Giving After Disasters

It’s become all too clear in recent years: Catastrophic acts of nature—hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, wildfires—are happening more frequently and causing more destruction. The annual inflation-adjusted global cost of natural disasters has increased sharply, with the average from 2011 to 2015 reaching four times the average from 1980 to 1985. The number of people affected is rising too, often exceeding 300 million in recent years. But traditional sources of funding for disaster recovery, from governments, nonprofits, and NGOs, have not kept pace.