By: Rachel Sams

Have you ever had a thorny situation you wanted to run by risk professionals who held your same job title in other nonprofits, just to get their take? 

Perhaps you wonder how your role or department can work best with others in your organization, and long for some outside perspective on that. 

Or maybe you want a playbook of ways to engage your board on risk management issues—without tempting them to wade into day-to-day operations with the staff. 

Across the nonprofit sector, many risk managers work in organizations that have no or few other risk professionals on the team. Whether that’s true for you, or you manage a team of risk professionals but long for an outside perspective, all risk managers can benefit from external help and insight. Not all nonprofits can hire an external consultant for risk advice, especially in seasons when funding is tight. But anyone at your nonprofit can reach out for additional perspective on a challenge you face. 

That’s a place where NRMC’s Risk Summit in Reston, Virginia October 27-28 can help. 

Attendees regularly tell us one of their favorite features of the summit is our Kindred Spirit Roundtables, where risk professionals meet for breakfast with others from their sector or role and ask each other questions, commiserate over challenges, or share victories. 

If you’re wondering how your risk role fits in with others at your organization, Gerry Zack’s session “Risk, Compliance, Ethics and Internal Audit: Disparate Functions or Members of the Same Team?” might be a fit for you. Zack, CEO of Risk Trek LLC and former CEO of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics, will discuss scenarios that might call for grouping these functions under one leader—and scenarios that might not. 

Eager to have better board discussions on risk and strengthen your board-staff partnership? Join David Falchek, principal of DF Solutions, for “Board Engagement and Transformation: Managing Risk and Maximizing Impact.” Falchek will address common mistakes made by well-intentioned boards and ways to steer a board into better governance practices. 

Or maybe your team is hungry to get everyone in your nonprofit on board with your risk management approach, but not sure how. If that sounds like you, join Victoria Meadows, Assistant Director, Enterprise Risk Management Program at University of Maryland, Baltimore, and Elena Yearly, CEO and founder of EMY Consulting LLC, for “Everyone’s a Risk Champion: How to Build Risk into Every Role at Your Nonprofit.” They’ll discuss how to embed risk awareness at every level of a nonprofit, from front-line staff to board members. 

You probably sense that every member of your nonprofit team has a role to play when it comes to risk management, but you may be unsure what role that is or how to guide them. That’s where an outside perspective from other risk pros can come in handy. Engage in conversation with risk professionals beyond your organization, and you’ll hear lots of ideas for how team members in any and every role can help bring a risk function to life. 

Rachel Sams is Lead Consultant and Editor at the Nonprofit Risk Management Center. Reach her with thoughts and questions about role-based risk management at rachel@nonprofitrisk.org or (505) 456-4045.