Charity Risk Management
"Identifying and managing the possible and probable risks that a acharity may face over its working life is a key part of effective governance for charities of all sizes and complexity.
By managing risk effectively, trustees can help ensure that:
- significant risks are known and monitored, enabling trustees to make informed decisions and take timely action;
- the charity makes the most of opportunities and develops them with the confidence that any risks will be managed;
- forward and strategic planning are improved; and
- the charities aims are achieved more successfully."
Charities and Risk Management: A guide for trustees. The Charity Commission, June 2010
Risk Management in Charities
The risks that a charity faces depend very much on the size, nature and complexity of the activities it undertakes, and also on its finances. In general, the larger, more complex or diverse a charity's activities are, the more difficult it will be to identify, assess, respond and manage the risks that it faces, and put proper systems into place to manage them.
A solution is needed that supports the whole risk management process, captures all relevant risk data from each part of the charity, aggregates this up through the charity hierarchy, shows the level of exposure at each point in the charity, shows the priorities and shows the potential benefits of the proposed risk controls (or actions).
RiskAid Enterprise does this and more, making the charity risk management task so much easier, by providing:
- A secure, collaborative working environment for all stakeholders
- Risk identification and assessment tools, enabling users to assess risks in terms of potential cost, business delay and any other relevant criteria
- Automatic risk prioritisation, to show where effort is best applied
- Action definition to prevent and/or limit the impact of the risks
- Potential benefits of taking each action
- Tracking of risks to Issues (definitely going to happen) to Incidents (definitely has happened)
- Award-winning mathematics handling all calculations, behind the scenes, giving you the information you need to make sound decisions
- A fully recorded history throughout the life of the assessment to support trend analysis, audit trails - and to cut down the paperwork!
- All the reporting displays needed for managing and reporting on risk
- Private "what-if" scenarios where team members can try out alternatives to find the best solutions, before proposing them for inclusion.
RiskAid Enterprise supports the Charity Commission's requirements for Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) and their risk management process as described in "Charities and Risk Management: A guide for trustees" (The Charity Commission, June 2010)
It goes further. By involving staff in the risk management process and demonstrating the potential benefit of proposed actions, it helps in motivating staff to manage risks effectively. By recording all changes, it provides an audit trail that demontrates the the risk management process is being actively reviewed and managed. By providing role-based security at every level, it offers a confidential environment for safe risk management. Its availability over the web does not compromise this, as security is independently tested and proven, both physically and electronically.
RiskAid Enterprise allows stakeholders throughout the organisation to address risk from their viewpoint and determine the potential benefits of the actions they are taking, against the potential expenditure.
The result can be a pro-active approach to risk throughout the organisation, with clearly cost-benefit analysed action plans being executed to ensure best practice risk management, coupled with the ability to demonstrate that the charity's risk management objectives are actually being achieved.