When natural disasters strike, individuals, communities, and even entire countries can suffer. Researchers have studied the impacts of disasters on various factors of interest, from mental health, to poverty, to economic activity. However, the impact of disasters on the nonprofit sector is understudied despite the nonprofit sector's perhaps surprising role in local or national economies as well as its role in disaster response and recovery. Thus, we study the effect of natural disaster damage on different county-level nonprofit outcomes using a panel dataset spanning 1991 to 2021 and causal inference methods tailored to panel data. Contrary to prior work, which found small but positive associations between disaster damage and nonprofit revenue or assets, we find no evidence of a causal effect.
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