The Charities Sector Interest Group at the Institute of Risk Management has released a new risk maturity framework and accompanying guide:

'Getting Better' Flyer - March 2016
Charities SIG Risk Maturity Framework

This simple framework has been designed to help charities develop a plan for improving your risk management. It sets out four levels of risk maturity (conscious, developing, proficient and expert) and summarises what this means in terms of knowledge, skills and behaviours.

If you've just got started then you might class yourself as 'conscious', although in some areas you might well be 'developing' or even 'proficient'. But think about whether you actually need to be 'expert' - most of us probably don't. It's a question of matching your risk capabilities to your likely needs. But if you are 'conscious' in all aspects of risk management, then you'll probably want to make some improvements. If you don't, you're likely to find that objectives and targets are missed or not met in full, simply because senior management are diverted to deal with unplanned events.

Our short guide explains how you can use the framework to assess your charity's risk capability and identify where you need to improve. This will help you focus your limited resources on developing the right areas - why insist, for example, that all staff attend risk training if actually the problem is just that you haven't effectively communicated and promoted your risk policy?

The Chair of the group is Alyson Pepperill CFIRM ACII, Chartered Insurance Institute Risk Manager.