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Product Spotlight

Policy Drafting Help is a Click Away: My Risk Management Policies

If you’re looking for help developing custom risk management policies for your nonprofit, look no further. The Center is pleased to offer My Risk Management Policies, an affordable, easy-to-use online tool that helps you create custom policies in a matter of minutes. Policy templates are organized into 22 categories. Creating a new social media policy, youth protection policy or code of conduct is a snap using My Risk Management Policies, and requires far less time that it takes to find a mildly suitable sample using an Internet search engine.

6 Tips for Making Risk Management Stick

By Melanie Lockwood Herman

Is your road to a great risk management program paved with only the best of intentions? Even skilled and experienced nonprofit leaders sometimes find their risk management efforts falling victim to internal and external booby traps. Consider the following tips to avoid common planning pitfalls:

1. Communicate freely and visibly. An essential part of any risk management framework is communication but, unfortunately, “communicate” is too often an afterthought. When you wait until your risk management strategies have been fully outlined to communicate them to stakeholders, you are setting a potentially disastrous trap for your program. When people feel uninformed or “out of the loop,” they generally resist new ideas, programs and policies, however great they may be.
2. Shift your focus. Instead putting most of your energy into “preventing losses," shift your focus to spend as much if not greater effort on the efficacy of response strategies and your nonprofit’s “bounce back” ability after a major loss or crisis. Over time, every nonprofit will face their share of losses and even crisis events. To quote former Center board member Felix Kloman, “Resilience… is the essence of effective risk management.”
3. Start small and experiment. Consider testing new risk management activities, policies or processes on a small group instead of unleashing an unproven approach on your entire workforce or clientele all at once. Better yet, involve hard-to-please constituents in the design of any new risk management activity. Those involved in early versions of your approach will likely be your most effective ambassadors once the plan is rolled out.
4. Keep it simple. When you aim for simplicity in your risk management policies you do yourself and those who must comply with those policies an invaluable favor. As you review draft policies, identify words, phrases and sections that are unnecessary and therefore can be deleted, rather than asking, “what’s missing?” or “what else could we include?”
5. Embrace redundancy. A risk management program aimed at protecting a nonprofit’s mission, financial assets and vulnerable program participants should include overlapping strategies to avoid any single point of failure. Like a car with anti-lock brakes, a camera on the rear bumper, always-on headlights, and side-impact airbags, a “safe” program has built-in redundancies. Never rely on a single policy, staff person or piece of equipment to keep your mission, people and facilities safe.
6. Strive for feedback, not perfection. The delay in rolling out many risk management strategies is often due to the desire to create the “perfect” solution that will be widely embraced. Instead of over-thinking your approach, build easy-to-access feedback mechanisms into your programs which encourage others to make suggestions… or to submit complaints.

Following these six tips will help you make your risk management policies “stick” and also help you avoid common pitfalls inherent in the design, launch and implementation of a risk management program.

Rock Stars and Risk Managers: 2012 SUMMIT

What do rock stars and risk managers have in common? They hang out at the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown Chicago!

The Nonprofit Risk Management Center is pleased to announce that the location of the 2012 Risk Management & Finance SUMMIT for Nonprofits will be the Hard Rock Hotel Chicago near the famous Magnificent Mile. Join us August 26-28 for informative risk management sessions, inspiring keynotes and a vendor expo that will allow you to keep your organization from getting stuck, “between a rock and a hard place.”

The hotel is offering discounted conference rates as low as $159 per night for SUMMIT attendees who reserve rooms before August 4, 2012. To book your hotel reservation in our limited block, please use the following link: Nonprofit Risk Management Hotel Reservations. The Center is offering an unprecedented low registration rate for leaders ready to sign up before we release conference program details. This special offer will expire at the end of May. Click here to register for the SUMMIT.

Employee or Volunteer: What’s the Difference?

By Melanie Lockwood Herman

Nonprofit organizations frequently depend on the service and commitment of volunteers as well as the labor of employees. The skills and talents of both types of workers bring nonprofit missions to life. At first glance, the simple difference between these two types of workers is that employees get paid and volunteers don’t. Yet many nonprofit leaders have discovered that there is more to distinguishing between employees and volunteers than whether an individual receives a regular paycheck. This article explores two subtopics under the umbrella issue of employee versus volunteer status: whether employees may also volunteer, and the consequences of compensating volunteers.

When Employees Also Volunteer

May your nonprofit’s paid employees also serve as unpaid volunteers? Each year the Center receives numerous calls and email messages from leaders who tell us that their dedicated, paid staff are eager to volunteer in the evenings and on weekends. In some cases these willing staff volunteer to work “off the clock,” while in other instances they sign up or formally apply for volunteer roles, such as volunteer ticket takers, coaches or special event staff, or as volunteer mentors in the nonprofit’s mentoring program. But we also receive calls from employees who want to know whether they can be forced to “volunteer” and on occasion from employees who are indignant after having been told that they cannot volunteer their services in the agency where they are employed. more…

New! — 2nd Edition of Ready…or Not Released during Risk Summit

At the annual Risk Management & Finance Summit for Nonprofits the Nonprofit Risk Management Center released the 2nd edition of Ready…or Not: A Risk Management Guide for Nonprofit Executives. This easy-to-read, practical guide addresses topics ranging from risk awareness to calibrating risk appetite. Authored by Melanie Herman, the Center’s executive director, Ready…or Not invites readers to embrace risk-taking in their organizations while paying close attention to stakeholder perceptions, risk communication and the relationship between risk and strategy setting. The 2nd edition features updated content throughout, including brand-new chapters on “human factors” in risk management and risk awareness/risk appetite. Learn more or order a copy today, here.

Risk Management Webinars: Affordable and Convenient

Check out our First Wednesdays Series for general risk topics, our Third Thursdays HR Series geared toward human resources risk.

Webinars offer high-quality, affordable and convenient training delivered to your desktop. Participate in “live” programs or listen to recorded programs at your convenience. You’ll receive expert instruction and helpful handout materials. All Center webinars are recorded and archived so you can listen and watch on the Web when it’s convenient to do so. After signing up for a webinar you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link where you can download the handout materials and view the archived recording as many times as you wish.

Disaster Preparedness Resources

In my view, www.nonprofitrisk.org is the Web's gold standard for risk management information. If I was stuck on a desert island and could only bring one Web site with me it would be www.nonprofitrisk.org. That may sound ridiculous, but next time you have a risk management question, I'll bet you can find an answer at www.nonprofitrisk.org.

David Hartley, Manager, Training & Outreach, Insurance and Liability Resource Centre for Nonprofits, Toronto