State and local governments generally have the principal responsibility for meeting mass care and other needs in responding to a disaster; however, governments largely carry out this responsibility by relying on the services provided by voluntary organizations. Voluntary organizations provide sheltering, feeding, and other services, such as case management, to disaster victims and have long supported local, state, and federal government responses to disasters. Voluntary organizations have historically played a critical role in providing services to disaster victims, both on a routine basis—in response to house fires and local flooding, for example—and in response to far rarer disasters such as devastating hurricanes or earthquakes. Their assistance can vary from providing immediate services to being involved in long-term recovery efforts, including fund-raising. Some are equipped to arrive at a disaster scene and provide immediate mass care, such as food, shelter, and clothing. Other charities address short-term needs, such as providing case management services to help disaster victims obtain unemployment or medical benefits. Other voluntary organizations provide long-term disaster assistance such as job training or temporary housing assistance for low- income families. In addition, local organizations that do not typically provide disaster services may step in to address specific needs, as occurred when churches and other community organizations began providing sheltering after the Gulf Coast hurricanes. The American Red Cross, a nongovernmental organization founded in 1881, is the largest of the nation’s mass care service providers. Operating under a congressional charter since 1900, the Red Cross provides volunteer humanitarian assistance to the armed forces, serves as a medium of communication between the people of the United States and the armed forces, and provides direct services to disaster victims, including feeding, sheltering, financial assistance, and emergency first aid. An additional key player in the voluntary sector is NVOAD, an umbrella organization of nonprofits that are considered national in their scope. Established in 1970, NVOAD is not itself a service delivery organization but rather coordinates planning efforts by many voluntary organizations responding to disaster, including the five organizations in this review. In addition to its 49 member organizations, NVOAD also coordinates with chartered state Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) and their local affiliates. (See app. II for NVOAD members.) The occurrence in 2005 of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita revealed many weaknesses in the federal disaster response that were subsequently enumerated by numerous public and private agencies—including the GAO, the White House, and the American Red Cross. These weaknesses included a lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities among and between voluntary organizations and FEMA and a need for the government to include voluntary organizations in national and local disaster planning. According to several post-Katrina reports, the contributions of voluntary organizations, especially faith-based groups, had not been effectively integrated into the earlier federal plan for disaster response—the 2004 National Response Plan. These reports called for better coordination among government agencies and voluntary organizations through cooperative relationships and joint planning and exercises. (See bibliography.) Under the Homeland Security Act, which President Bush signed in 2002, as amended by the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (Post-Katrina Act), FEMA has been charged with responsibility for leading and supporting a national, risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation. In support of this mission, FEMA is required to partner with the private sector and nongovernmental organizations, as well as state, local, tribal governments, emergency responders, and other federal agencies. Under the act, FEMA is specifically directed, among other things, to build a comprehensive national incident management system; consolidate existing federal government emergency response plans into a single, coordinated national response plan; administer and ensure the implementation of that plan, including coordinating and ensuring the readiness of each emergency support function under the plan; and update a national preparedness goal and develop a national preparedness system to enable the nation to meet that goal. As part of its preparedness responsibilities, FEMA is required to develop guidelines to define risk-based target capabilities for federal, state, local, and tribal preparedness and establish a comprehensive assessment system to assess, on an ongoing basis, the nation’s prevention capabilities and overall preparedness. FEMA is also required to submit annual reports which describe, among other things, the results of the comprehensive assessment and state and local catastrophic incident preparedness. FEMA may also use planning scenarios to reflect the relative risk requirements presented by all kinds of hazards. As we noted in previous reports and testimony, the preparation for a large-scale disaster requires an overall national preparedness effort designed to integrate what needs to be done (roles and responsibilities), how it should be done, and how well it should be done. The principal national documents designed to address each of these questions are the National Response Framework, the National Incident Management System, and the National Preparedness Guidelines. A core tenet of these documents is that governments at all levels, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations, such as the Red Cross and other voluntary organizations, coordinate during disasters that require federal intervention. (See fig. 1.) DHS’s National Response Framework, which became effective in March 2008, delineates roles for federal, state, local, and tribal governments; the private sector; and voluntary organizations in responding to disasters. The new framework revises the National Response Plan, which was originally signed by major federal government agencies, the Red Cross, and NVOAD in 2004. Under the National Response Framework, voluntary organizations are expected to contribute to these response efforts through partnerships at each level of government. In addition, FEMA, in conjunction with its voluntary agency liaisons, acts as the interface between these organizations and the federal government. (See fig. 2.) The Framework also creates a flexible and scalable coordinating structure for mobilizing national resources in a large-scale disaster. Under the Framework, local jurisdictions and states have lead responsibility for responding to a disaster and can request additional support from the federal government as needed. In addition, for catastrophic incidents that almost immediately overwhelm local and state resources and result in extraordinary levels of mass casualties or damage, the Framework—through its Catastrophic Incident Supplement—specifies the conditions under which the federal government can proactively accelerate the national response to such disasters without waiting for formal requests from state governments. The Supplement was published in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. The National Framework organizes the specific needs that arise in disaster response into 15 emergency support functions, or ESFs. Each ESF comprises a coordinator, a primary agency, and support agencies—usually governmental agencies—that plan and support response activities. Typically, support agencies have expertise in the respective function, such as in mass care, transportation, communication, or firefighting. In a disaster, FEMA is responsible for activating the ESF working groups of key federal agencies and other designated organizations that are needed. For the voluntary organizations in our review, Emergency Support Function 6 (ESF-6) is important because it outlines the organizational structure used to provide mass care and related services in a disaster. These services are mass care (e.g., sheltering, feeding, and bulk distribution of emergency emergency assistance (e.g. evacuation, safety, and well-being of pets), disaster housing (e.g., roof repair, rental assistance), and human services (e.g., crisis counseling, individual case management). Under ESF-6, FEMA is designated as the primary federal agency responsible for coordinating and leading the federal response for mass care and related human services, in close coordination with states and others such as voluntary organizations—a role change made in 2008 in response to issues that arose during Katrina. FEMA carries out this responsibility by convening federal ESF-6 support agencies during disasters and coordinating with states to augment their mass care capabilities as needed. Under ESF-6, the Red Cross and NVOAD are each named as support agencies to FEMA, along with numerous federal departments, such as the Department of Health and Human Services. FEMA’s voluntary agency liaisons, located in FEMA regions, are largely responsible for carrying out these coordinating duties with voluntary organizations. As private service providers fulfilling their humanitarian missions, the voluntary organizations in our review have historically served as significant sources of mass care and other services in large-scale disasters and play key roles in national response—in coordination with local, state, and federal governments—under the National Response Framework. While their response structures differ in key ways—with some having more centralized operations than others, for example—these voluntary organizations coordinate their services through formal written agreements and through informal working relationships with other organizations. In recognition of their long-standing leadership in providing services to disaster victims, these organizations, especially the American Red Cross and NVOAD, have considerable roles in supporting FEMA under the nation’s National Response Framework. While this new Framework shifted the Red Cross from a primary agency for mass care to a support agency, largely because the Red Cross cannot direct federal resources, the 2006 Catastrophic Incident Supplement has not been updated to reflect this change. FEMA does not currently have a timetable for revising the Supplement, as required under the Post-Katrina Act, and while FEMA and Red Cross officials told us that they have a mutual understanding of the Red Cross’s role as a support agency in a catastrophic disaster, this understanding is not currently documented. While the major national voluntary organizations in our review differ in their types of services and response structures, they have all played important roles in providing mass care and other services, some for over a century. According to government officials and reports on the response to Katrina, the Red Cross and the other voluntary organizations we reviewed are a major source of mass care and other disaster services, as was evident in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The five voluntary organizations we reviewed differ in the extent to which they focus on providing disaster services and in the types of services they provide.