Club Directors and Risk Management
Risk Management and Club Directors
Article by Warren Tapp
What is Risk Management?
It is the anticipation of events that can cause harm to your club and the proactive steps to minimise those risks. Club Directors do not always spend enough time on risk management even though it is a key responsibility of all Directors.
The first step, the Board together with management, is to have a workshop thinking of all the risks a club may face. One such workshop recently identified 48 risks in 2 hours.
The next step is to give each risk a score out of 10 for the likelihood it may happen and then a score out of 10 for the impact on the club if it did. Then multiply those 2 scores for each risk to get a result out of 100. This ranks all the risks from lowest to highest (perhaps with traffic light colours with red for high, green for low and amber for medium) and the Board can decide which of all the risks it wants to monitor, while management looks after the lower-level risks. The next step in the workshop is to agree on the steps to reduce or mitigate the risk. These may be to stop the risky activity, transfer the risk by insurance or accept the risk, despite the score.
The Board should monitor these scores to see if each risk has reduced by score and it should be in the Board papers and as an agenda item. Consider developing a Disaster Recovery plan and a Business Continuity plan if a major event impacts your club, such as a fire or flood that can close the club down. Also, consider reputational risk for the club if certain events happen too.
Good club governance requires a Board to take a close interest in risk management before an event happens and be ready for it.
There is training on risk management in our online learning platform at https://clubgovernance.com.au/elearning-platform to assist you and your Board.
Who Needs Club Governance Training?
In our opinion every club and Association across Australia need Club Governance Training.
Governing a Club, Charity or any Not-for-profit is a big responsibility, and it cannot be done by well-meaning volunteers who do not understand their role.
Club Governance Training will;
- Board Members will know their responsibilities.
- You’ll have more productive Board Meetings.
- Help improve your Club’s growth and sustainability.
- Your Club will be more legally compliant.
Club Governance has developed an online training program for all Board and Committee members to ensure they know how to do their job.
It is available in 15 modules of about 15 minutes each and covers all the necessary knowledge they must have, based on our 30+ years of assisting organisations like yours around Australia.
