Community’s central role in disaster recovery
Community groups are doing the front-line work of disaster recovery in NSW — but the funding model may be quietly destroying what makes them effective.
When a flood hits a town like Eugowra in the NSW Central West, the state agencies mobilise, the media arrives, and the politicians make statements. But the people who actually know which family on the edge of town is too proud to ask for help, which roads wash out first, which community hall has the generator: that is the progress association. The same group that runs the monthly newsletter and staffs the rural transaction centre. Before the flood, during it, and four years later when 30 emergency accommodation pods are still occupied.
Informal networks carry the load formal agencies cannot
The Western Sydney University research, which surveyed groups from Sydney's western fringe to rural towns in the state's south, north, and central west, found a consistent pattern. Local organisations fill gaps in the state's disaster risk reduction efforts. They build trust faster than anyone arriving from outside. They are, as Linda Strickland from Hawkesbury's Helping Hands puts it, the first ones to respond. They are also the last: her organisation, which moves ten pallets of food relief every week, was still assisting in recovery long after disaster agencies had packed up and left. In all that time, it has never received government funding for its operations.
The report's lead author, Dr Willow Forsyth, frames the problem clearly. Disaster risk is emerging faster, and in more novel forms, than community resilience and preparedness are growing to meet it. That is a structural mismatch, and it is getting worse as the climate shifts.
When those organisations burn out, that tissue does not simply wait to be rebuilt by the next government program. It dissolves. The volunteers scatter. The institutional memory evaporates.
Instrumentalising community organisations destroys what makes them work
The mechanism behind it deserves attention. Community organisations are not just service providers who happen to be local. They are the connective tissue that makes community function: the trust networks, the shared history, the knowledge of who needs what and why. When those organisations burn out, that tissue does not simply wait to be rebuilt by the next government program. It dissolves. The volunteers scatter. The institutional memory evaporates. What replaces it is either nothing, or something more formal, more distant, and considerably more expensive.
This is the trap in treating community organisations primarily as instruments of government disaster response. The Mountain Community Resource Network in the Blue Mountains, which coordinated local social services and became a critical point of contact for agencies after bushfires and floods, is facing closure at the end of this year because its core funding from the Department of Communities and Justice ended in April. Its executive, Kris Newton, asks the obvious question: who leads the recovery now? The answer, almost certainly, is no one in particular, which means coordination falls to agencies that lack the local knowledge to do it well and will spend significantly more money doing it badly.
There is a parallel worth drawing here. Research on why hobby clubs address loneliness more effectively than government programs finds they work precisely because they solve a real problem people actually have, through genuine human connection, rather than through a program designed around an outcome metric. The same logic applies to community disaster organisations. They exist because people in a place care about that place. Instrumentalise them, subject them to the funding cycles and reporting requirements of government contracts, and you change what they are. The thing that made them effective, their organic rootedness in a community, becomes harder to sustain.
$3.55 million across 39 projects is recognition money, not infrastructure
The NSW Reconstruction Authority has awarded $3.55 million across 39 projects under its Spontaneous Volunteers Support Program, established after both the 2022 flood inquiry and the 2023 Review of Emergency Volunteering. NSW Assistant Minister for Recovery Jodie Harrison has acknowledged the obvious: the government cannot simply rely on goodwill alone. That is an honest statement, and the funding is a real step. But $3.55 million spread across 39 projects is not an infrastructure investment. It is recognition money. It does not answer the question of what happens to the Mountains Community Resource Network, or the dozens of similar organisations quietly doing the same work in the same precarity across regional NSW.
The design question is whether government support strengthens organisations or substitutes for them. The better model is neither pure volunteerism, which burns people out and leaves gaps, nor government-managed community response, which is an oxymoron. It is sustained, flexible funding for community organisations to do what they already do well, without reshaping them in the government's image in the process. Funding to exist, not just to respond.
Eugowra's progress association had a genuinely positive experience working with disaster agencies after the 2022 flood. Sean Haynes describes it as a partnership, with the community's needs actually being heard. That model works when agencies treat local organisations as peers rather than contractors. The evidence suggests it does not happen consistently enough, and the cost of that inconsistency is paid by communities long after the cameras have gone home.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why are community organisations better at disaster recovery than government agencies?
Community organisations hold local knowledge that outside agencies simply do not have — they know which families won't ask for help, which roads fail first, and who trusts whom. That embedded trust means they can mobilise faster and stay longer, as Hawkesbury's Helping Hands did, continuing food relief long after state disaster agencies had left.
What happens when community disaster organisations lose their funding?
When a community organisation closes, the trust networks, institutional memory, and volunteer relationships it held do not transfer to a government program — they dissolve. What replaces them is either nothing, or a more formal and more expensive agency response that lacks the local knowledge to be equally effective.
How much is the NSW government spending on volunteer disaster support?
The NSW Reconstruction Authority has distributed $3.55 million across 39 projects through its Spontaneous Volunteers Support Program. That averages to under $100,000 per project — enough to signal recognition but not enough to fund community organisations as permanent, year-round infrastructure.
What is the risk of governments treating community groups as disaster contractors?
Subjecting community organisations to government funding cycles and reporting requirements changes their character. The organic, trust-based quality that makes them effective at disaster response is tied to their independence; once they are reshaped around government outcome metrics, that quality becomes harder to sustain.
What does the Western Sydney University disaster recovery report recommend?
The research points toward sustained, flexible funding that lets community organisations operate year-round — not just during declared disasters. The argument is that resilience has to be built before a disaster strikes, and that means supporting the organisations that maintain community cohesion in ordinary times.