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Key Initiatives
The Greater Houston Disaster Alliance is dedicated to building a stronger, more resilient region by partnering with nonprofits, whose deep community connections, adaptability, and program expertise make them vital to accelerating recovery and building resilience.
Informed by lessons learned from administering two joint disaster funds in 2024, the Disaster Alliance has developed a transparent and impactful strategy to engage nonprofits year-round through funding opportunities, convenings, and resource sharing. This strategy aligns with our commitment to deploy disaster funding with thoughtful urgency while ensuring collaboration with trusted nonprofit partners.
United Way of Greater Houston, in partnership with United Way Worldwide and with generous support from Verizon, is proud to offer a series of United We Prepare workshops across the region. These free workshops equip residents with the knowledge and supplies they need to prepare for disasters and understand the first steps to take after a disaster.
Recognizing Houston’s extraordinary diversity and the range of barriers residents face, the workshops make critical preparedness information more accessible by:
- Prioritizing communities facing higher disaster risk, identified through analysis of historical disaster impacts
- Expanding community-centered preparedness through multilingual and culturally relevant education and outreach
- Making the Household Disaster Preparedness Plan, co-designed with cross-sector partners, available in 11 languages
Workshops are co-facilitated with trusted community partners who understand the needs of the residents they serve and are rooted in the neighborhoods where the workshops take place. Early survey results from August 2026 show that more than 80% of households feel more knowledgeable about local disaster risks and more confident in their ability to prepare for a disaster after attending a workshop. The effort also includes a region-wide multilingual media campaign promoting the message that neighbors helping neighbors is the best way to get prepared.
The Community Foundation Resilience Network (CFRN) was launched in 2025 with support from the Gulf Research Program to strengthen collaboration among Gulf Coast community foundations and advance science-informed approaches to resilience. The network brings together four partner foundations: Greater Houston Community Foundation, Baton Rouge Area Foundation, Greater New Orleans Foundation, and the Community Foundation of South Alabama.
Key accomplishments from Year 1 include:
- Establishing a multi-state community of practice supported by a shared learning and data platform.
- Conducting a regional community needs assessment to identify priorities, gaps, and opportunities for collaboration.
- Engaging community foundations from four Gulf Coast cities in shared learning, relationship-building, and resilience planning efforts.
In Year 2, CFRN is building on this foundation through planning grants that will help identify research opportunities and investment strategies to strengthen resilience in each region. Together, the partner foundations are applying research, data, and shared learning to support stronger preparedness, recovery, and long-term resilience across the Gulf Coast.
Fragmented disaster data and uneven access to trusted information make it harder to identify needs, target resources, and ensure timely assistance reaches the communities most affected, particularly under-resourced and historically disenfranchised neighborhoods. To address these gaps, United Way of Greater Houston received a planning grant from National Academies Gulf Research Program to bring cross-sector partners together to explore how the region can build community-centered disaster data and communications systems through two complementary system-level models:
- Disaster Data Subgroup, led by Connective, will develop a collective data strategy and governance framework that connects information on disaster impacts, community needs, and available recovery resources.
- Disaster Communications Subgroup, with research led by UTHealth School of Public Health, will develop clear and accessible strategies for sharing information before, during, and after disasters with the hardest-to-reach populations.
The project brings together 32 cross-sector leaders to strengthen three regional outcomes: better decision-making, more inclusive resource allocation, and timely, trusted information for residents. And this is just the beginning. The team will prioritize developing a structure and strategy that can sustain and advance this work beyond the planning grant. Partners will also have an opportunity to apply for an implementation grant in 2027 to continue putting the resulting recommendations into practice.
Ten years after Hurricane Harvey, the Greater Houston Disaster Alliance is leading a regional retrospective to assess investments and progress in recovery and help map a vision for future resiliency. The report will examine outcomes for Supported & Connected People, Safe & Adaptive Places, and Responsive & Aligned Systems, identifying what worked, remaining gaps, and opportunities to strengthen regional resilience. The report will be unveiled in concert with a community-wide convening scheduled for August 2027, The Disaster Alliance has engaged the Texas A&M Hazard
Reduction & Recovery Center to research and produce Hurricane Harvey at 10: Building a More Resilient Future, synthesizing existing research, investments, and data and working with stakeholders to fill information gaps where feasible.
