Managing Your Nonprofit for Resilience

6Respond to Your Risks

RUBRICS CAN HELP leaders think through what to do about threats and opportunities. This chapter proposes a framework or rubric for responding to risks.

In general, there are six approaches to dealing with a risk: research, avoidance, mitigation, development (of opportunities), shifting, and monitoring (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 What Can You Do to a Risk?

Research involves defining and refining the issue that needs response.

You avoid a risk by not doing the conduct that might trigger the threat.

You mitigate a threat by taking steps to reduce the likelihood of an event happening, reduce the magnitude of the threat if it happens, or increase the amount of time between when you learn the threat is going to create a problem and when that problem fully affects your organization.

Some risks, as discussed, are positive. You do not want to avoid or mitigate opportunities; instead, you want to develop them.

If you cannot avoid a risk and mitigation would not bring the risk down to a tolerable level or is not worth the effort, you might consider shifting the risk using insurance, contract principles, or partnering with some other organization.

Finally, you may decide to simply monitor a risk. If you have done everything you reasonably can to address the risk, you may wish to simply check in on it from time to time, based on some accepted criteria.

Experience ...