NRMC’s Most Popular Articles of 2025
Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
By Rachel Sams
Lead Consultant and Editor
The NRMC team always learns something when we look back at the articles that resonated most with our audience of nonprofit risk professionals each year. As we paused to look back this week, we learned that nonprofit risk leaders long for ways to meet uncertainty and face challenges ranging from employee screening to cybersecurity.
Here are our 10 most-read RISK eNews articles for 2025. As you wrap up your year, we encourage you to review these articles and reflect on what you’ve learned this year and your risk learning and development goals for 2026.
1) The Royal Family Doesn’t Need Your Bank Account; Neither Does the USPTO
Recently NRMC received several credible-looking emails indicating that our trademark protections with the USPTO were expiring… soon! Not surprisingly, there was a click through button promising quick and easy correction of that (fraudulent) problem. After all, there’s nothing a fast click and some money can’t solve for us, right? What was surprising is that, to be honest, it took more than a quick glance to recognize this email as a scam.
2) 2025 Risk Insights: Tap Your Team’s Energy for Mission Focus
Our white paper and risk forecast for 2025 encouraged nonprofits to use a simple, flexible risk framework to address the unprecedented risks they faced this year. We encouraged nonprofits to let go of some long-term projects and programs so they could meet the moment and assess, prioritize and address risk.
3) Background Screening for Nonprofits: What to Consider
When many nonprofit leaders think of background checks, they think of running a criminal history background check on a potential employee before finalizing their hire. For nonprofits that do background screening, criminal history background checks are common. But other tasks on your hiring or volunteer recruitment checklist can function as background screening as well.
4) Embrace the Complexity in Your Team
In his book How to Work with Complicated People, Ryan Leak offers simple, practical advice for dealing with wonderful humans who sometimes seem strangely complicated. Three pieces of advice from the book resonated with the NRMC team as powerful tips for risk champions facing pushback, skepticism, or sabotage.
5) Don’t Wait Till You Know Everything to Do Something
During 2025, the NRMC team worked with brilliant nonprofit leaders and teams who feel knocked about by uncertainty. We want nonprofit leaders to know there are ways to build resilience in the face of risk, even when what you understand about the issue is eclipsed by what you don’t know. A few simple tools and practices can help you prepare for a risk that would impact your nonprofit.
6) The Cybersecurity Skills Your Nonprofit Needs
We advise nonprofit leaders that while hackers are persistent and no measures are foolproof, spending time to strengthen your organization’s cyberdefenses is always worthwhile. And investing in cybersecurity can benefit your nonprofit in other ways—like improving employee morale and client trust.
7) Own It: Failure as a Springboard to Success
When was your last failure or misstep in a risk role? Perhaps your last executive team or board risk briefing fell flat, or you were defensive when your CEO or a board member asked a perfectly appropriate question. Or the feedback from your last risk committee meeting signaled frustration with the ambiguous agenda. Learn how to step back and understand a recent misstep as a powerful indicator of the possibilities that lie ahead.
8) Risk Leadership with Situational Awareness
Every time they go out their front door, our colleague Elyzabeth’s dog Braxton is attuned to ensuring that everything around the pair is okay. And, as nonprofit leaders, isn’t that exactly what we want to do? On a daily basis, don’t we want to assess our surroundings to understand where opportunities and threats might lie?
9) When Financial Stress Hits Your Nonprofit, Try These Steps
Right now, many nonprofit leaders are drifting off in thought in meetings or lying awake at night. One of the worries crowding their minds: Amid turmoil in the federal funding many nonprofits rely on, they may have to lay off trusted team members, or end programs that meet acute needs in their communities. Worry is natural in uncertain times. But it’s easy to get caught in a loop of worries and miss opportunities to take actions that might help.
10) Reputation Risk: Steward a Valuable Asset
What is reputation? According to Rethinking Reputational Risk by Anthony Fitzsimmons and Derek Atkins, it’s the sum of how your constituents perceive you. Reputational risk, in their view, is the risk that constituents come to believe you are not as good as they thought you were. That could happen because of poor performance by your nonprofit, or because of the behavior of people associated with the organization.
Rachel Sams is Lead Consultant and Editor at the Nonprofit Risk Management Center. Reach her with thoughts or questions about the topics in this year’s most-read risk articles at rachel@nonprofitrisk.org or (505) 456-4045.
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