Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” While he probably wasn’t referring to a public relations crisis, this mentality can surely be applied to PR. Planning can make the difference between quickly stomping out a fire or going up in flames.

You can never hope to predict every PR blunder—wouldn’t crises be easier if you could?—but there are a few things credit unions can do to make the inevitable less damaging and less stressful.