Crisis definition and response: Understanding non-profit practitioner perspectives

The everyday actions of public relations practitioners affect and shape an organisation’s reputation. In a crisis situation, the communication response of an organisation is as important in a non-profit organisation (NPO) as it is in the private sector and, therefore, vitally important to the public relations practitioners in that field. The non-profit sector of public relations has not been widely studied despite its status as one of the top sectors for employment (Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008). This is especially true of research exploring how NPOs handle crisis situations. The current study employs seven in-depth personal interviews with non-profit public relations practitioners to understand how they define organisational crises, how they plan for such crises, and how they react to theoretical response strategies for dealing with these specific crises. The findings of this study further demonstrate that the situational crisis communication theory is applicable to the non-profit sector.