirmed volunteers with full contact details
• Add walk-ins immediately — people showing up to help can be registered on the spot
• Move volunteers in real time — if one site is overwhelmed and another is quiet, use the Move Tool to redistribute
• Export a PDF for areas with no connectivity — critical in disaster zones where cell towers may be down

Flexible messaging — SMS, WhatsApp, and email

In disaster contexts, email alone isn't enough. People may not have reliable internet access, or may be in regions where WhatsApp or SMS is the primary communication channel. PurposeTech Disaster Recovery supports:

• SMS notifications — push updates directly to volunteers' phones, even without data
• WhatsApp integration — for contexts where WhatsApp is the default messaging platform
• Email — for detailed briefings, shift confirmations, and documentation

Per-shift-type notes mean different roles get different instructions automatically, regardless of the communication channel.

Government and agency coordination

Disaster response often involves coordination with government agencies — civil defence, local councils, emergency management offices. The platform's reporting capabilities support this:

• Real-time volunteer counts — provide agencies with up-to-the-minute deployment data
• Coverage reports — show which areas are served and which need government resources
• Exportable data — CSV and PDF exports for formal reporting and documentation
• Audit trail — timestamped records of who was deployed where and when

Coordinator delegation

Assign area coordinators who can manage their own zones independently:

• Each coordinator manages their assigned area without bottlenecking through a central admin
• They can add, move, and remove volunteers autonomously
• Multiple coordinators can be assigned as the response scales
• Coordinators can be changed as shifts rotate (e.g., morning vs. evening incident commander)

Skills-based registration

Use custom registration fields to capture volunteer skills:

• First aid certification
• Driving licence (and vehicle type)
• Heavy machinery operation
• Languages spoken
• Professional skills (medical, engineering, counselling)

Admins can then filter volunteers by skill when assigning to specialist roles.

Post-response reporting

After the response, generate accurate reports:

• Volunteer hours — total hours contributed, by site and role
• Coverage achieved — which areas were served and for how long
• Volunteer count — unique volunteers deployed, peak daily numbers
• Communication log — every email sent, every update pushed

Essential for government reporting, insurance documentation, donor reports, and organisational learning.

Built for the unexpected

PurposeTech Disaster Recovery's architecture handles the unpredictability of disaster response:

Operational pattern

Get started

Preparing your organisation for emergency volunteer coordination? Get in touch to discuss your disaster preparedness planning and see how PurposeTech Disaster Recovery can be part of your response framework.