Mentor program aims to help small businesses prepare for disaster

In a move to help small businesses prepare for and recover from a disaster, a new mentoring program has been launched that will allow small business owners to learn from big businesses how to respond to disaster more effectively.

One out of four businesses that close during a disaster never reopen, according to the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). In addition, 43 percent of businesses that don’t have an emergency response plan in place don’t reopen after closing during a disaster.

The National Incident Management Systems and Advanced Technologies (NIMSAT) Institute at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has partnered with the U.S. Council of the International Association of Emergency Managers to start the Big Business – Small Business Emergency Management Mentorship program, which aims to increase the number of businesses that reopen after a disaster.

The program will take willing big business mentors and use their disaster response knowledge to help small businesses when facing an emergency.

Register to become a mentor or to request a mentor by going to the program’s website, disasterb2bmentor.org.

Afterwards, begin building a business continuity plan by using IBHS’ Open for Business^® toolkit. The IBHS Open for Business^® program allows small and mid-sized businesses to not only build a plan for when disaster strikes, but also information on how to quickly recover.

For additional commercial resources, please visit IBHS’ commercial maintenance page.