What you need to know:
- Research from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Verizon reveals a major gap between small business confidence and disaster preparedness
- New partnership will help small businesses access tools and resources to better prepare, respond, and recover
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today at the 2026 Building Resilience Conference, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Verizon announced a strategic partnership to help America’s small businesses better prepare for natural disasters, respond to disruptions, recover more quickly from damage, and strengthen the communities that depend on them.
As part of the partnership, the organizations released preliminary findings from a new national survey of small business owners and decision-makers, revealing a confidence-preparedness fault line running across America’s small businesses that puts jobs, payrolls, and community stability at risk.
A growing issue for local economies
In 2025, the United States experienced 23 weather and natural disasters that each caused at least $1 billion in damage — the third-highest annual total on record. Over the last decade the country has averaged 20 such disasters each year and federally declared disasters increased by nearly 90%, with FEMA disaster declarations rising from 63 in 2015 to 119 in 2025.
With small businesses representing 99.9% of U.S. businesses, employing 45.9% of the workforce, and contributing 43.5% of GDP, their resilience is an economic issue as much as a local one. Major natural disasters can cause permanent closings and loss of revenue, but even less visible disruptions — including storms and flooding — can close businesses temporarily, interrupting local commerce and slowing community recovery.
“Across the country, more than 33 million small businesses drive our economy. Strengthening their ability to withstand disasters is essential to building more resilient communities and a stronger America,” said Rob Glenn, vice president of global resilience at the U.S. Chamber Foundation. “We’re excited to partner with Verizon to leverage our reach and expertise in supporting small businesses, and to help more business owners access the tools, resources, and guidance they need to thrive in the face of adversity.”
A strategic partnership for community resilience
Through this partnership, Verizon will serve as the premier sponsor of the U.S. Chamber Foundation's Small Business Readiness for Resiliency program, helping to scale a grant program that has supported nearly 5,000 businesses nationwide through recovery grants. The partners will also engage small businesses through Verizon’s Small Business Digital Ready program, an online platform that provides free courses, mentorship, networking, and grants to help business owners build the skills and capacity needed to adapt and grow.
“Verizon has a long history of running to a crisis to keep communities and small businesses connected during natural disasters, when it matters most,” said Donna Epps, chief responsible business officer at Verizon. “Through our Community Disaster Resilience Initiative, we are taking a holistic approach to disaster preparation, response and recovery to support communities in other ways beyond our world class network recovery and emergency response communications. By combining our efforts to make small businesses more resilient before disaster hits with the proactive resources of our Small Business Digital Ready platform and this new partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, we are providing small businesses with a complete ecosystem of support to prepare for, withstand, and rapidly rebuild from any disruption.”
New research points to the economic risk of underprepared small businesses
The early research findings reveal a clear preparedness gap: while small business owners are confident they could recover from a disaster or major disruption, many have not taken basic steps to prepare.
Among the early findings:
- The Preparedness Gap: 69% of small businesses have no disaster plan — despite record disaster costs.
- The Payroll Cliff: 36% of small businesses can't pay employees beyond one month after a disaster, putting communities at economic risk as disasters increase.
- The Cost Illusion: On average, small business leaders believe disaster preparedness would cost about 30% of annual revenue, while the actual cost is closer to 5% — a gap that may discourage action and leave businesses more vulnerable to disruption.
- The Optimism Trap: 94% of small business owners believe they'd recover from disaster. Yet 66% do not know the kinds of disasters common to their region, and 80% do not have a disaster budget.
- The Guidance Gap: 65% of small businesses have never sought disaster preparedness help — and most don't know where to start.
The findings imply that while these gaps exist, they can be overcome by enhanced education and resources like new technologies that assist small businesses in taking steps towards resilience.
The preliminary national survey findings are available here.
What’s next
In the coming months, the organizations will release the full research findings, along with an analysis of the economic costs of underinvesting in small business resilience. In response to this information, the partners will develop new and additional resources to support small businesses in boosting resilience in order to help communities the small businesses serve. “We’ve seen, both in this research and in our interactions with them, that small business owners know resilience is important and want to enhance their resilience. What they need is support in identifying steps to take, tools to use, and the resources to make use of those tools and guidance,” Epps added. “That’s the goal of this new partnership: to combine our expertise and resources to help small businesses nationwide.”
Learn how you or a local business in your neighborhood can access free tools and resources to close the preparedness gap by visiting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Readiness for Resiliency program and Verizon’s Small Business Digital Ready.
About the Survey
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Verizon commissioned RXN to conduct a representative online survey of 2,005 U.S. small and medium-sized business owners and decision-makers nationwide. The survey was fielded March 13–27, 2026. The margin of error is ±2.19 percentage points.
