Responding to Panic Through Preparation and Prevention

This is one of those moments where writing is hard. A few days ago I wrote an article about how writing isn’t always easy, I laid out some ways to help.

Emptying your brain, setting goals for your writing, there are a million ways to deal with writer’s block that comes from everyday stress, but sometimes there’s a lot more going on, and it can be really down too hunker down and get to work. Stress about family, about work (whether you can work remotely or not, or if you are out of work because of Covid-19), about health, and about older or immune-compromised relatives, or having to take your team remote as a small business owner.

It’s not easy to adapt when things get chaotic, and it may feel like everything is up in the air because for a lot of people that is the actual reality on the ground. And for a lot of nonprofits that rely on donations and grants, this time may feel like operations are stalled if not at a complete stop.

There are various resources that have been released to help nonprofits as well as other organizations to help them to adjust during this pandemic, and to ensure that people and organizations are able to maintain some level of normalcy.

Maryland Nonprofits’s Standard for Excellence Institute has released a “Charitable Nonprofits’s Guide to Remote Work” which is meant to help nonprofits be able to ensure that teams are able to work from home and stay safe in light of this pandemic, but also other circumstances that might occur, and is a great resource to look at.

The World Health Organization has released a new interactive, web-based, knowledge-transfer platform offering online courses, called OpenWho which is meant to help organizations improve their response to health emergencies, and can help the WHO and all of its partners to give life-saving information to decision-makers at organizations to ensure that they are preparing for similar health emergencies properly. And that’s critical because knowing best practices for your business, employees, and health could mean the difference between life and death, especially at a time like this where there is a wide variety of information everywhere and it can be confusing.

The Center for Disease Control has released an Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to Plan and Respond to COVID-19, to help with this preparation and help with critical planning, and the CDC has said that this will be consistently updated as new information about the Covid-19 pandemic becomes available. So keep checking this link for updates so that you and your team are constantly on top of what is going on and how to navigate throughout this crisis. The CDC has also released a guideline on travel, as well as a list of facts about Covid-19 and all of these resources need to be a part of your response to what is going on. Make sure that you are consistently following up with the available information to ensure compliance.

And it’s not all warnings and facts, resource-wise. Google and Microsoft have both announced that they will offer their business-conferencing tools free of charge through July 1st, to allow for business to be able to communicate.

Zoom Video Conferencing is holding various webinars on how to approach this crisis, including on healthcare and best practices when it comes to working from home, and is hosting a virtual summit on Covid-19. They also have a variety of content about remote working on their website to help all of those who are having to adjust during this time.

So if you’re a writer, a creative or a small business owner, the director of a nonprofit, or anyone else that’s feeling overwhelmed by the effects of this crisis, you aren’t alone. Our entire GrantWatch and GrantNews team is also working remotely, and as always is working hard to provide our customers with the best service possible while also being careful during this crisis.