DRBC

Disaster Resistant Business Council

Tulsa’s home-grown team of volunteers helping small businesses plan to survive fire, flood, wind, power loss, or other troubles that can sink even the most determined entrepreneurs.

We want to help businesses and nonprofit social service agencies strengthen their protection and planning before disaster strikes, whether in the form of natural disasters or even everyday emergencies such as a power failure.

Current Events and News

Tulsa World: Disaster Plans stressed for small firms
Update on DRBC activities

Do Small Businesses recover from Disasters?

Parade Picture

When disasters strike, small businesses are uniquely vulnerable.  Some small businesses closed down by disasters never reopen.Small business preservation is central to Tulsa Partners’ strategy for growing the local economy.  As in most communities, small business is Tulsa’s backbone, accounting for 80 percent of all local businesses.  More than 85 percent of the Chamber’s 2,500 members have fewer than 10 employees.

Big businesses need to mentor small businesses to help them plan now to survive the worst.  That’s what we’re trying to do with workshops, conferences, public education programs, one-on-one mentoring, speeches, and other outreach activities.

Is your Business ready in case of a disaster?

“The Tulsa group is developing a mentoring program that we are using nationally as a prototype for other communities,” says Diana McClure, IBHS Vice President and the national director for the IBHS Open for Business® program.The Open for Business® toolkit includes a booklet with step-by-step forms that can be filled out to document the business continuity plan.

For more information or to download a free copy of Open for Business®, see www.DisasterSafety.org

Tulsa Partners will be offering an Open for Business class in the fall. Please contact Tim Lovell at 918-632-0044 for more information.

Partners

Back row: Dennis Currington (Metro Chamber of Commerce), Sandy Cox (Business Continuity Planner), Linda Muirhead (Tulsa Health Dept.), Crystal Klein, Claudia Arthrell (Family & Children's Service), Sandra Gunner (former President, New Orleans Chamber of Commerce), Dave Hall (State Farm), John Wiscaver (State Farm), Bob Roberts (Project Manager, Millennium Center), Tim Lovell (Executive Director Tulsa Partners) Front row: John Westmoreland (State Farm, retired), Rick Myers (former President, Association of Contingency Planners) DRBC volunteers joined forces in 2006, under the umbrellas of two parent groups: Tulsa Partners, and The Institute for Business & Home Safety and its Open for Business® program.DRBC chair Dave Hall, manager of small business programs for State Farm Insurance.

Rick Myers, former president of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Association of Contingency Planners ACP.

Kim Holland Commissioner of the Oklahoma Insurance Department

Dennis Currington, Small and Minority Business Development for the Tulsa Metro Chamber.

Click here for more information or Contact Us with any questions or comments.

Update on DRBC activities

(Submitted to Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) by DRBC Chair David Hall, January 30, 2009)Here is an update on some of the happenings at the Disaster Resistant Business Council (DRBC) in Tulsa:
We’ve wrapped up our work on the development of the Pilot program for “Save the Children”® that focuses on disaster preparation and Business Continuity for Day Care Centers. We’ve handed the completed program designed around the IBHS “Open for Business”® Program to Save The Children for national implementation.

I’ll be speaking at several large national venues on the subject of Small Business Continuity Planning.

  • The South Central Chambers of Commerce Center for Chamber Excellence Meeting in Dallas in March 2009
  • The NFPA Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2009
  • The America’s Fire and Security Conference in Miami in July 2009.

Our main project this year for the Disaster Resistant Business Council will be to aid in the WILLIAMS Safety and Security expo.

We believe that getting to the “Keystones” of the Community will enable us to have the broadest audience. We have targeted Chambers of Commerce and our Local Tulsa Area United Way for the Non-profit Community:

  • The Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce is a member and integral part of the DRBC
  • I’ve just been asked by the President of the Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce (a large, fast-growing area of suburban Tulsa) to join the Board to assist them in the design of their plan and and implementation strategy for their members
  • Yesterday we met with the director of the Tulsa Area United way on how we could implement a strategy to all TAUW member organizations that would include Business Continuity Planning as a value added service.

All of these activities were and will be focused around the IBHS “Open for Business”® Program.

THANKS as always for your GREAT Support!

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