DARWIN was an EU funded research project under the Horizon 2020 research programme focusing on improving responses to expected and unexpected crises affecting critical societal structures. The project developed Resilience Management Guidelines (DRMG) that were tested in different pilot exercises at different locations in Europe. One of the pilot exercises organized in Italy in June 2017 offered the opportunity to address issues related to the resilience of the organizations that have many aspects in common with those experienced in the current worldwide COVID-19 crisis. Examples of such issues are: the need to establish a common ground among the different organizations cooperating in the management of a crisis; the importance of anticipating and managing trade-offs and conflicting goals during the disease outbreak; as well as the importance of coordinating communication activities to improve the effectiveness of the containment measures applied by the citizens. The severity and magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis has shown to be greater than the crisis and emergency situations imagined during the DARWIN pilot exercise. However, the results from the project show that decision makers and managers at different levels in first responder organizations can benefit from the adoption the DRMG principles and translate them into policies or procedures for front line operators that are useful also to address the COVID-19 global pandemics.