Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
By Linda Varnado
Recently, my newspaper in San Antonio — and many others across the nation — carried an article1 with a startling headline: “Body lay in kitchen for 2 years.” The headline compelled me to read the short news item. The story reported that an elderly woman in California had fallen in her kitchen in mid-2003, died a couple of weeks later of her injuries, and was not found until March 2005. That sounded plausible, especially if the person lived alone and had no close neighbors. But that wasn’t the case here. As it turns out the woman’s son and husband had just stepped around her body and continued to use the kitchen for all that time. The situation was investigated only after a neighbor reported not seeing the woman in about a year. I shook my head at those images and then went on with my work.
That article did not go away so easily, however. The more I thought about that particular situation, the more I believed it could be a metaphor for many situations. Then I began to think about risk management in nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have become increasingly skilled at identifying and managing obvious risks. And slowly but surely we’re getting more astute at recognizing subtle risks. But are there times when we step around delicate or difficult risk management issues? Some of the situations that immediately came to mind were:
Every time we fail to take responsible action about people issues, property challenges, financial issues, or maintaining goodwill, we are just stepping over that body in our own kitchen. If something doesn’t change, someone from outside is going to realize that something has been missing for several years and will make a report that requires follow up and action. The question is, are you willing to identify your situations, then resolve your issues before outsiders arrive? The choice of stepping over — or stepping up — must be answered by management and leadership. The choice made affects all stakeholder groups in a nonprofit.
1 Phillips, Kelli. [Knight-Ridder] “Body lay in kitchen for 2 years.” San Antonio Express News, 22 March 2005: Nation.
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