Several reports that offer advice and lessons learned about grant making after a disaster commanded attention during session’s at this week’s conference. Among them:

• Best Practices in Disaster Grantmaking: Lessons Learned from the Gulf Coast, published by the New York Association of Grantmakers, offers advice on what foundations should do after a disaster. For instance, it urges grant makers to reach out to charities in the affected area, rather than waiting for requests for assistance and recommends practices to avoid, such as taking up a great deal of a local nonprofit leader’s time and then not making a grant to the organization.

• The Survivors’ Fund Process for Disaster Recovery, published by the Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, in Washington, describes how the foundation provided financial support and case management to more than 1,000 people in the seven years after the September 11 attack on the Pentagon. The report is designed to make it possible for other foundations to copy the approach quickly without starting from scratch. An accompanying report tells the stories of some of the people who received assistance from the fund.