Resources
What Youth-Serving Nonprofits Need To Know About Youth-On-Youth Abuse
By Rachel Sams and Melanie Lockwood Herman Youth-serving nonprofits invest a great deal of time and effort addressing the risk that an adult associated with their programs could harm children. Many youth-serving nonprofits may not have gone to the same lengths to address the risk that youth participants in their programs could harm other young … Continued
Youth Mental Health: Responsibilities and Opportunities for Nonprofits
By Rachel Sams This article contains information about how to identify and respond to signs of mental health issues and suicide risk in young people. Have you ever looked into the eyes of a young person your nonprofit serves and seen that they were hurting? What did you do? If it hasn’t happened yet, what … Continued
Safe and Supported: The Intersection of Psychological Safety and Fruitful Risk Practice
By Erin Gloeckner “My input isn’t valued here.” “My coworkers always reject my ideas.” “I feel so stupid around my boss.” “I have to pick my battles.” “It will be safer for me if I keep my head down.” “I wanted to warn them, but I couldn’t risk being ridiculed again.” “I told them … Continued
Workplace Culture: The Foundation for Sound Risk Practice
By Whitney Thomey Workplace culture has gone viral. In less than a second, Google will return nearly 400,000,000 results on the question “What is workplace culture?” From surveys to engagements, renewed values statements to grand-scale reorganizations, nonprofit leaders are focusing on how culture is defined, infused, and perceived throughout the organization. Workplace culture is central … Continued
Safe and Supported: The Intersection of Psychological Safety and Fruitful Risk Practice
By Erin Gloeckner “My input isn’t valued here.” “My coworkers always reject my ideas.” “I feel so stupid around my boss.” “I have to pick my battles.” “It will be safer for me if I keep my head down.” “I wanted to warn them, but I couldn’t risk being ridiculed again.” “I told them … Continued
Workplace Culture: The Foundation for Sound Risk Practice
By Whitney Thomey Workplace culture has gone viral. In less than a second, Google will return nearly 400,000,000 results on the question “What is workplace culture?” From surveys to engagements, renewed values statements to grand-scale reorganizations, nonprofit leaders are focusing on how culture is defined, infused, and perceived throughout the organization. Workplace culture is central … Continued
7 Techniques to Reimagine Your Relationship with Risk
By Melanie Lockwood Herman In just over a week, clocks around the world will strike midnight, and risk professionals will be opening the door to another year of risks. There will be good and bad surprises we never envisioned, the arrival of future professional friends we haven’t met yet, and the inevitable departures of close … Continued
All Aboard: Building Internal Support for Risk Management
Join NRMC to learn how to build and sustain support for risk management in your nonprofit. This webinar explores some of the most common reasons for pushback and resistance, as well as proven techniques to convert nay-sayers into yay-sayers.
2020 Risk Refresh: An Update to Our Forecast of Risk Trends Facing Nonprofits
Enjoy this timely update to the popular 2020 Risk Forecast we published earlier this year. Review our original article to explore additional risk trends including the need to: Ignite a reskilling revolution (our prior #1), and Contribute to climate action and other causes (our prior #5). 1. Master Contingency Planning Elvis Presley famously said, “When … Continued
It’s Time to Banish Blueprints and Best Practices
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson By Melanie Lockwood Herman and Katharine Nesslage When our team is asked, “What should a risk committee do?” or “How should risk roles be described on position descriptions?” or “How often should … Continued
6 Risk Trends that Matter to Your Mission
By Melanie Lockwood Herman Yesterday I read with interest Kate Barr’s new blog post titled 8 Trends in the Nonprofit Sector. Kate is the President & CEO of Propel Nonprofits, an organization that supports nonprofits in Minnesota and adjacent states. Propel’s finance factsheets, worksheets and other resources are top notch, and I recommend them. Kate’s … Continued
Dream a Little Dream: Managing Sleep Deprivation Risks
By Katharine Nesslage Our ambitious 24/7 lifestyles, filled with unbalanced diets, low physical activity, excessive electronic media use, and psychosocial stress, are causing a precipitous decline in our sleep. But the safety implications of sleep deprivation have been known for decades. Precipitating causes of the Three Mile Island nuclear incident (1979), the Exxon Valdez oil … Continued
Don’t be Dispassionate: How to Use Emotional Impulses to Make Better Decisions – Full Article
By Glenn Mott “Heuristic / you risked it.” —Hank Lazer Recently, I had an opportunity to read a special issue of the Harvard Business Review called “The Brain Science Behind Business”—a compilation of previously published articles about neuroscience. Reading these articles got me thinking about the role of heuristics in risk management. Heuristics refers to … Continued
High or Dry: Weed and the Workplace
By Melanie Lockwood Herman Is your nonprofit workplace a “drug-free” zone? Although nonprofit leaders are in agreement that impaired staff pose an unacceptable risk to the safety of people who serve and receive services, the legalization of medical and recreational marijuana creates a host of challenges for nonprofit employers who wish to take a stand … Continued
If Ruminating on Risk Inspires Worry, You’re Doing it Wrong
By Melanie Lockwood Herman During a recent risk workshop, one of our participants commented, “Thinking about all of the potential risks facing my organization makes me really worried!” Her remark reminded me of the distinction between what many leaders believe is the narrow purpose of risk management and its true aim. The narrow view of risk management’s … Continued
Out of Focus: How Being Less Focused (and More Aware) Pays Off
By Glenn Mott Mindfulness, like it’s complement gratitude, has been much hyped—with good reason. Our underlying mindset and conditioning are nearly invisible to most of us; by itself, the conscious mind is insufficient to get at the deeper mindset. Nonjudgmental, present-moment awareness (aka mindfulness meditation) has been shown to change attitudes, emotional responses, and habitual … Continued
Scorched Middle Earth: Banishing The Department of No
by Melanie Lockwood Herman As fans of high fantasy fiction know first-hand, Middle-earth is the fictional setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the most widely-read books from English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. According to Wikipedia, “Middle-earth has also become a short-hand to refer to the legendarium and Tolkien’s fictional take … Continued
Storm Season: Risk Lessons from Tornado Alley
July 8, 2015 By Emily Wilson Dark storm clouds were just beginning to swallow the sky over my college house as my phone started making an eerily familiar sound. While growing up in Alabama, I often heard tornado watch and tornado warning alerts broadcasting from the sirens mounted on posts every few miles along the … Continued