# AVERT Charter | Purpose & Operating Principles Canonical: https://avertusa.org/charter/ Updated: 2026-10-15 Charter and statement of purpose # Find the gap. Build the solution. Hand it off. The charter of the American Volunteer Emergency Response Team: why AVERT exists, how it works and how it measures success. Statement of purpose AVERT exists to close the gap between disaster and organized response. We establish ground truth, identify unmet needs, connect people and resources already on the ground, build temporary capabilities where necessary, and help communities until larger systems are ready to carry the mission forward. We remain lean, volunteer driven, partnership focused, and committed to placing mission above brand. We take what is needed, use it responsibly, give credit freely, hand off when the work is sustainable, and move to the next gap. The readiness cycle ## Ready before the storm, not during it. AVERT works a continuous cycle instead of switching on when disaster strikes and off when it passes. - Build - Connect - Rehearse - Respond - Integrate - Hand off - Learn - Build again Core principles ## Eight rules we work by. - ### Mission over brand. AVERT exists to solve problems, not to create visibility for itself. - ### Relationships before introductions. Trust, access, and interoperability are built before they are needed. - ### Requirements before resources. AVERT asks what is actually needed before collecting money, goods, or people. - ### Connection before acquisition. AVERT seeks to activate available capability before buying redundant capability. - ### Integration before duplication. AVERT strengthens effective efforts and fills uncovered gaps. - ### Temporary structure for temporary problems. AVERT creates only the organization required to solve the mission in front of it. - ### Handoff is success. AVERT leaves when the mission can continue without AVERT. - ### Learn every time. Every operation and exercise should make the next response better. Contents - [Preamble](https://avertusa.org/charter/#preamble) - [I. Mission](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-1) - [II. Operating Doctrine](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-2) - [III. Benevolent Discord](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-3) - [IV. Organizational Model](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-4) - [V. Readiness, Relationships, and Interoperability](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-5) - [VI. Capability Networks and Field Integration](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-6) - [VII. Interoperability and Rehearsal](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-7) - [VIII. Partnership and Relationship Stewardship](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-8) - [IX. Mission Over Brand](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-9) - [X. Stewardship of Resources](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-10) - [XI. Volunteers](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-11) - [XII. Field Conduct](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-12) - [XIII. Learning and Accountability](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-13) - [XIV. Transition and Handoff](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-14) - [XV. Continuous Readiness Cycle](https://avertusa.org/charter/#article-15) - [Organizational character](https://avertusa.org/charter/#character) ## The charter ### Preamble The American Volunteer Emergency Response Team exists to provide rapid, disciplined, and adaptable humanitarian assistance during the period between disaster impact and the establishment of sustained organized response. AVERT recognizes that disasters rarely produce an absolute absence of people, resources, goodwill, or capability. They produce fragmentation. Communications fail. Transportation is disrupted. Information becomes unreliable. Emergency services are overwhelmed. Volunteers and donations converge unevenly. Capabilities exist but are disconnected from the requirements they could satisfy. AVERT exists to identify those gaps, establish ground truth, connect available capabilities to actual needs, create temporary solutions where none exist, and transfer those solutions to appropriate local, governmental, nonprofit, or private sector partners as soon as conditions permit. ### Article I Mission AVERT shall provide rapid humanitarian response, operational coordination, capability integration, and gap filling support during disasters and humanitarian crises, with particular emphasis on the immediate period before conventional relief systems are fully established. AVERT shall seek to reach requirements that remain uncovered, populations that remain underserved, and operational problems that prevent assistance from reaching those who need it. AVERT's mission includes both emergency response and the year round development of relationships, interoperability, operational knowledge, and access to capabilities necessary for rapid humanitarian action. The organization shall treat preparedness as a continuous activity rather than an event initiated by a disaster. ### Article II Operating Doctrine AVERT shall operate according to a simple sequence: establish the situation, identify the gap, find what is available, build what is missing, execute the mission, transfer the capability, and leave when the work can continue without us. AVERT shall favor practical outcomes over institutional visibility and shall create only as much structure as the mission requires. AVERT shall regard adaptability, disciplined initiative, local knowledge, and trusted relationships as operational capabilities. ### Article III Benevolent Discord AVERT recognizes that spontaneous goodwill during disasters can unintentionally produce duplication, competition, logistical congestion, resource consumption, conflicting priorities, and inefficient distribution of assistance. AVERT refers to this condition as benevolent discord. AVERT shall actively reduce benevolent discord by coordinating with existing responders, avoiding unnecessary duplication, identifying underutilized capabilities, sharing information, consolidating complementary efforts, and directing resources toward unmet rather than already satisfied requirements. AVERT shall never create activity solely to justify its presence, sustain its visibility, or preserve an organizational role that the larger response no longer requires. ### Article IV Organizational Model AVERT shall maintain a deliberately lean permanent structure. The organization shall rely heavily upon volunteers, trusted relationships, donated capability, temporary teams, and partnerships rather than maintaining large standing bureaucratic or logistical structures. AVERT shall preserve the ability to make rapid decisions, create temporary partnerships, adapt to changing requirements, and operate without unnecessary administrative burden. AVERT shall maintain depth of relationships rather than breadth of bureaucracy. ### Article V Readiness, Relationships, and Interoperability AVERT recognizes that effective disaster response begins long before a disaster occurs. During periods of normal operations, AVERT shall deliberately develop and maintain relationships, partnerships, communications pathways, logistical access, and operational familiarity among organizations and individuals whose capabilities may become important during a future emergency. AVERT shall seek to ensure that, when a disaster occurs, response begins with trusted relationships rather than introductions. To accomplish this purpose, AVERT may engage with emergency management agencies, fire and rescue organizations, emergency medical services, law enforcement organizations, National Guard and other appropriate military organizations, nongovernmental organizations, charitable organizations, hospitals and medical providers, communications organizations, aviation providers, logistics and transportation companies, utilities, businesses, faith based organizations, community groups, and other organizations possessing capabilities relevant to humanitarian response. These relationships may be developed through training, professional conferences, nonprofit and emergency management events, capability demonstrations, facility visits, liaison activities, cross training, joint exercises, tabletop exercises, communications tests, logistics rehearsals, professional education, and informal relationship building. AVERT shall seek to understand both the capabilities and limitations of its partners before those capabilities are required in an emergency. ### Article VI Capability Networks and Field Integration AVERT shall maintain awareness of capabilities available throughout its network, including personnel, transportation, aviation, communications, medical support, logistics, warehousing, heavy equipment, power generation, water purification, fuel, shelter, food distribution, technical expertise, local knowledge, and other resources that may support disaster response. AVERT need not own or permanently control a capability in order for that capability to contribute to the organization's readiness. AVERT's effective operational capacity shall therefore include both its internal resources and the external capabilities it can responsibly access, coordinate, integrate, or support. During emergencies, AVERT may connect, organize, integrate, or enable underutilized personnel and resources when doing so responsibly increases the effectiveness of the larger response. AVERT may establish temporary mission focused teams around these capabilities and may operate those teams directly or support an appropriate partner organization in doing so. AVERT shall seek the minimum effective structure necessary to turn fragmented people and resources into useful capability. ### Article VII Interoperability and Rehearsal AVERT shall actively seek interoperability with organizations likely to operate within the same disaster environment. Interoperability shall include, where appropriate, familiarity with communications procedures, incident management systems, logistics processes, information sharing methods, operational terminology, safety practices, volunteer management procedures, and organizational authorities. AVERT shall use training and exercises to identify friction before emergencies occur and shall work with partners to develop practical means of overcoming those limitations. AVERT should periodically participate in or conduct exercises designed to test realistic disaster response problems, including degraded communications, transportation disruption, isolated populations, competing resource demands, spontaneous volunteers, overlapping charitable efforts, medical requirements, supply distribution, information uncertainty, and coordination among multiple independent organizations. Lessons derived from exercises shall inform AVERT planning, training, relationship development, and operational procedures. ### Article VIII Partnership and Relationship Stewardship AVERT shall actively cultivate relationships across local, state, and federal government; emergency services; nongovernmental organizations; nonprofit organizations; businesses; aviation; logistics; medicine; communications; community organizations; and private citizens. AVERT shall seek cooperation before competition and integration before duplication. Relationships established during normal operations shall be maintained through regular engagement and mutual support rather than contacted only when AVERT requires assistance. AVERT shall seek opportunities to support the missions of its partners, share useful knowledge, make productive introductions, and strengthen the larger emergency response community even when AVERT receives no immediate organizational benefit. The objective is not simply to build an AVERT network. The objective is to make the entire response network more capable before it is needed. ### Article IX Mission Over Brand AVERT shall judge success by the effect produced for affected populations rather than by organizational visibility. When another organization is better positioned to lead a mission, AVERT may provide personnel, coordination, relationships, resources, planning, or other support while allowing that organization to receive public recognition for the effort. AVERT shall not compete for missions already being effectively performed. The mission matters more than the logo. ### Article X Stewardship of Resources AVERT shall maintain a lean organizational model designed to place the greatest practical value possible against mission requirements. Fundraising and resource collection shall be driven by identified or reasonably anticipated operational requirements. AVERT shall not knowingly solicit goods, funds, or services for which no legitimate requirement exists. Donor resources shall be treated as mission resources and employed responsibly, efficiently, and transparently. Whenever practical, AVERT shall leverage partnerships, volunteer labor, donated capability, shared resources, and existing infrastructure before purchasing redundant capability. ### Article XI Volunteers AVERT is principally a volunteer organization. Participation shall be based upon demonstrated capability, reliability, judgment, integrity, willingness to coordinate, and the ability to operate without creating additional burdens upon affected communities. AVERT volunteers shall be expected to work within established command, coordination, safety, and accountability structures. Self deployment into AVERT operations without coordination shall be discouraged. AVERT recognizes that useful service is not limited to deployed responders. Individuals may contribute through professional expertise, logistics, fundraising, transportation, communications, supply sourcing, administration, public information, networking, technical support, local knowledge, or other useful capabilities. ### Article XII Field Conduct AVERT personnel shall operate with humility, professionalism, adaptability, self sufficiency, and respect for affected communities and established authorities. AVERT teams shall seek to minimize their logistical burden upon disaster areas. Personnel shall maintain accountability, communications, safety practices, and mission discipline appropriate to the operating environment. No AVERT member shall place organizational recognition ahead of the welfare of affected populations or the effectiveness of the larger response. ### Article XIII Learning and Accountability AVERT shall treat every operation, exercise, and significant training event as an opportunity to improve. Following significant deployments, the organization should assess what was expected to occur, what actually occurred, what succeeded, what failed, what should be sustained, and what should change. Lessons learned shall inform future training, planning, partnerships, and operations. Where appropriate and responsible, AVERT should communicate meaningful results and lessons to volunteers, donors, partners, and the public. ### Article XIV Transition and Handoff AVERT's presence in an affected area shall be temporary. When governmental agencies, local organizations, established nonprofits, businesses, or community structures become capable of sustaining a requirement, AVERT shall assist in transferring relationships, information, resources, or responsibilities necessary for continuity. AVERT shall then reduce or terminate its involvement in that requirement and redirect attention toward remaining gaps. AVERT shall measure success by the gaps it closes, the people it connects, the capabilities it creates, and how quickly those capabilities can stand without AVERT. ### Article XV Continuous Readiness Cycle AVERT shall maintain a continuous cycle of readiness rather than alternating between activity and inactivity. During periods before disaster, AVERT shall build relationships, map capabilities, train, exercise, improve interoperability, and strengthen the wider response community. During disaster, AVERT shall establish ground truth, identify uncovered requirements, activate relationships, integrate available capabilities, and close gaps. After the immediate requirement is stabilized, AVERT shall transfer capability, capture lessons, strengthen useful relationships, correct weaknesses, and return to readiness. This cycle may be summarized as: Build. Connect. Rehearse. Respond. Integrate. Hand Off. Learn. Build Again. ### Organizational character AVERT shall remain agile, lean, nonpartisan, mission oriented, and primarily volunteer supported. Its permanent structure shall remain subordinate to its humanitarian purpose. It shall build relationships, establish interoperability, and develop access to capabilities before emergencies occur so that disaster response begins with trusted partners rather than introductions. ## The short version See the need. Find your part. Do the work. [Answer the call](https://avertusa.org/volunteer/) [Send help](https://avertusa.org/donate/)