What 2024’s twin hurricanes taught us about preparedness

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Hurricane Helene made landfall across our region on September 26, 2024.

Seven days later, Hurricane Milton followed.

Same communities. Same organizations. Same families — absorbing a second blow before they had recovered from the first.

I have worked in this sector long enough to know that disasters reveal things. They expose the gaps between what we assume is in place and what actually is. The 2024 hurricane season exposed a specific gap that I think our region needs to reckon with before June 1.

The organizations that responded best were not the largest.

Through the Tampa Bay Resiliency Fund — a collaborative effort between Pinellas Community Foundation, United Way Suncoast, Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg, and Allegany Franciscan Ministries — we deployed $998,332 in grants to 34 nonprofit organizations across Pinellas, Hillsborough, Sarasota, Manatee and Desoto Counties.

What we saw in that process was instructive.

The organizations that responded most effectively were the ones that had already invested in their own infrastructure. Backup power. Communication systems.

Established relationships with the people they serve. They did not have to figure out how to operate in a crisis. They already knew.

The organizations that struggled were often doing everything right under normal circumstances. They simply had not had the resources to build the systems that make crisis response possible.

That distinction determined how quickly people got help.

A clean audit does not mean there is nothing to watch.

I think about disaster preparedness the same way I think about financial oversight.

A nonprofit can be technically compliant and still be operating with thin controls. Everything looks fine until conditions change. Then the gaps become visible.

The same is true for organizational resilience. Nonprofits can be doing excellent work and still be one major storm away from a disruption they cannot recover from quickly — not because of anything they did wrong, but because the systems that absorb shocks were never funded or built.

Generators are not glamorous. Disaster plans are not exciting. Backup communication is not a program. None of it shows up in an impact report.

But when a storm hits and the power goes out, it is the difference between an organization that stays open and one that goes dark.

Preparedness is a funding decision.

Our second cycle of grantmaking from the Tampa Bay Resiliency Fund was entirely focused on infrastructure — not relief, but readiness. Generators. Facility repairs. Disaster planning. Communication systems.

The organizations that received those grants are more capable heading into this season than they were heading into last one.

That is what preparedness actually looks like. It is not a checklist. It is sustained investment in the capacity to absorb what is coming.

What I am asking of our community.

Hurricane season starts June 1. It runs through Nov. 30. In Florida, that is not a theoretical window.

The Tampa Bay Resiliency Fund needs to be replenished before the season begins. What was deployed in 2024 was meaningful. What comes next depends on what we invest now.

This is a call to businesses and philanthropists in our region who have the capacity to give. Not because another storm is guaranteed. Because in Florida, it is close to it.

To make that easier, Pinellas Community Foundation is matching all donations to the Tampa Bay Resiliency Fund dollar-for-dollar, up to $25,000. Every dollar given before the season begins is doubled — and ready to move the moment it is needed.

What happens next depends on what we choose to do before the first storm forms.

To learn more or contribute: pinellascf.org/tampa-bay-resiliency-fund.

Duggan Cooley is President and CEO of the Pinellas Community Foundation.