Risk is inherent to the life in general and in the NPO field in particular. In the NPO field risks cannot be avoided and are part of our everyday organisational life. This has always been the case - The future is always uncertain and the outcomes of events unpredictable. Why then the perpetual surprise in the NPO field when these risks pop up. Why then the resistance in developing plans to address the risks and the tendency to year after year raise the negative impact of the same risk as opposed to yearly evaluating the impact of our plans/activities to address the risks.
Risk Management in the NGO Field : Is it because action is then internalised in the organisation, and evaluated as such - as opposed to the NPO being a passive recipient of negative external actions? Is it because the possible action is going to take us out of our comfort zone? Don’t we want to ask the questions because we don’t like the answer’s that is going to be produced?
In our work with NPO and other civil society organisations in developing risk management plans the resistance to developing action plans to prevent risks or limit the impact of risks is unfortunately quite too often clear. Many organisations can give detailed and comprehensive descriptions of risks they face, can detail the triggers and impact. However if they have to develop plans to address the risks on an organisational level, detail and clear actions are quite often superficial.
NPO’s and Civil Society organisations who shy away from developing comprehensive risk management plans(with clear actions that they are going to take) are setting themselves up to continue being passive recipients of other’s actions and decisions. In addition, aspects such a strategic planning and change actions are going to continue being repetitive process of discussing the impact “old” problems, as opposed to discussing the impact of actual actions undertaken by the organisation in addressing the “old” problems.
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