When Hurricane Helene touched down in 2024 and wrought an estimated $78.7 billion in damages, it also spawned something unexpected for Team Rubicon: A new approach to disaster relief that blends traditional emergency operations with local community service projects. The innovative strategy is now transforming how the organization serves communities across the country—both before and after disasters strike.
A National Organization Built Around Local Service
For more than a decade, Team Rubicon’s disaster response operations and service projects have appeared to operate as distinct and unique entities. Service projects have long been opportunities to keep Greyshirts engaged and embedded within their local communities, and to ensure that when a disaster does occur, local emergency managers and others know they can tap Team Rubicon for assistance.
For the past 15 years, Team Rubicon’s service projects have largely been opportunities to rebuild homes alongside a partner like Habitat for Humanity, for example, support a local food bank with packaging and distributing food, or clean up a neglected cemetery.
Or, help with a move.
When a disabled Vietnam veteran in Maurton, VA, needed assistance last year loading furniture and boxes into a POD in order to move to Texas to be with his wife, who had entered hospice care, Greyshirts from across the region responded in droves—many of them also veterans. The assistance was just what was needed: the man had become overwhelmed by the task of moving and packing.
“With compassion and some gentle nudging, we were able to get him to make some decisions that allowed him to move forward and direct us in what needed to be loaded into his POD for transport to Texas,” explains Greyshirt Bruce Randall.
Technical Skills Meet Community Needs
In 2024, Team Rubicon created a dedicated task force to develop comprehensive guidelines for service projects, which resulted in permission to conduct disaster-related activities as service projects.
“We finally got permission to do disaster-related things as service projects,” Brian Buhman, a regional operations leader for Team Rubicon, notes. “It opened up the floodgates for us and allowed us to do things like sawyer-focused service projects that maybe weren’t related to a disaster, but that would utilize those skills.”
Another reason for high-level buy-in for service projects is that in 2024 Team Rubicon launched Just-in-Time trainings—core ops, HEO, chainsaw, and other certifications conducted during an operation—thanks to the nonprofit’s Helene and Milton responses. Those trainings are allowing Greyshirts to bring technical skills gained on a major disaster operation to local service projects.
Increasingly, Greyshirts are able to perform chainsaw, heavy equipment, roof tarping work, and more—just as they would on a disaster operation—in their hometowns during a service project. Service projects also enable Team Rubicon to conduct mitigation and address preventative measures that might not be prioritized during emergency operations, such as removing hazardous trees along riverbanks that could cause downstream damage during future flood events.
Bridging Operations and Service, and Building Local Capacity
Now, increasingly Greyshirts are standing up disaster preparedness and recovery service projects, too. The difference between what makes for a community service project and an operation can be the scale of damage and the number of locally trained volunteers available.
“An operation uses a lot more resources and a formal command and general staff,” explains Vlad Tamashiro-Loma, one of Team Rubicon’s field leaders. “Service projects do a lot of similar planning, but the intent is a lot more localized.”
Perhaps most importantly, for a national disaster response organization that operates at a hyper-local level, the community service project approach allows Team Rubicon to better develop local capacity and deepen community connections.
“If I can build up Greyshirt capacity in a Northern Virginia or a Vermont, and a flood comes through, then we’ll have all the people locally who can handle that kind of a disaster on a weekend. Then, we’ll do that instead of asking to stand up a full operation and bring in Greyshirt resources from outside the region,” explains Brian Buhman.
Local Community Service Projects Deliver Regional Success
This localized approach represents a significant shift in Team Rubicon’s strategy. While the organization has conducted service projects for years, 2024 marked the first year that service projects received full organizational buy-in. The result? A full 902 community service operations served 500 communities across the U.S. last year.
In Virginia and DC, for example, volunteers supported local food pantries and participated in Clean the Bay Day, a statewide initiative where thousands of Virginians clean the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
In Connecticut, volunteers helped restore a recently purchased camp for underserved children and conducted sawyer work at a nonprofit horse ranch.
In the West, Greyshirts used service projects for everything from mitigation work to disaster recovery to community aid. In April, Greyshirts in Alaska descended on the banks of the Mendenhall River to clean up remnants of debris left by unprecedented flooding the previous August. Not only did the service project help Juneau recover from a previous disaster, it also helped the community mitigate against future flooding.
And, in New Mexico, Greyshirts put their construction and core-ops skills to use on numerous service projects. In association with the New Mexico Ramp Project, Greyshirts built accessibility ramps that would allow people in wheelchairs, with walkers, or with mobility issues to get into and out of their homes.
Looking Ahead, and Using Service to Prepare for Disaster Seasons
With both the 2025 hurricane and wildfire seasons spinning, Greyshirts aren’t slowing down their service project plans. Already, Team Rubicon has more than 500 service projects in planning for July through December. In some cases, these service projects will also provide mitigation assistance, such as in Montana where Greyshirts will serve the Fort Peck Indian Tribes.
In July, Greyshirts will conduct a wildlands fire mitigation service project on the reservation. Some places on the reservation are an hour away from the closest fire station. During this service project, Greyshirts will help clean up many abandoned and neglected properties that are overgrown with brush and tall grasses and that pose an extreme risk to fire and combined with wind could even wipe out entire communities.
Greyshirts will use some other service projects to further hone their own disaster response preparedness skills so that should they be asked to step up for a disaster response operation, they’ll be ready. For example, in June, Greyshirts in Puerto Rico practiced their roof tarping skills as they supported the Toa Alta community by providing temporary roofing solutions to five homes in need of urgent support.
As Team Rubicon continues to evolve its approach to disaster relief and community service, the organization’s innovative blend of technical expertise, local engagement, and preventative action promises to set new standards for how disaster response organizations operate in an increasingly volatile climate landscape.
