Resources
COI: Candor Or Inhibition? Managing Conflicts Of Interest
By Erin Gloeckner Hopefully gone are the days when nonprofit stakeholders might sweep potential conflicts of interest under the rug. Nonprofits are held to high standards of ethics, which call upon nonprofit leaders to candidly assess real or perceived conflicts of interest. As charitable enterprises continue to evolve in terms of complexity, performance, and notability, … Continued
An Eye for Ethics: Quelling Confusion about Ethical Quandaries
By Melanie Lockwood Herman Most nonprofit leaders would enthusiastically agree that ethical conduct and core values are key to the success of their community-serving missions. Yet among your co-workers and peers, how acute is awareness of ethical dilemmas in every-day decisions? Do colleagues have the skills and patience to slog through ethical questions when they … Continued
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
Not all questions have specific or concrete answers, and many risk questions have no clear answers. Expert colleagues may be aunable to pinpoint answers for us, or a panel of experts will individually present their own analysis. Even experts are biased by their own past experiences, and experts sometimes tell clients what they want to … Continued
Gibberisk: Risk’s Mangled & Made-up Words
By Melanie Lockwood Herman Have you ever exuberantly crooned the chorus of a popular song and later discovered that you had mangled the lyrics? Today’s music fans can use a search engine to quickly verify the lyrics of a favorite tune. But when I was a kid (!), I recall being completely surprised by the … Continued
How to Conduct a Risk Assessment
By Melanie Lockwood Herman To say that the term risk assessment has many meanings is an incontrovertible understatement. My Google search of the phrase what is a risk assessment yielded more than 127 million results in an astonishing .88 seconds! From time to time at NRMC we ponder what the phrase means, and why it’s … Continued
Facility Agility: Planning for Facility Emergencies
By Erin Gloeckner What is facility agility? Facilities might be static assets that can’t be considered agile, but nonprofit leaders must remain agile in order to resume or maintain operations in the wake of a crisis or emergency. The NRMC team has heard more than a handful of horror stories about nonprofit leaders who believed … Continued
What Star Trek Taught Me about Risk Leadership
By Erin Gloeckner There’s not exactly a Starfleet Academy for nonprofit risk professionals, like in the beloved television and film series, Star Trek. Nonprofit risk professionals are often designated by surprise, and are expected to learn on the job, wear new hats (e.g., insurance program manager, safety committee leader, etc.), or seek out professional certifications … Continued
The Risk of Regret: Not Every Mission Really Lives
By Melanie Lockwood Herman In Everybody Dies But Not Everybody Lives, rapper and spoken word artist Prince Ea challenges us to be open to risk-taking: “There was a study done, a hospital study on 100 elderly people. Facing death, close to their last breath they were asked to reflect about their life’s biggest regret… Nearly … Continued
Board Development: Surf the Board Talent Pipeline
By Melanie Lockwood Herman We asked RISK eNews readers to weigh in on the top governance-related risks and challenges facing their organizations. Thank you to everyone who responded to our governance risk survey! With 67% of respondents ranking the issue as a #1 or #2 concern, the top board-related risk and worry was: “inadequate pipeline for … Continued
The Garden of Risk Oversight: Positioning the Board to Cultivate Strategic Risk-Taking
By Melanie Lockwood Herman When considering the myriad risks facing a nonprofit organization, one could identify many risks that should be safeguarded against, mitigated, or prevented if possible. Strategic risks are another animal altogether, or more appropriately, a garden of risks that—if properly tended to—will grow to fruition and advance the nonprofit’s mission and vision. … Continued
Create A Risk Management Function That’s Built To Last
By Melanie Lockwood Herman and Eric Henkel Many nonprofit organizations have made it a priority to integrate risk-aware thinking and decision-making into day-to-day operations and strategic planning. Plenty of organizations demonstrate expertise in managing risks related to programs, facilities, and clientele. But nonprofits’ ever-changing risk landscape invites a broader and deeper approach to risk management. … Continued
What’s in a Word? Risk Management Leaders as Mission Champions
By Erin Gloeckner “What’s in a name?” asks Juliet in William Shakespeare’s famed play Romeo and Juliet, as she argues that her and Romeo’s family names are the only cause for their families to remain enemies. Though the Capulet and Montague names were meaningless to Juliet, researchers and philosophers from ancient to modern times have … Continued
Truth or Story? The Human Capacity for Knowledge
By Melanie Lockwood Herman Tell me a story. In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story. Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. The name of the story will be Time, But you must not pronounce its name. Tell me a story of deep delight. (from the poem Tell Me … Continued
Repairing Broken Insurance Broker Relationships
By Erin Gloeckner The inaugural Risk Leadership Certificate Program (RLCP) is complete and the NRMC team looks forward to inviting a new cohorts of nonprofit risk professionals to join RLCP in future programs. Contact Melanie Lockwood Herman (Melanie@nonprofitrisk.org) to apply for RLCP, or read on to share in the learning from our first RLCP cohort. During the … Continued
Foodie Risk: How Eating Habits Mirror Risk Management Maturity
By Eric Henkel During the launch of NRMC’s Risk Leadership Certificate Program, I was struck by the amount of sharing and collaboration that happened during the group meals. Participants often took the opportunity to follow up on a topic from an earlier breakout session or to share information about their experiences with risk management in their … Continued
Succession Planning for [NOT] the CEO
By Erin Gloeckner CEO succession planning arises as a strategic risk and key concern of nonprofit boards in many NRMC-led Risk Assessments. If you’re looking for an article about CEO succession planning, this is not it. Instead, review our popular article, Avoid Transition Trauma with a Succession Plan. This article explores succession planning for nonprofit … Continued