The Partnership Experience Between Non-Profit Organizations and the Government in Disaster Management
Author: Shu-Hsin Lin
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Services that non-profit organizations (NPO) provide can reduce the impact of disasters. Their fast paced nature and high mobility can support the government when the latter cannot react timely enough to or fulfill public needs. They are helpful to local post-disaster reconstruction in the long run, and NPOs can be an important partner to the government during times of disaster. Therefore, the partnership experience of non-profit organizations participating in government disaster prevention is important.
Partnerships should be discussed based on the stakeholder relationship; however, due to the length limitation of this article, this study will focus on the NPOs’ views on these partnerships. The research has found that while there has been improvements in the NPO and government partnerships during emergency rescue, the “Friendship Network” has not yet been established. Also, (1) bilateral and multilateral communications should be built to enhance disaster management; (2) it is difficult to build trust relationships when trust is only based on the foundation of case outsourcing; and (3) each body possesses resources that lack integration which fail to enhance the disaster support systems. Finally, NPOs participating in disaster rescue are indicators of the realization of democratic and new governance; however, organization type, scale, and popularity limits these partnerships in expa nding their network, and the inabilities of local governments limit the effectiveness of partnerships.