Identifying Risks in the Charity World

If you are responsible for the welfare of a small charity, you will know the importance of getting protection in the form of charity insurance. This article looks at the first stages of what you and your charity can do beyond buying insurance to reduce the chances of an accident or loss occurring.

As the trustee of a charity or someone responsible for sorting the insurance for a small charity, community group or voluntary organisation you will no doubt be aware of risk management. And as someone in such an important role, you will realise the importance of doing everything you can in your power to make sure your premises, any even you organise and your organisation as a whole is a safe as possible.

For those of you new to risk management or helping run a charity for the very first time, here are is some basic information to help you when it comes to risk management.

To begin with it is perhaps best to clarify exactly what a risk is and risk can be defined as either a hazard, source of danger or the possibility of incurring loss or misfortune. It can be defined a venture undertaken without regard to possible loss or injury or risk can be defined as exposure to a chance of loss or damage.

So as a charities trustee, what is the first thing you can actually do to reduce the chances of loss or damage by managing the risk?

The first thing you should be doing is identifying hazards that could exist in and around your charity. If you have premises, go around and look for things that could potentially cause harm. Perhaps you have boxes in walkways or cables coming from under desks that unsuspecting people could fall over.

You also need to get other trustees or volunteers involved in the process above as there is every chance you could miss things that they can identify.

If you are an established charity, you may actually have an accident book already and these can often be a great source of information. Simply look through your accident book and see if there are any trends that exist.

The final thing you can be going at this early stage is to actually seek help. The charity commission website and the website for the health and safety executive are both great sources of information and they are free. Therefore you could get health and safety advice which when implemented can make your charity a safer place.

You will always have the option of transferring some of the risks by purchasing charity liability insurance but identify risks that already exist and the first task of risk management will be complete.